Steal the Sun (32 page)

Hildie sank ungracefully into a chair at the closest table. “No, I don’t have it. It’s the damn leprechauns’ fault. They’re a menace, they are. They run those damn card games. I won for a long time but then I just couldn’t stop. Once I started losing, I just kept trying to get it back.”

I sighed and took another drink. “That’s how the con works, Hildie. You think you can win it all back, but you just get in deeper and deeper. So you paid your debt to the leprechauns with the Blood Stone.”

“Yes,” she acknowledged. “I didn’t have anything else and those damn leprechauns can be mean. You don’t want to owe them nothing. I always knew it would come back to haunt me. It would have looked good on my crown, you see.”

“I think we should go now, Zoey,” Declan said, standing suddenly. “If we hurry, we can find the leprechauns.”

“Oh, no, Prince Declan. It was many months ago. They’re long gone by now.” Hildie winked at him. “We have plenty of time.”

“Oh, I have to get back to the palace right away,” Declan said. “Don’t I, Zoey?”

I shook my head but something was off. I felt a small pain start low in my belly. I took a deep breath and figured it was my first pregnancy pain. I smiled to myself because for the first time, I actually felt a little pregnant. It was just a cramp and I stretched to relieve it.

“Zoey, are you all right?” Neil asked, his brows forming a concerned
V
.

Zack sniffed the air. “I smell blood. Where the hell is that coming from?”

“Yeah, I do, too.” Lee turned, looking straight at me, his face grim. “Zoey, what’s wrong, darlin’?”

Neil was on his feet, moving around the table toward me. All three guards stared in my direction, but I didn’t see the problem.

“I’m fine,” I assured them. “Who’s bleeding?”

“Oh god, Z.” Neil stopped as he approached my seat. “You are.”

I stood up suddenly and my gown was soaked in blood.

Chapter Eighteen

I doubled over as a horrible cramp hit me. Pain filled my body, racked every inch of my flesh.

“Oh, god, what’s happening?” Deep down I already knew what was happening. I was just too horrified to admit it. It had to be something else. It couldn’t be that. Not my boy.

The gown that had been delivered for me to wear earlier this morning was a light yellow. It turned a dirty brown color as I continued to bleed. So much fucking blood. Like it would never stop.

I clutched my stomach, low toward my pelvis, and wondered what I’d done to cause this. It couldn’t happen. Not my boy. Not my baby. It was mine and Dev and Daniel’s and he couldn’t be dying. He couldn’t.

There was so much blood.

“She is losing the baby,” Declan said quietly, looking completely terrified at the prospect.

Another cramp, worse than anything I’ve ever felt, struck me. My knees buckled, but before I could hit the floor Neil was there, picking me up and taking me with him gently to the ground. He had one arm around my back and the other held my hand as I squeezed through the pain. Agony shuddered through my body, every moment a fresh misery. I started to scream. I couldn’t help it.

“It’s going to be okay, Z,” Neil promised me once I calmed slightly, though his eyes were wide with fear. He looked up at Lee, who was stark white as he stared down at me. It was the first time I could remember Lee not having any idea what to do.

I was aware of the crowd surrounding me. They looked down, their faces worried and horrified at the event unfolding before them. I heard the whispers about a curse on the Fae and that all of this was happening because their priest was a mortal. They were cursed because Devinshea was cursed.

“Shut up, all of you.” Declan looked savage as he stood over me, staring down the crowd. He had his sword out, brandishing it toward the crowd. “I hear one more whisper about my brother and I swear I’ll consider the lot of you traitors. I’ll behead you all myself. Do something useful. Someone get the healer.”

“Don’t you fucking touch that,” Zack yelled, and I saw a smallish man attempting to clear off the table. Zack had pulled a gun and was aiming it directly at the blond faery. “The first one of you who touches anything on this table will find out what a cold iron bullet can do to you.”

“Everyone else all right?” I heard Lee asking.

“I feel fine,” Declan said but then allowed, “well, physically, that is. Zoey did not eat anything. It was not the stew.”

