Claimed by the Elven King: Part Four (8 page)

“You’re saying it’s because of something he did, not something that
happens naturally?”

“Yes and no,” he replied maddeningly.

I made a face. “That doesn’t help, Sethian.”

He chuckled. “Bear with me, my Emily. These are questions an elf does
not normally have to answer, much less spend much thought on. Our bonds to each
other as well as our manipulations of the natural energies of the world are
things that are as ingrained and instinctual to the
Sidhe
as breathing
is to a human. A human does not have to be taught how to take that first breath
at birth; they just
know
. Thus, our son reached out to you with his mind
and in essence, joined with yours as easily as though he had merely reached out
a hand to clasp your own. If you wish a deeper explanation, then that is a
question you will have to pose to the scholars who study such things.”

Now that I was becoming fairly proficient in basic Elvish despite my
inability to correctly pronounce a lot of the more tongue-twisting words, I
would definitely seek them out as long as Sethian allowed them to visit me in
the royal suite. I doubted the archives were a good place to take a newborn for
any extended length of time. The baby—

I cut myself off mid-thought and frowned over at Sethian. “Do we really
have to wait seven days before naming him?” I asked. “It feels kind of awkward
to keep calling him ‘my son’ or ‘my baby.’ We humans usually have a name picked
out long before the baby is even born.”

He nodded. “It is important that we learn his natural personality from
the beginning in order to select a name that suits him the most. For instance,
my name means ‘the one who forces a new path.’”

“Yes, I would say that name suits you perfectly,” I said dryly.
Bringing me to the elven realm without so much as a “may I?” and taking a human
bride despite the many protests from the elven court reflected the essence of
that meaning very well. “Fine, we’ll wait, but I hope you at least have
something in mind.”

Even before the birth, I had decided to let Sethian pick the name
without any input from me. I had gleaned enough from my conversations with my
friends to understand that names were very important in the elven culture, and
I was nowhere near understanding all the nuances involved.

“I do,” he replied, smiling at me as if I had just said something
incredibly funny, which I usually interpreted as “said something stupid.”

“Good. Then we’ll leave that discussion for another time. Now, you were
saying about the balance…?” I said, steering us back on topic.

“Ah, yes. According to the tale, there was much speculation of how this
balance came to be. Some said that the human mother was not human at all but of
a race of beings from beyond even the human realm.”

“Is that even plausible?” I asked with interest.

“There are many realms,” he replied enigmatically, and I could have
strangled him when he didn’t elaborate.

“One of these days, maybe you’ll actually answer one of my questions
completely,” I grumbled.

“A few centuries from now you will better appreciate leaving some
things for later discussion,” he said.

As always, whenever he threw a wrench that big into the conversation, I
had no idea how to reply, leaving me feeling a bit unsettled. It seemed it was
happening more and more often lately, but maybe it was because ever since
someone had tried to push me off the balcony, he had been spending more time just
sitting and talking with me.

The baby picked that moment to wiggle a bit, giving me the perfect
excuse to turn my attention away from Sethian to him. I couldn’t believe how
well he was already able to focus on my face, as though he was months and not
hours old. When I looked into his eyes, I could practically see the wheels
turning within. It had been a bit disquieting at first, but now I couldn’t get
enough of just looking at him, wondering what he was thinking, if anything.

I couldn’t resist bending down and kissing him on the forehead. The
moment my lips touched his incredibly soft skin, I felt a tiny surge of an
emotion that made me think of how pleasant it felt to feel the cool wind on my
face while sitting out on the balcony.

“I think I just felt one of his emotions,” I said in something like
awe. “It made me remember a time when I had felt the same. Is that what it’s
been like for you all this time when you said you could hear his soul?”

“Yes,” he said, sounding strangely hesitant.

I immediately looked over to him, but the expression on his face hadn’t
changed. “What is it?” I asked anyway.

