Its nose resembled a dark snout, and its mouth had all its sharp little teeth already in place at birth. It growled, snapping hungrily and instinctively at the air.
As they gazed down at the creature with horror, it opened its eyes.
They were a bright golden-yellow.
Michael’s knees buckled. Aedan and Derwyn caught him as he slumped, his eyes glazed with shock, and then something in him snapped. With an animal cry of rage and agony, he seized the hilt of Derwyn’s sword and wrenched it from its scabbard, then brought it down upon the abomination lyIng on the bed. Again and again he raised it and brought it down, dismembering the obscene creature. A edan and Derwyn seized him, but he fought them off, and they called for the guards to help restrain him.
He fought them like a man possessed, but finally, they got the sword away from him. It was slick with thick, dark green blood. They dragged him from the room as he screamed out Faelina’s name over and over, but not before the guards saw what he had killed.
Excellent, thought Laera with exhilaration. They will never be able to keep it quiet now.
“Faelina!” Ariel said, bending over her and stroking her forehead.
“Faehna . . .”
Laera stood at the foot of the bed, looking down at the limp form of the empress. “She’s dead,” she said flatly. “Just like her hellspawn.”
Ariel looked up at her slowly. No words passed between them, but Laera clearly saw the look of sheer loathing in her eyes. So, she thought with sudden realization, she knows. In that one moment, all of Ariel’s thoughts were perfectly transparent.
Aedan must have told her. She gazed back at her, defiantly, as if daring her to say something.
“I knew you were a cold-hearted bitch,” said Ariel softly, “but until this moment, I never truly realized how evil you really were.”
“Evil?” Laera said. They were alone now with the body of the empress, and there was silence in the corridor outside.
“If I am evil, then what do you call that?” She indicated the remains of the thing Faelina had brought into the world. “How else can you explain such an event except to say it was willed directly by the gods?
What portent shall we read from this, my lady?”
She turned and left the room, passing the physician as he was hurrying back. Laera paused, then stood against the wall by the open door, listening.
She heard the physician’s voice.
“Oh, no. Is she … ?”
Ariel’s voice was leaden. “She’s dead.”
There was a sharp intake of breath as the physician saw what it was Michael had killed.
Ariel spoke. “How is the emperor?”
“I have given him a sleeping draught. It is very potent. He was…
greatly distressed.”
“Take that… that thing and get rid of it,” said Ariel. “No one else must see it. And then have all the midwives report to me. And the guards who were in here, as well. There must not be a word of this.
Not even a whisper. The empress died in childbirth. The child did not survive. It was … a male.”
“I understand, my lady. But to keep something like this quiet. . .”
Laera could imagine the man shaking his head. “Someone is bound to talk.”
“Nevertheless, we must try, for the sake of the emperor and the empire.
If word of this gets out,” said Ariel, “there is no telling what may happen.”
Oh, yes, there is, thought Laera, smiling with grim satisfaction. Oh, yes, there is.
Aedan had not been drunk in years, not since that night in the Green Basilisk, but he felt like getting drunk tonight. He needed to get drunk. He feared for Michael’s sanity. He had never seen him in such a state, not even in battle when he loosed his divine rage. He had not done so tonight, for it was not rage that seized him but agony and desperation. Nevertheless, it had taken Aedan and Derwyn and four guards to restrain him.
Aedan had him brought back to his quarters, where the physician had forced a sleeping draught down his throat while they held him down.
Thankfully, it was very strong and had taken effect quickly.
He would sleep till morning. And then, when he awoke …
Aedan didn’t want to think about that. He knew he had to because it was his duty to think about such things, but not just now. For tonight, just one night, he did not want to consider possibilities.
They were too frightening to contemplate.
Ariel would sleep with her ladies-in-waiting tonight, if she would sleep at all. She had sent for all the midwives and the guards who had seen the …
the thing, instructing them they were to reveal nothing, on pain of direst consequences, but it was an empty threat. What were they to do if anyone should talk? Imprisonment? Execution? For what? For failing to keep to themselves something so horrifying and grotesque that to keep it bottled up inside would eat at them like acid?
It was a doomed effort, anyway, and he knew it.
By now, the entire castle would be buzzing with talk of what had happened, and by tomorrow, the town would know of it, too. From there, it would spread
throughout the empire, and there was nothing anyone could do to stop it.
He signaled the serving wench for another
