Leaves of Revolution (20 page)

THE HOUSE WAS DARK as Linnea crept down the hallway, although it wasn’t quiet. With so many people here now, it never was. Even now, as she passed William and Quinn’s room, she could hear Samuel’s soft cries and her brother’s hum as he sang to his son.

She tried to smile through the prickling sensation in her eyes at the image, tried not to see the picture in her mind of Ben cradling their child in the night.

I’ll do it,
she promised him silently, curling her hands around the small, tight rounding of her belly.
I’ll do it every night and tell her it’s from you.

Her thoughts were still far away when she stepped into the moonlit kitchen, so the glimpse of the shadowy figure on one of the stools by the counter startled her so badly she gasped out loud and reached instinctively for a weapon.

“It’s just me, Linnea!” Zander’s voice was low but quick, trying to reassure her. He stood, holding up empty hands. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“Oh,” she heaved a sigh, trying to control her stuttering heartbeat, though the exertion triggered her lingering cough again.

“You okay?” he asked when she was finished. “Can I get you something to drink? I have a cup of tea; I could make you one.”

“Sure. That sounds good. Thank you.” She settled on one of the stools as he worked in the dark, pouring a mug of tea and passing it across the counter to her. She liked the atmosphere of the kitchen at this hour, lit half by a wide swath of moonlight across the counter and floor, and half by the dancing orange glow of the dampened fire. Warm orange and white shapes danced on every surface, reflecting on the metal of the mugs in intricate patterns.

 “What are you doing up in the middle of the night, anyway?” she asked. A leather-bound journal lay on the oiled wood of the counter next to Zander’s mug, and a discarded pencil wobbled half off the edge a few inches away.

“I’m on duty.” He saw the pencil, too; he picked it up and tucked it under the cover of the notebook. “I tend not to wake people up with the creaky floorboards or scare people as much if I stay in here to listen.”

She chuckled. “No, you just wait and pounce when they come in here.”

“I am sorry. I heard you coming, but I didn’t think calling out to you or towering over you in the hallway were much better options than sitting here trying to be small and unthreatening.”

“Probably not,” she laughed. “If you’d blocked my path in the hallway you might have needed that sword.”

His broad shoulders relaxed and he grinned. “You’re ready to knock me flat again? Sounds like you’re feeling better.”

“Finally.” She took a sip of the tea; the warm liquid soothed her still-scratchy throat. “It only took me a week. I slept through everything.”

“Oh, I think there will be plenty more to be awake through. Things are just getting interesting.”

“Yeah.” She shivered, pulling her dressing gown closed more tightly around her shoulders. Zander must have noticed; he went immediately to the low fire and stoked it a little before laying down another log to coax more heat into the room. When he reached for another, she said, “That’s perfect right there. Any more and you’ll remind me of being stuck in bed with a fever.”

“Got it.” He set the wood back in the pile and poked at the embers again.

“So, how did you know it was me, anyway – and not one of the soldiers creeping into the house to kill us all?”

He straightened and turned around. In the dim light, she could see just the shadow of one of his eyebrows lifting, changing the shape of his expression. “Well, you came out of one of the bedrooms, and nobody else has gone
in
there. Besides, if a soldier wanted to come in here and kill us, he’d probably wear boots and carry a sword. You’re in socks and walking much too softly to be carrying anything more than a small knife.”

She coughed again, but this time it had nothing to do with the protracted effects of pimaeum.

“What? You didn’t think I’d ever catch on to any of this guard stuff?”

“Someday,
Sir
Zander, you might learn to accept a compliment without leaping to the conclusion that someone doesn’t think you actually deserve it.”

“Mmm… Someday,
Princess
Linnea, you might learn to give an actual compliment.”

She regretted having taken a drink of her tea right then, as she nearly spit the entire mouthful across the counter. “All right. I’ll give you the checkmate on that one.”

“Just don’t choke, too.”

“Fine, then.” She rolled her eyes and wiped her mouth on her sleeve as he returned to the counter. “I’m impressed at the job you’ve done since you’ve begun training as a guard. You’ve earned the accolades you’ve received.”

 He took a sip, too, avoiding answering her – making her smile as he proved her point that even if she could give a compliment, he couldn’t take it. “So why are
you
up at this hour?”

She chuckled softly, deciding she’d tortured him enough for the moment. She closed her hands over the bump again. “Someone decided I need practice not sleeping through the night.”

“Can you feel the baby moving already?” he asked, leaning in close, his tone a little awed – which made her smile.

“Yes, just in the last week or so. It’s not so obnoxious it wakes me up, though. Right now, it’s the trips to the washroom. And after the most recent one, I’m wide awake. I think I’ve been sleeping so much while I’ve been sick that I just can’t stay in bed anymore.”

“Sometimes I really can’t complain about the fact that I’m a guy.” Zander laughed.

She shrugged. “I don’t really mind. I like knowing she’s here.”

“Yeah…” Even from across the counter, she could hear him swallow. “Do you think it’s really a girl?”

“I don’t know. It’s not like he could have really known that. It’s a fifty-fifty chance, though, right? I figure I’ll humor him until I know for sure.” She heard the little catch in her voice, but that was as bad as it got this time.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I shouldn’t have…”

“Stop apologizing, Zander.”

“I just – I…”

“You just. I know. But it’s going to come up. He was my husband. I’m having his child. And he was your friend. We can’t never talk about that. Yes, it still hurts – but it’s worse when everyone avoids mentioning him like they think I might
forget
or something. Or like they’ve forgotten.”

