Blooms of Consequence (Dusk Gate Chronicles Book 4) (35 page)

He pointed the gun at Quinn again. “What did you do?” he asked.

“I didn’t do anything.”

“You’re the one who was born there – Samuel’s little brat. You weren’t ever supposed to come here. Samuel never even told you about this gate – he couldn’t have. You’re the one who did this. What did you do?”

And that’s when she knew. Knew where he’d gotten the gun.
He hasn’t fired that thing in many cycles, Marcus had said. Many cycles.
He hadn’t found out about the gate just recently from Tolliver. He’d known all along.

“You killed my father.”

“And now I’m going to kill you.”

But he never got the chance. She’d taken the knife out of her belt as soon as he’d aimed that gun at her. He was still fumbling with the gun – he hadn’t re-cocked it after the last shot – when two blades hit him, almost simultaneously, one in the chest, and one in his neck, knocking him instantly to the ground.

The gun clattered to the stone floor of the bridge as Quinn looked around, trying to figure out who had thrown the second knife.

“It was me,” Marcus said. “Stay here.”

Marcus, Ben, and Luke ran up the steps of the bridge while the rest of them stood there. Quinn started shaking. First it was just her hands, but then it quickly spread up her arms, and to the rest of her body. At the first click of her teeth, William grabbed her and pulled her against him, holding her tightly. But the shaking didn’t stop.

When Luke yelled, “He’s dead,” her whole body felt like it had turned to ice.

WHEN QUINN WOKE LATER, she knew where she was – in the bedroom in the castle she’d been sharing with William – but she had no idea how she’d gotten there.

“Hey, love.” William’s hand was on her the second she moved; he must have just been sitting next to her on the bed, watching her the whole time.

“Hi.” She smiled weakly. “What am I doing here?”

“We brought you back in the wagon,” he said. “I gave you some valoris seed – I’m sorry, but I was worried. You were pretty shaken.”

“Well I just … I just
killed
somebody, William.”

He pulled her up and into his arms. “Maybe. Marcus says he doesn’t know which knife did what – and we don’t know which injury actually killed him.”

Quinn held herself back far enough to give him a look.

“He had a
gun
pointed at you, Quinn. He may or may not have actually been able to hit you with it, but he sure wasn’t going to hesitate to try. He killed your father, and had your grandfather killed – maybe he even did that one himself; we may never know. But he should have been hanged for those crimes in the first place.”

“Well, I wish he would have been.”

“Me too, love. Me too.”

She sat there for several minutes, reveling in the comfort and safety of his arms before she spoke again. “What happened with the gate?”

He shrugged. “I have no idea. Simon and Max both tried again to use it, several times. They even tried throwing things through it, all the way up until it was completely dark. And it never worked. It was like it didn’t even open.”

“Do you think we found the magnet and we didn’t even know it?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so – even if we did, we didn’t
take
it anywhere.”

“So strange,” she said.

“Yes, it is.” He kissed her forehead. “Are you hungry? I’d like to see you get some food in you after that.”

She nodded. “We should probably go see the rest of your family…”

“
Our
family.”

“…
Our
family. I’m sure everyone’s worried.”

“They are. Thomas and Linnea are probably still pacing the hallway outside the apartment. You and Linnea can swap hero stories now.”

She shivered. “That didn’t feel heroic.”

He kissed her on the nose. “I think that means it really was.”

*          *         *

The next moon – Quinn was surprised the day she discovered herself calling it that automatically – was the most bittersweet time she’d ever spent in Eirentheos.

There was a general tone of celebration in the air everywhere. Hector’s death and Tolliver’s arrest had mostly put a stop to the hostilities between the kingdoms. The border was opened again, and people were free to travel and be with their friends and families. Quinn was thrilled the day Eloise and Gene Bennett appeared at the castle with their son, Elliott, requesting an audience with her and William.

Not everyone was happy, of course, and they still heard reports of fighting inside Philotheum, as those who enjoyed power under Hector and Tolliver tried desperately to hold onto it. The queen’s troops and the Friends of Philip quashed it as quickly as they could, but it was likely to continue for some time.

