King of Assassins: The Elven Ways: Book Three Read Free Page A

informed her that eve of the watch he had been keeping, not only on Lariel’s guards but the others he tabbed as being from the warlord Diort. The Vaelinars had been assigned for protection but there was no knowing why Diort’s men stood watch. She dragged her concern back to the ox in the middle of the room, as it were. “You must have had some inkling of complications. Jeredon was the Warrior Queen’s brother. His death doesn’t diminish that. You can’t tell me you didn’t think of it. You’ve never climbed a tree where you did not know exactly where you’d land, if you fell.”
    Nutmeg rolled her eyes. “Listen to you. If we ever get home, no one will know a thing you say. You sound just like one of the elven with words of honey and spidersilk to trap the listener.”
    By home, Nutmeg meant the orchards and fields of the groves by the Silverwing, a place of hard work sunup to sundown and faraway neighbors, a home overrun by Ravers and abandoned because of that. The folk they’d left behind were not city folk, far from it, and their ways held a directness of their own. The diplomacy and tact she’d learned in the courts of the Warrior Queen would not go far there. Grace bumped her shoulder. “Forget what I was saying. What are you saying?”
    Nutmeg fussed with her hair, pulling it off her shoulders and away from her face, fastening her heavy tresses into a ponytail which, the moment she took her nimble fingers away, sprang out of its knot and came tumbling back down. “I was thinking,” she said quietly, “that I was foolish t’expect that he might ever stay with me, but while I had him, when he was wounded and healing, I was good for him. He needed Dweller common sense and care in heaping spoonfuls, and he got it. When he began to walk again, a step at a time, the beauty of his happiness took my breath away. An’ I did that. Part of it. I think he loved me then. When he left me for the war, and he went to Tressandre, I told myself he was decoying the ild Fallyn away from me. Keeping me safe so that they would not harm me or use me t’ twist him in their ways. I told myself that—over and over.”
    “And I think you were right. But . . .” Grace hesitated to ask. “Did he know you were with child? Did you ever get a chance to tell him?”
    Nutmeg shook her head. “No. I barely knew it myself, and he . . .” She stopped as memory flooded her eyes and an unshed tear sparkled on her eyelashes. “I think somehow he sensed it at the end. War and blood all around us. Yet he touched me, and said my name, and a wonder seemed to fill him, just for a moment, before his life winked out. Did I imagine that? I hope not. I hope it was real.” She put her hand on Grace’s arm. “I knew how t’ dance. Kiss. Laugh an’ flirt. But I had never been with a man before. I took what precautions I knew about, but Vaelinars have such a power runnin’ within them.” She looked into Rivergrace’s eyes. “If you’re asking questions for Lariel, I don’t plot against her rule. If you’re asking for yourself, it happened, Grace, because I loved him so blessed much. And now look where we are. I have a babe the size of a tree growing inside me, and a pack of guard hounds on my heels. And you wearin’ a sword on your belt. Who’d have thought?”
    Rivergrace reached out and took Nutmeg’s hand, found it chilled despite the lingering warmth of the day, and she squeezed gently. “I wear this sword as much because of Sevryn as I do for any other. I wish I could say the others don’t matter, but we know they do. Still,” and she did not resist this time when Nutmeg took their laced hands and placed them over her stomach and she could feel the tiny but insistent bumps under her palm, “it would be nice if you could raise him as a Farbranch like you did me.”
    “Would it not? Just think, a Vaelinar with th’ roots and sense of a Dweller! Look at you. Lariel could do worse for an heir.”
    Rivergrace freed