Thorns of Decision (Dusk Gate Chronicles) (34 page)

“Will she wake up again?” Wesley asked, tears pooling at the corners of his eyes, and William’s heart ached even more.

“Of course she will. Everything is going to be fine, buddy.”

“Are you going to do that to my brother?” Some of the tears were starting to drip now.

“No, I’m not. He’s going to stay awake, and you can stay sitting next to him the whole time to make sure, okay?”

Wesley nodded, wiping his cheek on the shoulder of his shirt. William reached into his pocket and took out a handkerchief; the motion of handing it to the little boy made him think about Quinn. He hoped she was doing all right back at the castle.

“Are Clara and Darren twins, Wesley?”

“Yes.” He dabbed at his eyes with the crumpled-up cloth, sniffling.

“I thought so. Did you know that I have a brother and sister who are twins and they’re just a couple of cycles younger than me?”

“You do?”

“Yup. And I love them very much, and I always try to protect them, too. You’re doing a really great job as a big brother.”

The look in Wesley’s eyes was very slowly becoming more trusting.

“I do need your help, though Wesley. Do you think you can help me?”

“What do I have to do?”

“I need to clean out your brother’s cut, and I need to fix it so it can heal the right way and it won’t get infected or give him a bad scar. But I don’t want to hurt him when I do that, so I need to give him some medicine to make just that little part of his leg go to sleep for a while.”

Wesley raised his eyebrow skeptically. “He doesn’t like medicine.”

“Nobody does, Wes,” William said, meeting his gaze. “And he’s really not going to like this kind, because I have to use a little needle to put it just in his leg.”

Wesley’s eyes popped open wide.

“Yeah, I know. It will sting, and he’s probably going to cry for a few minutes, but then that part of his leg will fall asleep and he will feel better. Do you think you can help him out and hold his hand and help him keep his leg still?”

“Maybe.” Wesley still looked dubious, and William had to smile.

“We’re not going to talk about the needle, though, okay? Not even if you see it, although you probably won’t, because I have a special way I like to hide it while I’m using it. I won’t lie to him – I’ll tell him when it’s going to pinch, but talking about the needle is a little scary. Can you just talk to him about other stuff, like maybe his favorite game to play or his favorite thing to eat? Can you do that for me?”

“I’ll try.”

William couldn’t help smiling again. It was an honest answer. “Awesome. Thanks, little man.”

“Prince William?”

“Yeah?”

“You’re not going to stick needles in
me
, are you?”

William looked him right in the eye and smiled. “No, I’m not.”

Quinn walked back into the castle slowly after saying good-bye to William at the stable, still upset with herself for ruining his surprise. She barely gotten inside the hallway to the family’s quarters when Linnea pounced on her.

“So?” Linnea said, smiling widely.

“So what?” She frowned. Had she missed something else?

“Which one did you pick?”

She felt her face and neck flush hot. “You knew?”

Linnea rolled her eyes. “Were you really under the impression that people keep secrets from me around here?”

She raised an eyebrow at her friend, “I suppose not many.” Of course, Quinn knew of several secrets people were keeping from Linnea, her own included, but it wasn’t like she could say anything.

“So? Which one?” Linnea’s eyes shone with curiosity and excitement.

“The one that’s a solid light gray color except for the patches of white on the chest and wings.”

“Oooh, good choice!”

By that point they’d reached the door to Quinn’s bedroom, and she was surprised to find that the door stood open. As soon as they entered, she could see why. “Do the two of you ever hang out in your own bedrooms?” she asked Thomas, who was sitting on her couch. His injured leg was propped up on her coffee table.

He shrugged. “Yours is a nice change of scenery. Besides, we were waiting for you, wanting to hear how the bird-picking went.”

“You were right, T. She picked the one you thought she would.”

Thomas’ eyes lit up as he smiled widely. “I’ve been calling that one Raeyan. It’s perfect for you.”

“You can name it something else if you’d like, though,” Linnea said hurriedly.

“I don’t know; it’s kind of a nice name. I don’t know anything about naming seeker birds – and at least that one’s a name I’m not going to have to learn how to pronounce.”

Thomas chuckled. “See, Nay. I knew what I was talking about.”

“Does the name mean something?” Quinn asked.

“Um ... it’s something like ‘trusted guardian’.”

“Well, that’s appropriate then.” She sat down in one of the armchairs and put her own feet up on the table. Her thoughts were still in a tangle; she couldn’t decide whether Thomas and Linnea being in her room right now was a welcome distraction or an annoyance. After she’d sat there silently for a moment, she realized that the two of them were still looking at her expectantly.

“What?”

“Anything
else
happen on your walk?” Linnea asked.

She frowned. “Like what? We saw some rabbits, too.”

“That is so not what she’s asking,” Thomas said. “What else happened between you and Will?”