There were many in Eirentheos who had been badly scarred by the shadeweed incidents as well, who weren’t happy about the open border, who lodged complaints with Stephen. It was going to be a long time before everything was fully back to the way it should be.

Quinn knew she would have much to learn when she took over leadership of Philotheum. One of the first things she did was ask Marcus to be her top advisor.

About a week after they’d arrived back in Eirentheos, they were surprised when Nathaniel appeared. He’d told Sophia that he was needed more in Eirentheos, to assist with the wedding preparations, to check in with the clinics he’d started, and to be with Quinn and William.

While they were happy he was there, and grateful for his help, he did spend much of his time away from the castle – especially on trips to Cloud Valley.

It was Thomas who clued them in to the reason for that. “You know he’s thinking about asking Cammie Winthrop to court him officially,” he said one day at lunch.

Quinn nearly dropped her glass of milk, causing Josh, who was sitting next to her, to snicker, and after she steadied the glass, she elbowed him in the ribs.

“Hey!” Josh said. “Aren’t you supposed to be all dignified or something?”

“Queens reserve the right to put their little brothers in their proper places when necessary,” she said, giggling before turning back to Thomas. “Cammie Winthrop, the widow?”

Thomas nodded. “With the three little kids … you remember them?”

“Of course.” Quinn would have a hard time forgetting little Tallie and Caleb, whom she and Thomas had spent a night caring for in their house while their mother stayed at the Cloud Valley clinic with the oldest child, David, when he’d been sick with shadeweed poisoning. “How do you know he’s courting her?”

“These are the kind of things I know. I’m just that good.”

“He’s scary,” Mia agreed, and Thomas kissed her on the cheek.

Things were warming up nicely between Linnea and Ben as well, and on the night they held a big celebration for Thomas and Linnea’s sixteenth birthday – and Linnea’s coming of age – Ben presented her with a courtship bracelet. It looked like Linnea might be joining them in Philotheum before too much more time had passed.

The day after the party, Linnea, too joined the Friends of Philip. On that same day they learned that the absence of both Hector and Tolliver from the capitol had delayed all executions in Philotheum, and that the queen was releasing all prisoners who had been jailed for treason against Hector’s false rule. Dorian and James Blackwelder sent personal messages to Quinn and Thomas.

And Quinn and William got to relax and have a much nicer honeymoon. Although their afternoons and evenings were usually busy with family and preparations for their wedding and real move to Philotheum, the nights and mornings were just for the two of them.

They stayed together in the little apartment, keeping late hours, and waking up late, too, ready to enjoy long, leisurely breakfasts from the trays that appeared outside their door.

Every night, Quinn would fall asleep in William’s arms, thinking it wasn’t possible for anyone to be more in love than she already was, but then she’d wake in the morning and discover that, somehow, she loved him even more.

The dark shadow that hung over all of it, of course, was the gate. Learning that Hector had known about the gate for a long time – and that it was almost certain he would have told others – terrified all of them.

Quinn knew that she’d made the right decision, that the gate had to be closed, that it would be safer for everyone if it never opened again. But still, the night that the gate was scheduled to open again, and it didn’t, was a difficult one.

“The worst part, I think,” she told William that night when they were in bed, “is that my family doesn’t even know yet. It’s only been two days for them. They probably won’t even try to come and visit until the summer. There hasn’t even been a school day since we left – nobody will even know that we’re both gone – and I never even got to say good-bye.”

He held her for a long time before he spoke. “Maybe it’s easier this way, love – for your friends at least. There’s nothing you could have ever told Abigail or Zander that they would have accepted. It would have been another argument, and another bad memory.”

“What are they going to think?”

“Your family … if we can really never go back, it will always hurt, Quinn. They’ll miss you, we’ll miss them. Your friends…” he sighed. “Your friends will be upset and talk about it for a few weeks, maybe a couple of months. But they’ll believe your mother that you went away to live with your father’s family. And they’ll do what teenagers do in your world. They’ll move on, go to college, get married…”

“Yeah, I suppose.” She leaned back against him, playing with his fingers, twirling his wedding band around. “I still would like to know how we actually closed the gate – if what we did is permanent.”

