Page 86 of Hearts on Fire
She heaved a sigh, not meeting my eyes.
“A distant cousin and his wife.” She didn’t sound very enthusiastic about reuniting with them. And frankly, if they left her starving in theSalamandraSanctuary for decades, they couldn’t be that good of a family to begin with. Obviously, they didn’t want her before. Why would they want her now?
“Will they let you live with them?” I asked.
She hesitated before replying, clutching her hands in her lap.
“I’ll help them look after their child. I’ll clean their house. Cook. Do whatever they’ll need me to do.” She drew in another long breath. “We’ll make it.” Her voice was firm with resolve. She sounded determined, though her hand still shook a little when she briefly placed it on her belly.
“We?” I stared at her hand.
She jerked it away from her belly. “I’ll be fine.”
Her dark eyes finally met mine. Pleading.
“Zenada, are you…”
She gripped my hand. “Please, Amber. You can’t tell anyone. I’ll leave. No one will have to know. Ever.”
“You’re pregnant,” I breathed out. “With King Edkhar’s baby?
The revelation shook me to the core. My mind was reeling. King Edkhar had left an heir, after all. Whether he knew about it or not before he died.
Zenada kept begging frantically, “Please… No one can know. I don’t want my son to be a part of any of this.” She waved her hand around the room.
“Your son? How do you know it’s a boy?”
“Gargoyle women always know early. It is a boy. The dead king’s bastard child. If anyone finds out about him, he’ll be in danger. Can’t you see? With the new king on the throne, any descendants of King Edkhar will be considered a threat to the new bloodline. He’d be hunted and killed.”
“No, he won’t,” I said. “You don’t know Elex. He’s the most decent, most honorable man I’ve ever met.”
She tilted her head, giving me a faint smile. “Spoken as a woman in love.”
I knew what she meant. I might trust Elex with my life, but for Zenada, he was a stranger. Why would she trust him with the future of her son?
“It doesn’t have to be the new king who’d wish ill for my baby,” she said. “There are plenty of people in the kingdom who will want to eradicate any trace of King Edkhar. Or some power-hungry High Lord may decide to use my Ahrit as a pawn in his political game. I can’t let that happen.”
“You’ll name him Ahrit?” I smiled.
That was the name of the king who Elex said was his grandfather, the first time he and I met in King Edkhar’s Great Hall.
If King Edkhar was Elex’s great-great-grandfather, and King Ahrit was his grandfather, that meant Elex fit right between them in this succession line. In the line of his ancestors, he’d take the place of his own great-grandfather and his namesake, King Elex.
Voron was right. Future was but a black-and-white sketch, left for us to color in and give it substance. Elex’s bloodline didn’t end with the death of King Edkhar. It just took an unexpected detour.
“Ahrit was the name of my grandfather,” Zenada explained. “He died when I was eight. And he was the only man in my life who ever loved me. Unconditionally.”
I smiled and hugged her.
My heart soared, my head spinning. I felt like hugging the whole world.
There was a reason why Elex hadn’t disappeared from existence, and now I believed he never would.
“You have no idea what this means, Zenada.” I stared into her ink black eyes that looked so much like Elex’s. At her braid that was so dark it appeared almost black if it wasn’t for the copper highlights brought out by the setting sun. At her smooth, glowing skin, that was almost exactly the same beautiful shade of brown as that of the man I loved.
Elex carried little family resemblance with King Edkhar because he clearly took after another one of his ancestors, his great-great-grandmother Zenada. Who, by the crazy twist of fate also happened to be his great-grandmother.
For the first time since King Edkhar’s death, I was able to draw a full breath, free of fear. “Oh, this makes me so, so happy, Zenada.”