“What we were talking about before, about the reason for Hirion being
born with such incredible abilities, about how such a perfect balance came to
be…”

I could feel myself stiffen in response to the gravity I heard in his
voice. “Just tell me,” I said firmly.

Suddenly I felt a wave of foreboding crash through me so powerful that
my entire soul as well as my body shuddered in reaction.

“W-What did you just
do
?” I stuttered.

“I just accepted the truth,” Sethian said.

“Huh?” I said intellectually.

He reached over with his free hand and gently cupped the side of my
face. The expression in his eyes was something that I had only seen once
before, and just as it had that time, the shock of it hit me like a bolt of
lightning to the heart.

“There was another version of Hirion’s tale that offered a very
different answer as to how the balance had come to be. It was said that his
Sidhe
father and human mother had bonded as soulmates at the same moment that he was
conceived, something I never thought could happen—” The smile Sethian gave me
was beautiful and simple. “—until it did.”

I opened my mouth, to say what, I had no idea, but the implications of
Sethian’s declaration left me stunned and unable to utter a sound. Tears welled
up in my eyes as I suddenly understood the emotion I was seeing in his eyes. It
was impossible. Things like this never happened to someone like me. I was
suddenly terrified that this moment wasn’t real, that I had passed out during
the birth and was dreaming this whole conversation.

Sethian leaned forward and brushed his lips tenderly against mine, soft
and fleeting. A rush of pure affection instantly flooded my being, causing the
tears to begin falling down my cheeks. There was no more doubt. That strong
connection we had seemed to form the second time we had made love still
existed, and judging from the clarity of the emotions I could now sense from
him, it had probably never faded at all.

He pulled back and rubbed a thumb beneath my eyes, wiping the tears
away. “There is nothing to fear,” he said. “I am truly here. This moment is
real. Just as I never thought I would be able to gaze upon my child like this,
I believed I would never find this kind of love with another and did not allow
myself to see our bond for what it was until our son opened my eyes. Forgive
me.”

Love… Just hearing him say that one word, the word I had desperately
wanted to hear him say for all these long months made a quiet sob burst forth
from my throat. It wasn’t a straight out “I love you,” but it had been a
declaration all the same. I needed only to feel the affection that had flooded
my soul and see the love in his eyes to know it wasn’t just wishful thinking.

A soft sound of exclamation from below had me instantly looking down at
my son. His little arms were waving back and forth as if in either agitation or
excitement. The moment my attention was entirely focused on him, a feeling of
extreme interest washed over me, overriding Sethian’s own feelings of
affection.

Not wanting him to see me cry, I made a huge effort to pull myself
together and smiled down at him brightly. He blinked and the feeling he was
projecting changed to the one I had felt from him earlier, the one that made me
think of the wind on my face.

“He likes your smile,” Sethian said, the sound of his voice drawing the
baby’s eyes to him.

Sethian reached over and lovingly caressed our son’s head. The
intensity of the baby’s emotions instantly doubled, making me feel a bit
light-headed and dazed.

That strong surge of emotion triggered the memory of the dizzying and
near overwhelming rush of energy I had felt while giving birth of the moment my
son was completely free of my body. At the time, I had thought it was a result
of my own emotions going haywire about the event itself, the realization that I
had just brought a life into the world that most first-time mothers probably
experience.

Thinking back to everything Sethian had told me about that mythical
elf, Hirion, and the fact that I still knew very little about elven magic, it
made me wonder if I had been wrong. What if what I had felt hadn’t come from me
at all, but from him?

“Sethian,” I said hesitantly, “when he was born, I felt a huge surge of
what I thought at the time was an adrenaline rush. Now, feeling the baby’s
emotions like this, how strong they are, I just realized how incredibly
ignorant I am when it comes to an elf’s power. It never occurred to me to ask
about things like are your abilities present at birth or do they come later at
puberty or adulthood?”