“I’m sure it was that tea,” Zack said. “I don’t think we ordered it, but I saw Zoey drink it.”

I started crying because I was just realizing that this was truly happening. I looked up into Neil’s blue eyes. “Where’s the doctor?”

A doctor would fix it. I needed a doctor.

“They have gone to fetch him, Zoey.” Declan kneeled beside me. His emerald eyes looked so much like Dev’s it hurt. I loved Neil, but I wanted Dev’s arms around me. I wanted Daniel standing over me.

“He’ll save my baby?” I hadn’t meant for that to come out as a question, but it did. My insides seized and I felt another rush of blood leaving my body. I barely concealed a scream. The fact that it hadn’t hurt so much this time terrified me. If the worst was over, then what was left to do?

Declan looked at Neil, his face filled with pain. Neil just shook his head and pulled me close. “No, sweetie. There’s too much blood. I’m so sorry, but I think the baby’s gone.”

“He can’t be.” I sobbed and now I wasn’t rational. I was a ball of pain and emotion. Any ambiguity I had about wanting a baby was completely gone now that I was losing him. Now that I was losing him, I wanted nothing more than to be his mom. “I need Daniel. Where’s Daniel? He’ll fix it.”

“Daniel can’t fix this, Zoey.” There were tears escaping from Neil’s eyes now. I felt them hit my skin as he tried to pull me close. He tried to give me the comfort I needed.

“He’ll give me blood and then the baby will be fine.” Danny fixed things. I got hurt and he fixed me. I died and he brought me back. It only made sense in that moment that he could save our baby. Daniel could do anything. I just needed Daniel. Daniel wouldn’t let this happen to me. I sobbed, calling out for him. Calling for Dev. Begging anyone who would listen to stop this thing that was happening to me.

God, this couldn’t happen to me.

Neil hugged me to him and stood up. “It’s too late. We have to worry about you now.” Neil looked at Lee. “Tell the healer to meet us at the palace. I’m getting her away from this place.”

Lee stepped forward. “We should wait.”

“And let them gawk at her?” Neil asked savagely, turning his scorn on the people around us. “I won’t let her pain be mocked and gossiped about. I won’t let them use her to further their own agendas. For god’s sake, Lee, one of them did this to her.”

“We don’t know that,” Declan said, but even to my ears he sounded unsure.

“I do,” Neil replied. I let him take over because I couldn’t. I let myself rest in the security of his arms. “I know it deep in my bones. They got the baby but they don’t get her. You hear me?” He shouted the question all around. “You don’t get to take her! Get that healer to the palace. I’m taking her to Sarah.”

“Neil,” Lee shouted in that alpha voice of his. “Give her to me and I’ll take her.”

I tensed, ready to be shifted to my head guard’s arms because Neil always obeyed Lee when he used that alpha tone. Neil wasn’t an alpha. He followed the strongest leader in the group and that was Lee.

“No,” Neil said, walking away.

“She’s my responsibility,” Lee insisted.

Neil whirled around. “And she’s my friend. Sometimes she’s been the only friend I had in the whole world. I won’t give her up when she needs me. You think I’m not strong enough, well, let me tell you, I’ll always find the strength for her. If you want her you’ll have to fight me so just follow me and try to keep up, Lee.”

Lee sighed and his shoulders slumped forward in defeat. I could see every one of his thirty-five years on his face in that moment. “Go on, then, but be careful. I’ll stay behind with Zack and try to figure out what happened. I’ll be at the palace as soon as I can.”

“I will bring the healer,” Declan promised.

Neil nodded and then we were out in the sunshine of the afternoon. It was bright and sunny and that seemed to me the biggest insult of all. I looked over Neil’s shoulders and saw the trail of blood we were leaving. My heart seized because that was my baby boy’s life I was leaving in a thin stream on the ground. That was all of his tomorrows. I would never know him. I wouldn’t hold him and think about how much he looked like his father. I wouldn’t watch him take his first steps. I wouldn’t worry about his first day of school or tease him about his first date. He wouldn’t have any of those things, and I clutched Neil and cried for this small thing that would never be.