Now she was confused. Nothing else
had
happened, at least nothing noteworthy besides her overreaction, and they didn’t know about that. “I really don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Thomas and Linnea never looked more like twins than when they both reacted the same way to something. Watching them both roll their eyes at the same time was almost comical.

“Do you think she just doesn’t know that him asking her to formally announce their courtship at the party is a big deal?” Linnea asked her brother.

Suddenly the room felt like it was spinning. “What?” she managed to splutter.

Linnea’s eyes widened, and pink lines spread across her cheeks. “He did ask you, didn’t he?”

“He didn’t ask me anything, except about the birds.
What
was he supposed to ask me?” And why did his siblings have to know everything before she did? Her heart pounded heavily in her chest as she wondered just how badly she’d upset him over the bird thing. She’d already felt terrible enough.

Both Thomas’ and Linnea’s faces were beet red. “Sorry, Quinn,” Thomas said. “I had no idea we’d be ruining anything by saying something.”

Quinn blinked furiously, as she tried to regain her composure. The pain in her chest threw her off balance. He’d been going to ask her about that and now he hadn’t? What did that mean? What had she done?

“Quinn…” Linnea walked toward her, a sympathetic look in her eyes.

Suddenly, there was a soft knock at the open door, and Quinn looked up to see King Stephen standing there, looking a little concerned. She’d never before thought how nice it might be if she were a chameleon, capable of blending into the background on a moment’s notice.

“Oh, hi Father,” Linnea said, the red coloring in her face reaching all the way past her hairline and to the tips of her ears now. “How long have you been standing there?”

The look Stephen directed to his children right then might have made Quinn laugh if she hadn’t been so mortified. “Long enough to hear the two of you crossing the boundaries of decent privacy, as usual.”

They both looked down at the floor.

“I do believe there’s a good deal of silver that needs polishing downstairs,” Stephen said, in a tone that caused both Thomas and Linnea to slink out of the room immediately.

Once they were gone, Stephen’s eyes fell back on Quinn.

“How are you?”

“I’m all right, thank you.” It was a lie; she was barely holding herself together, and she’d never felt quite this awkward talking to him before.

“We haven’t really had a chance to talk since you’ve been back.”

“No, we haven’t.”

“Do you have a minute now?”

She nodded slowly, taking a couple of deep breaths. Her thoughts were spinning so wildly that she wasn’t sure she was capable of maintaining a conversation, but she’d try.

Stephen closed the door to her room and came over to sit down on the couch that Thomas had just vacated. They both sat there for a moment, just looking at each other – she had the feeling that he wasn’t quite sure what to say to her, either.

Finally, he spoke. “How are you doing with everything?”

She closed her eyes and took another deep breath before she answered. “Apparently not as well as I thought I was.”

He chuckled under his breath, though his gray eyes shone with sympathy. “That sounds about right. It’s a lot to take in. Nathaniel told me that Megan gave you the pendants.”

“Yeah.” Quinn reached deep into the pocket of the woven pants she wore for the little pouch she’d stored there. Carefully, she unclasped the safety pin that held it in place, and pulled the pouch into her hand. The pendants inside jingled together softly.

“She gave me the pendants, and Nathaniel told me the whole story. Or at least what sounds like the whole story. I’m learning that there’s always some part of things I don’t know about.”

“It sounded like he told you most of things that are relevant. He told you who he really is and who your father was.”

“Who I am,” she added raising an eyebrow at the word ‘relevant’, but choosing to let it go for now.

“Yes. Who you are.”

“Well, that’s the part I’m having the most trouble with,” she said. “I’m not entirely sure what I’m supposed to do with that information.”

“I imagine it changes a lot of things for you, Quinn.”

She looked up at him, meeting his gaze, a little wave of irritation crashing into the sides of her stomach. “Is that what it’s supposed to do? Change everything for me?”

He sighed, his expression shifting to one that looked almost –
guilty?
“I don’t know the answer to that. There’s nothing about this situation that’s the way it’s ‘supposed’ to be. Or at least, the way I wish it was. I said something to Alvin once, about not knowing what I was supposed to do about any of this, and he told me that there’s no such thing as
supposed
to – that there is only whatever situation is in front of us today, and the choices we make in dealing with it.”

“So what do I do now then? What choice do I make?”

“Ultimately, that decision is up to you. No one else can choose for you.”

The anger rushed in so fast it took her by surprise; she didn’t even know where it came from. “I keep hearing that. Everyone says ‘the choice is mine,’ but it doesn’t feel that way. It feels like everyone else has been deciding everything for me my whole life, and now they’re waiting on me to make some kind of ‘choice’ that’s really going to be what they wanted the whole time. What is it I’m supposed to be deciding, exactly, Stephen? I don’t even know! What are my choices?”