Sign of the Throne: Book One in the Solas Beir Trilogy (3 page)

“Then I will organize a hunting party—too much time has already passed. She must be captured as soon as possible and forced to hand over the child.”

“No,” Eulalia said. “I will go. Alone.” Cael opened his mouth to argue
, and she silenced him with a look. “Do not protest—she is my sister, and she will listen to me. I cannot make an appeal for compassion if I am surrounded by soldiers.”

“And if she harms you? You know I could not bear that,” he said.

“I know, Cael. But I cannot live without my child.”

Lucia stood in the shadows just outside the home’s wrought iron gate. It was almost midnight, but the electric lights in the massive old Tudor
Revival were still on, and she could see two figures silhouetted through the sheer curtains. She cautiously opened the gate and walked up a flagstone path to the large front door with its oversized brass door knocker, intricately engraved with the letter C. Placing the bundle on the stone steps in front of the door, she knocked, then slipped behind the trunk of the ancient oak that filled the front garden. A sandy-haired man in his early thirties opened the door, and seeing no one, was about to close it when he spied the bundle. He pushed up the long sleeves of his sweater and hunkered down to inspect the package.

“Who is it?” a young woman called out.

“It’s…a baby,” the man said as he pulled back the silken blankets protecting the child from the cold. “There’s a note wrapped in his blanket. It says, ‘Please take care of this child. His mother is no more.’”

“What? You’ve got to be joking.”

From her hiding place, Lucia could hear the woman’s excited footsteps as she hurried to the door.

Margaret Corbin took the sleeping baby from her husband, gasping in wonder as he woke, stretched, opened his eyes, and smiling, looked straight into hers. The child had
a full head of dark, curly hair and round cheeks.

Although he appeared to be only a few months old, there was an ancient wisdom in his pale blue eyes. “Oh my goodness. Philip, look at him. He’s so beautiful.”

Philip was preoccupied, still puzzling over the note. “His mother is no more. What does that mean? She died?” Looking up, he peered out into the dark street for whoever had left the baby.

Margaret held the child close, staring into those startling blue eyes that seemed much too aware for an infant. There was something about this child, how he held her gaze. She knew nothing about him, but she loved him. She couldn’t help herself. She loved him.

Logic would say it was because she wanted a child so badly. After several miscarriages and a diagnosis guaranteeing she would never have a child of her own, she was heartbroken. If she were honest with herself, she would have admitted that it wasn’t just her heart—
she
was broken. All the things that used to matter to her—her husband, her home, her affluent lifestyle—all that had faded into the background and become white noise against the constant, beating thought that she wanted, no,
needed
a child.

She looked up at her husband, squinting again at the mysterious note. She had considered adoption, but Philip was hesitant. He insisted that they hadn’t yet exhausted their options to have a biological child—that there had to be more medical tests, in spite of their doctor’s conclusive diagnosis. His refusal to accept that they were out of options made her tired. She knew she could never carry a baby to term, and she knew that frightened Philip.

He was a man used to having control. Young as he was, he ran his business with a tight rein, and he was very, very good at it. Their house, built in 1935, was one of the largest in all of Newcastle Beach, and on prime real estate, no less, with a magnificent view of the Pacific Ocean. It was much too big for the two of them, but it had been a wedding gift for her. Philip joked that nothing was too good for his bride, but she knew that he bought the old house less for his bride and more for his pride—not that she would have brought that to his attention. He had supervised its restoration himself, in his usual hands-on way, dealing with the architect and construction crew with the same presence and energy he brought to building his firm.

His ability to have a child of his own was the one thing he could not control, and yet the idea of caring for an adopted child came with so many unknowns, it terrified him. She suspected his pride played a part in that as well. They had fought about it, and the strain that put on their marriage only made the house seem bigger…and emptier.

Now, looking into this child’s eyes, Margaret Corbin knew this was what she had been waiting for. This child made all that heartache worthwhile. It had only taken a second, but in that second, she was unconditionally connected to him. She knew Philip wasn’t going to like what she was about to say, but she didn’t care. “It doesn’t matter where he came from or how he got here—I’ve been praying and praying for a baby, and this is the answer I’ve been waiting for. This is fate.”

“Meggy…” Philip began. “You know we should call the police and go through the proper channels. We should make sure the boy wasn’t taken from someone, or that something terrible hasn’t happened to the mother.” He was looking at her in that condescending way of his. She thought of it as his, “Do I really have to explain this, little girl?” look. She hated that look. She wasn’t stupid—
obviously
something terrible had happened to the mother. As a rule, babies didn’t appear on doorsteps because something good had happened.

But if
she
was a mother and something awful happened to her, wouldn’t she want someone to care for her child? Someone who would love the child as if he were her own? And she
could
take care of him, more than take care of him. She’d always felt a bit guilty about having money—maybe that was because her family had been nouveau riche and still held to working-class ideals, a fact her old-money neighbors were all too happy to help her remember. But she also had a fear that tragedy followed money—like you could only be blessed so much before you had to pay your dues.

She looked at the child’s face and then her husband’s. Philip could say what he wanted, but this time she would not bend. “I’m keeping this baby—he’s ours now.”

Philip sighed. “All right then. He’ll stay with us tonight. We’ll have to watch the morning news and see if we hear anything about a missing child. I’ll call my attorney tomorrow and find out what needs to be done.” He folded the note, looked at the baby, and grinned. “I will concede that he’s awfully cute. Seems like a smart little guy, too.”

“He’s got an old soul,” Margaret cooed. “My little wunderkind.”

