“And you can sense them, too?” I asked. Jase
“It’s a talent we share.” He grinned. “So, I knew she was still alive. We just . . . we can’t hear her heart beat.”
“Why not?”
“Something to do with your skin, we figure. It not only protects her from savagery, but conceals her, too.”
I laid a hand to my belly. “I’m . . . how come I didn’t sense her?”
“Are you sure you didn’t?” Jase asked, his smile growing.
“I haven’t felt anything—at all. Aside from hungry.”
Arthur and Jason laughed.
“I can’t believe I’m pregnant.”
“It’s pretty good news, huh?” Jase said.
“Yeah, but. . .” The crease on my brow deepened as I looked at Arthur. “Why did you make plans to use the turkey baster if you knew all along I was pregnant?”
He laughed. “I never actually made plans, my dear. I put you off repeatedly, didn’t I?”
I nodded.
“I wasn’t ready to tell you about the child, Amara, because—”
“Because it meant there was no way to save David.”
“Yes. But now it seems we will lose him anyway.”
I looked at Jase. His face was stone white and expressionless. “Jase, what’s wrong?”
“I was so cut up when I realised you were pregnant—when. . .”
“When he realized he’d bedded you for no good reason other than his own primal needs.”
“Uncle, it wasn’t like that,” Jase said.
Arthur stood and moved away.
“So, I was pregnant when we. . .?”
“Yes,” Jase said. “I’m sorry, Ara. You know that if I’d known that, I would never have—”
“I know.” I stole his hand and kissed the knuckles. “What’s done is done. And it’s in the past. None of it matters now.”
“Except that David is still hurt,” Arthur muttered.
“Yes.” I sat up more. “I messed up—bad.”
“Both of us did.” Jase smiled softly at me, squeezing my hand.
“But I can either move on from it, or wallow in it. And I have a baby to worry about now, so I’m sorry, if David can’t forgive and move on, too, even enough to be civil to me, then that’s his loss. Not mine.”
Arthur sat down on the couch across the room. “Then I pray he finds civility before he leaves.”
“Leaves?”
“Ara.” Jase waited until I looked at him. “Arthur’s handing the dagger over to David tomorrow. He—”
“No!” I threw my covers back and leaped out of bed. “He can’t. Not yet. He hasn’t . . . I mean, does he even know?” I clutched my stomach. “Has anyone told him?”
“He knows,” said a dry, cool voice. I looked across the balcony to where the long-legged king leaned sideways against the railing, his arms folded.
“David, please tell me you’re not going to kill Drake tomorrow.”
He looked at his uncle. “Give us a moment.”
“Of course.” Arthur appeared across the room and opened the bedroom door. “Jason?”
Jase sighed, touching my arm as he passed. “I’ll be right outside if. . .” He looked over at David. “If you need me.”
I reached down and squeezed his hand. “Thanks.”
Tension spread around the room then as the door grated in its frame, coming to a complete stop with me on one side, and my protector on the other.
“I’m not here to hurt you,” David muttered angrily. “I may hate you, Ara, but I will not cause you physical harm.”
My shoulders relaxed. “Did you know?” I asked. “Before today?”
He shook his head, his cold stare staying on my face as I moved across the room and stepped out into the white sunlight.
“Guess this explains why none of my jeans fit,” I said, relieved.
“Your jeans don’t fit because you’re fat, Ara. Don’t use pregnancy as an excuse.”
My lips fell apart a little. “David, that’s—”
“Shut up. I didn’t come here to debate your lack of self-worth.” He turned away, leaning his elbows on the marble ledge, the world below his canvas for thought.
“Then why did you come? Just to taunt me?”
“I came to make something very clear to you.”
“Then, by all means,” I said, standing beside him, knowing I was crossing the boundaries by getting this close. “Enlighten me.”
“In exchange for the dagger, I promised my uncle I would stay for the birth of the child.”
I smiled, trying not to laugh with joy.
David pretended not to notice. “But that gives you no right to attempt contact with me. Gives you no right to look at, talk to, or even address me as anything more personal than your king. Do I make myself clear?”
“No. That’s ridiculous, I’m your—”
“You are nothing to me!” He spun around, yelling in my face.
“Well, I may not be, but she is your daughter.” I touched my belly to emphasize her tiny little existence.
He rolled his shoulders back, growing taller inch by inch, his bottom lip coming forward with detest. “A fact I’m forced to accept. And you are lucky she bares my blood—not my brother’s, or I’d have ripped it from your womb.”
“How dare you spea—”
“Easy.” He moved closer. “I care nothing for you, or for it. I am not your husband. I am not her father. I am a man forced by his word to stay and witness something he does not condone.”
“So, you don’t condone your own daughter.”
“That—” He pointed at my belly. “Is no daughter of mine.”
“How can you say that? She has your blood. We made her. She—”
“She was spawned under false pretences, Ara, in a relationship I believed to be love.”
“But it—”
“It was nothing but a lie.” He waved a hand through the air to shut me up. “And she is as tainted as you.”
“She’s innocent, David!”
“Her body was growing in you when you betrayed me.” His voice broke. “I will never touch her. I will never touch you. And I will certainly not accept her as my own.”
I didn’t realize I was crying until my chest shook and a cold tear dropped down, landing on my bare foot.