William cleared his throat. “I’m not sure
we
did anything.”

“What do you mean? Do you think someone got there before us?”

He shook his head. “Not on our side, anyway.”

“What?”

“Do you remember who else was standing with us when Alvin told us about the gate – when he gave us a very specific clue about how to find the magnet on the Bristlecone side – that it was buried with two pinecones?”

She thought about it for a second, and then gasped. “Owen.”

He nodded. “Alvin never actually said the magnet on our side even could be found. He never said someone put it there on purpose. It could just be a magnetized piece of the earth itself, under the riverbed. But the one on the other side
was
buried on purpose. And, I’ve spent a lot of time on that riverbank, Quinn. There is a tree, maybe a few yards away from the bridge itself. A huge, really old pine tree, with two trunks wrapped around each other – like two trees were once planted in exactly the same spot.”

Had her heart actually stopped beating? It felt like it. “But why would Owen…?”

“He said he has dreams sometimes, just like you do, love. He even knew who Alvin was. Maybe he had the same dream you did, or a similar one, and he knew what he had to do.”

“Then why would he show me what he showed me … why put me through all of that, when Owen was the only one who could do something about it, anyway?”

“I only have theories, love. I don’t know the real reasons. But if I had to guess, I would think that maybe it was important that closing the gate was a decision you had to come to yourself, for you to be all right with it. Maybe you needed to understand
why
it had to happen. And maybe it was to make sure we were at the gate when we needed to be to catch Hector.”

She sighed. “Maybe.”

“Either way, all I really know is that I’m sorry. I’m sorry you had to make the decision. I’m sorry that Sophia gave Hector power that she shouldn’t have. I’m sorry that your father left and chose to marry and have a child in another world. I’m sorry that nobody put a stop to any of this before you. I’m proud of you for doing it. For being brave enough to put your kingdom and this world first, even though you had to pay the price for it. And I’m sorry for what it’s costing you.”

She wiped away her tears with the handkerchief he handed her. “I couldn’t have done all of this without you, Will.”

“Yes, you could have. I think you would have, all of it, whether I was around or not … but it’s definitely better together. I’m honored, love, that you would allow me to stand beside you.”

*          *          *

On the night before their “public” wedding, she finally decided to tell him. It had been six weeks since their real wedding, and he’d known for two. They’d bathed and changed into their pajamas, and she was standing there at the edge of the bed, with her hair wrapped in a towel, comb in her hand, with a shy look on her face and pink flooding her cheeks.

“Talk to me, love,” he said, walking to her and pulling off the towel, rubbing the ends of her hair the rest of the way dry. Then he took the comb from her.

She was quiet for several more seconds, as he began combing out one long strand at a time. Her fingers twitched nervously when she finally spoke. “I’m late, Will.”

Further into their marriage – the second, third, and fourth times she would tell him this, he would tease her, ask what she was late for, and if she needed help finding her shoes again, but not this time.

This time, she was too nervous, still too unsure about how he would react, maybe, even though he’d told her he’d be happy when the day came – she was probably unsure how she even felt about it herself.

This time, he dropped the comb onto the bed, and turned her around, lifting her into his arms, kissing her gently. “That,” he said, “is truly the most beautiful thing I have ever heard in my life.”

“What will people think?”

He smiled. She still didn’t get it – still hadn’t lived in this world long enough for it to be part of the way she thought. “They’ll be ecstatic, Quinn. Everyone will. You’re carrying the heir, love,” he put his hand over her belly, which, even though it would still be flat for several more weeks, seemed to be surrounded with an almost magical aura, “the future king or queen of Philotheum. Our child. I love him already. Or her – I don’t care which it is.” He bent down and kissed her there.

“But our wedding isn’t until tomorrow. People can do math.”

“It’s not a secret that this wedding is only for show, Quinn. Everyone knows we’re already really married. The news has already spread through both kingdoms that we’ve fulfilled the prophecy. Relax, okay? Celebrate with me.” He kissed her neck.

She swatted him playfully. “Don’t tell me you’re going to get all gushy and start picking out nursery furniture before I’m even showing.”