This time he masked whatever his reaction was by pouring more water into his mug and setting the kettle back down with a muted
clunk
. After a moment, he leaned his elbows on the counter, his face closer to her, the firelight flickering across his features. “I haven’t forgotten.”

“I know.”

She stirred at her own tea with the chain of the tea ball for over a minute, wondering if he was actually going to talk to her about this. So far, Ben had been a verboten topic between them, though she’d wished for a while now that he wasn’t. Zander had been there with Ben when it happened; he’d sacrificed everything to try to save him. She wanted to be able to tell him how much that meant to her – to share that with him, but she didn’t want to push him on it – she probably wouldn’t have been able to even if she did.

“I remember every detail of that night,” he finally muttered. “Every tree, the way the river looked… even what everything smelled like.”

She sighed, reaching across the counter toward him, unsure of what she was doing, really. It startled her when he actually took her hand – for a second anyway. As soon as they touched – his hands were warm from being wrapped around his steaming mug – they both jumped and pulled them back.

Immediately, she picked up her own mug and held it to her lips, pretending to take a much longer drink than she actually did.

“Don’t think I don’t know how this is hard on you, too, Zander,” she said once she’d finally set it down again. “I know everyone’s worried about me, including you, but I think in some ways you lost more that night than I did.”

“He wasn’t my husband.”

“And that’s the only kind of relationship that matters?”

“I’d only just met him. It’s not the same.”

“Of course it’s not the same, but so what? The first time Quinn came through the gate, I’d just met her, but if something had happened to her – even then, it wouldn’t have been okay. We were friends. It didn’t take cycles for that to happen, but it was very real – still
is
real. That’s how it was for you and Ben, too. I know it was for him – he told me. And you can’t pretend to me that it wasn’t that way for you, too. You never would have given up your way home for him if it wasn’t.”

“He told you that he considered me a friend?”

She took a deep breath and another sip of tea. “Yes, Zander, he did. He liked you right away, even that first night you came to the castle.”

“Really? I kind of thought he hated me.”

She scoffed. “Yeah, he spent time with you instead of his new bride because he loathed you. That would make perfect sense.”

He was quiet, processing that for a minute. “I’m sorry I took that time from you.”

The exasperation that bubbled up in her then caused her to make a sound she’d never made before. “Don’t be stupid, Zander. What I wanted you to understand was that he wanted to spend the time he did with you. If I’m mad at you it’s because you’re drowning in all this weird guilt from stuff that’s not your fault. I don’t know if you think Ben would be mad at you for surviving that fight, or what, but if you think so, you’re wrong. He’d be glad that you’re okay, and even that you’re
here.
It made him sad, actually, that you were leaving and going back to your own world. He thought you fit in here; he wished you were coming to Philotheum with us. He wanted to get to know you better.
I
still do.”

She hadn’t meant for that last sentence to slip out, but she was too worked up to stop it.

“Well, I’m stuck here now, right?” he said quietly. “I couldn’t go back to my world if I wanted to.”

“Yeah.” She stared at the fire again for a minute before turning back to him. He still hunched over the counter, swirling his finger in his tea. “What would you do if we found a gate back to Bristlecone tomorrow?”

“You ask that like it’s a simple question.”

“On a purely hypothetical level – let’s say there was nothing dangerous about using the gate, and you knew exactly where it would take you and when.”

“I wasn’t even thinking about that part.”

“Oh?” That surprised her – and so did the other feeling that sprang up at the idea that he might not flee Deusterros at the first opportunity. She ignored that feeling, though. It didn’t make any sense.

“There’s also the part where I’m really not sure what it would be like to go home. I’ve been missing for a while now; things have got to be pretty crazy.”

She shrugged. “With the time difference it’s not
that
long.”

“Even a day is a long time to go missing when you have no explanation about where you went. And it’s been a lot longer than that.”

“I suppose that’s true.” It still seemed like a flimsy excuse, although that probably wasn’t a good thing to say. “It’s your family, though.”

“You’re that desperate to get rid of me, huh? You’re probably right. I might just be overthinking it so I don’t have to…
Hang on.
” He held his hand up, palm toward her, as he cocked his ear toward the door.

Linnea went silent immediately, reaching down toward the dagger concealed in a sheath strapped to her calf. She heard it too, now – footsteps in the hallway, approaching the kitchen. Whoever was coming was wearing boots.

Zander shook his head once. “It’s okay,” he mouthed, impressing her yet again with his ability to pay attention to two things at once. Despite his reassurance to her, his right hand hovered near his sword until James appeared in the doorway.

“Princess Linnea!” James hurried across the kitchen to her. “Is everything all right? How are you feeling?”

The flare of annoyance that made her fists clench involuntarily surprised her. She liked James, and his concern was sweet. It shouldn’t bother her. “I’m all right,” she said with a forced chuckle. “I’m feeling much better. I was just pestering poor Sir Zander here to fill me in on what I missed while I was sick.”

Zander raised an eyebrow at her – her purposeful use of his title might have been a bit too obvious.

“It’s chilly in here,” James continued, heading over to the fire.

Zander’s eyebrow crooked up even further when she didn’t say a word as James set two more logs in the flames, flooding the kitchen with bright orange heat.

“Are you hungry?” James asked. He didn’t wait for her answer before he pulled a plate down from one of the shelves and began digging around in the breadbox.

She wasn’t, but she accepted the snack with a quiet, “Thank you.”

“Some milk? For the baby?”

The look on Zander’s face as James disappeared into the cold cellar made her want to smack him. “What?” she snapped, in a half-whisper that wasn’t as quiet as it should have been.