“An elf’s power awakens at birth,” he replied. “That initial surge of
power is strong enough that it can be felt for many spans. Our son’s awakening was
particularly strong. It released enough energy that I have no doubt it was felt
by everyone in Talloth and perhaps even beyond.”

“Then everyone knows I’ve given birth,” I said slowly, hugging the baby
closer to my chest.

I suddenly had a new appreciation for the lack of windows in the
bedroom. Ever since someone had tried to kill me, I had been worrying about
whether or not they would target the baby after failing to prevent the birth in
the first place.

Sethian’s eyes sharpened at my reaction, and he nodded approvingly. “Yes,
and you are correct to think that the game has changed once again. We must both
be doubly vigilant now.”

As we neared the king’s entrance to the throne room, my levels of anxiety
rose exponentially as I remembered vividly the discomfort of having to endure
what had felt like an eternity of stares and/or glares from the entire elven
court during my presentation as Sethian’s pregnant Royal Wife. The whispering
alone was enough to drive one mad. I could only imagine their reaction when
they realized my son resembled an elf from myth.

I felt Sethian tighten his arm around mine, and I glanced over at him
sheepishly. No doubt I was sending some interesting emotions his way. Ever
since he had acknowledged that we were soul-bound, the block his uncertainty
had unconsciously placed between us had been removed permanently, and now our
emotions always flowed between us like a two-way river. I still had not quite
gotten used to feeling someone else’s emotions and wondered if it was even
something you
could
get used to.

“This is our son’s naming ceremony,” Sethian said. “Just focus on that,
and all the rest will become merely noise in the distance.”

I smiled thinly and nodded. He was right. I was
finally
going to
learn my son’s name and that’s all that mattered. I was still a little miffed
that I hadn’t managed to get him to cave and tell me the name beforehand, no
matter how much I had begged. I had learned over the last seven days just how
stubborn my husband could be.

With my beautiful son cradled securely in my right arm and a husband
whom I now knew loved me linked with the other, I really had no room to
complain, anyway. A year ago, I could have never imagined my life ending up
this well. That was probably why I really dreaded stepping into the throne
room. The nobles would be bad enough, but the fact that the queen would be
there as well left me feeling cold and angry, and if I were being completely
honest, more than a little helpless.

I did
not
want the woman who so casually insisted that I do
something that would have surely caused me to miscarry to even
look
at
my son. She had no right, but just because she was the queen, she had every
right.

Adding insult to injury, I still couldn’t even tell Sethian about what
she had wanted me to do because I had no idea what her game was or if she
really had been trying to help me in her own twisted way. For all I knew, her
hands could be as tied as mine and my anger was misplaced, so for the time
being, I had to face her with a neutral expression and pretend that I wasn’t
dying to punch that china doll face until it cracked.

It was probably for the best that I would be little more than a prop
throughout the ceremony. It would take more than birthing their future king for
the majority of the elven court to accept me as one of them, but after nearly
dying for the sake of their political games, I wasn’t very keen on being
included as a member of the court at all. I was happy to just step back into
the shadows and allow Sethian to handle the political side of our lives. I had
total confidence that he would keep our son safe.

Four guards stood in pairs on either side of the double doors that
opened up onto the dais. They noticeably stood more stiffly as we approached
and then bowed to both of us as we came to a stop before the door. I saw a
couple of the guards glance with unbridled interest at the bundle in my arms, but
I had covered the baby’s head so only his face was visible. He had been asleep
when we left the royal suite, but now he was wide awake, his eyes darting
around and taking in all the new sights. I could feel his interest seeping in
through my anxiety.

Sethian nodded at the guards, and the inside two each opened a door. I
heard the herald announce us, and a few seconds later, we were through the door
and facing the multitudes of courtiers. The atmosphere in the chamber felt
completely different this time. Instead of curiosity or just-barely concealed
hostility, the air was alive with excitement. However, it was completely
disconcerting on how every eye immediately zeroed in on me, making my skin
crawl.