This is what the
bean si
had wailed about—my child, not my husband.

I had done everything wrong. I had never seen the danger coming. I finally understood the prophecy. So much had been lost and I mourned. I mourned for both my children. My boy and a girl I hadn’t realized was mine.

“Hold on, Zoey,” Neil said as he started to run.

I held on to his strong shoulders. He wasn’t that much bigger than me but he didn’t falter. I held on to him because it would kill him to fail.

I had already failed, so it didn’t much matter to me.

* * * *

I woke up a long while later in the bed I shared with Dev and Daniel in the palace. Neil slept beside me and when I looked up, I knew it was night. The room was lit only by small candles, and the gloom seemed oppressive to me. I wanted to sink back into oblivion.

It was mostly over by the time the healer made it to the palace. Sarah had done everything she could to make me comfortable, but she confirmed that there was nothing that could be done to save my son and that was the way I thought of him now. Before he’d been just a worry and then something I might be able to get excited about in the distant future.

Now that he was gone, he was my son and I would never know him.

I’d been given several different solutions to drink and if Neil hadn’t been around, I would have just downed whatever was given to me. Neil had made sure Sarah watched the healer like a hawk. Neil had insisted on sniffing or tasting everything given to me. I didn’t care. I took something that was supposed to help complete the miscarriage, something for the pain and, worst of all, something to clear the curse because that was what had taken my child’s burgeoning life.

Through the haze of everything that had happened that afternoon, I understood what Sarah had explained to me. The tea I’d drunk contained a series of herbs that, when combined with the hex bag she found sewn into my clothes, formed a black magic curse. This particular curse purged a vessel of any magic. It could be used to render a magical sword mundane or kill a witch. In my case, my son was magical and it caused my body, which was not magical, to purge itself. It was a nasty spell, and whoever had used it on me had known exactly what they were doing.

Everyone who had been in Ross’s tavern was being held for questioning by the royal guard. The man who had tried to clear away the spiked teacup was being held in the dungeons, and I heard someone say he was talking. I wasn’t even mildly interested in what he had to say. They had also questioned anyone who handled my clothing.

There was a rustling at the window and I noticed a tall figure there. Sarah was asleep in a chair by the bed and I heard someone prowling in the outer rooms. I was pretty sure it was Lee. When the man turned from the window, my heart seized because Dev had come back.

“Dev.” The tears started again. It was all right to cry because Dev would hold me and if he was here, then so was Danny. I could sleep between them and they could promise they didn’t hate me for losing our child. I’d been reckless and stupid and we were all going to have to pay.

“I am sorry,” Declan said, his voice low as though he didn’t want to wake the others. Neil shifted beside me, but he did not wake. There was no arrogance on Declan’s face. It was why I’d mistaken him for his brother. “It is just me.”

I took a deep breath and wiped my tears away. “Sorry. I thought you were Dev.”

He nodded. I noticed he was dressed in traveling clothes, his riding gloves in one hand. “I wish he was here right now. I do not mean to pry, but I have to ask the question.”

I knew what he wanted. I was sure it was the question everyone was asking. I sat back, inexpressibly tired as I explained how the
bean si
curse had been about my son. “You want to know about my first child. God, I can’t believe I just said that. My child. Her name was Summer. I didn’t carry her, obviously. She was the product of a transference box that Daniel and I primed. I never considered her to be mine. She was an odd piece of magic. The tribe the box belonged to took her with them when they passed through the veil.”

Declan thought about that for a moment. “I know a little about transference boxes, though they are incredibly rare. There must be intent of will to create a child. Was it you?”

I thought back to that day so long ago. Daniel and I had been together for the first time in years, making love over and over again. I remember my greatest hope had been to never leave his arms again. It had come as a shock to know that a child had been Daniel’s deepest wish. “No, it was Daniel.”