Cael could hear the swish of the queen’s silken gown as she rushed down the stone hallway to the door of the second portal. She was so desperate to find her son, she hadn’t bothered to change from the delicate white gown she had worn to the court banquet earlier in the evening into something better suited for travel. She seemed convinced that if she hurried, she might be able to reason with her sister.

Cael had begged her to let him go in her stead, but she wouldn’t hear of it. Eulalia said Lucia would be more receptive to an appeal made by her sister, and that Cael’s presence as a soldier would compromise Eulalia’s negotiations for the return of her son. She said that in the absence of the king and the queen, a strong hand would be needed to keep her people safe from Tierney’s army, and there was no one she trusted more than Cael.

Before leaving her chamber, Eulalia had quickly written a letter to the court council, leaving the kingdom in Cael’s hands. He had accepted the letter and the queen’s charge with a heavy heart. If Lucia had been so bold as to assassinate her king and kidnap her nephew, what would stop her from harming the queen? But Cael’s arguments were to no avail—the queen would not,
could
not
hear him.

He insisted on escorting her to the hidden portal, begging her to change her mind all the while. Once he realized there was no chance of this, he simply asked for a promise that she would be careful and return. Eulalia assured him that she would, but Cael feared it was a promise she would not be able to keep.

Cael noted the second portal, like the first, was hidden behind a secret stone door. But instead of housing a tall mirror, the narrow passage ended in a shallow pool that emitted a glow, as if it were lit from below.

For the second time that evening, he found himself surprised by castle secrets and wondered what other information Ardal and Eulalia had kept from him. Cael was charged with castle security, and how could he protect the royal family if he were not privy to knowledge about hidden passages and portals? As Cael followed the queen to the pool’s edge, he could see stone steps disappearing into dark water that sparkled when disturbed, as though it held a thousand stars.

Gathering the folds of her gown around her, Eulalia entered the pool. As she descended, tiny bursts of light illuminated the fabric of the dress and the pale skin of her neckline and face, and trickled like diamonds through her dark tresses. “I will return soon,” she promised, and disappeared below the surface.

Cael felt his breath catch; he knew he might never see her again. He felt a familiar sense of loss, a dull ache in his chest that had begun long ago when he
’d learned of her betrothal to Ardal. It was a pain that had never gone away, but as always, he forced the feeling out of his mind, trying to focus his thoughts elsewhere. Unfortunately, in this secret chamber, no tasks required his attention; nothing distracted him from his heartache. All he could do was wait for her return. The throbbing in his head increased.

Kneeling, Cael dipped his hands in
to the water, cupping the liquid. He sighed heavily, and let it pour through his fingers into the pool, watching sparkling crystal droplets create expanding ripples of light in the water. Then he sat down to wait.

Lucia remained hidden until she saw that the baby was inside and Philip Corbin had closed the door. She smiled, satisfied the child would not be found. Then she slipped away. “Almost done,” she whispered to herself. Avoiding the street lamps, she hurried eastward to a three-story Victorian home. She had been here before, and she knew the old woman would be alone, sleeping in the bedroom on the ground floor.

As she crossed under a frostbitten, wisteria-covered arch and moved through the small flower garden framing the front porch, she heard a car passing, and ducked into the shadows. Entering the back garden, she allowed her form to become darker, almost as transparent as smoke, except for her eyes, which glowed bloody scarlet, allowing her to see as well as she could in daylight. She approached the back door and, instead of turning the knob, passed straight through the wood. Ghost-like, she glided down the hallway through the door of the bedroom.

Inside the dark room, Lucia heard soft, contented snoring. The woman looked peaceful, buried under a warm mound of quilts. Her long white hair was splayed across the pillow, and Lucia saw that she was dreaming, noting the movement of her eyes under the lids. Stretching out her arms, Lucia rose from the floor and floated from the foot of the bed to the head, descending horizontally until her face was an inch above the old woman’s. She breathed out steadily, and smoke encircled the dreamer’s head like a dark halo. Immediately, the woman’s breathing became irregular, and she began wheezing, her chest rising and falling painfully as she struggled to breathe.

Her death didn’t take long. With one fitful last effort to expel the smoke filling her lungs, the woman coughed violently. Her last breath was sucked from her as the smoke changed course and rose from her lips, dispersing into the air around her ashen face. The rhythm of her heartbeat wound to a stop. She was gone.

Lucia opened her eyes and found herself lying on her back
, staring at the ceiling in the complete silence of the empty room. There was no sound at all—not even the ticking of a clock. Every timepiece in the house had stopped when the old woman died, and they would never work again. Lucia brushed coarse, stringy white hair from her face and sat up. She threw the covers off the bed and, fighting the stiffness in her legs, went to inspect herself in the bureau mirror. Except for the eyes, which had grown so dark the irises were one with the pupils, the transformation was perfect.

As Eulalia held her breath and swam forward through a narrow stone corridor, a worrisome thought occurred to her:
What if the second portal was destroyed as well?
Surely Lucia had not been privy to all the king’s secrets. But still, what if there was no way to get through? How could she turn around in such a tight space on so little air? Once through the portal, she would be all but immortal, but here, in a claustrophobic underwater passage linking two worlds, she was vulnerable. This tunnel could well become her tomb.

Eulalia tried to banish her worries, to think only about her son and how much he needed her. With tiny explosions of light distorting her vision, it was impossible to see more than a few inches in front of her face. Lungs aching, she squeezed her eyes shut to block out the brilliance of the light, and reached out for the portal. And then she found it.