Claimed by the Elven King: Part Four (5 page)

To keep myself from hyperventilating, I fixed my eyes on Sethian and
did not move my gaze from his face as I slowly walked what felt like miles
towards the two monarchs. Even when I heard the soft murmurs, the gasps of
shock, and felt the stares of the nobles standing on either side of me, I
refused to look at them. I didn’t want to know how many of those eyes held
looks of disgust or even malice.

Once I reached the dais, my three friends bowed behind me and then
split off to the left to stand in a single-file line just out of direct sight
of the king and queen. I bowed to both monarchs in turn, as well. The queen
might as well have been a statue for all she even acknowledged me, or even
moved
for that matter. Sethian beckoned me closer with a flick of his wrist, and I
started to climb the steps up to the king’s level.

Once I stood before him, I bowed again, and waited with my hands folded
over my stomach. Only then did Sethian stand and reach out a hand to me. He had
explained to me that a Royal Wife could only be acknowledged within elven
society as such if the king publically offered her his hand in front of the
whole of the elven court. The deal was sealed when the Royal Wife-to-be
accepted that hand publically. It was strange to me that something so
simplistic had the power to make or break a person’s life in this particular
society.

I immediately placed my hand in his, and he clenched it tightly. “Let this
be our bond,” he said firmly, his voice echoing throughout the large chamber.

“Let this be our bond,” I echoed, my voice sounding weak and unsure in
comparison.

I was just glad that the words hadn’t gotten stuck in my throat. It had
been one of my main worries, but focusing completely on Sethian and refusing to
look at anyone else had ultimately been my salvation.

Sethian lowered our hands but did not release me, instead threading our
fingers together more securely. Now came the part I dreaded the most. I slowly
pivoted to stand beside Sethian to face the whole of the elven court for the
first time. I tried not to look too closely at all the various expressions, but
I saw them regardless, the excitement on some of the women’s faces, the
scrutinizing looks on others…a flash of disgust, a look of anger, a look of
sympathy, though that last one was not directed at me but in the direction of
the queen.

Sethian turned slightly to me and placed
his free hand on the curve of my belly. “In a little over four moon-cycle’s
time, the plague of sadness that has ravaged our lands will finally see its
first hope. Within the Royal Wife’s womb lies the next potential heir to the
throne of the Second Realm. With my child’s birth, a new generation of
Sidhe
will come forth!”

The room abruptly erupted in a roar of
voices, swallowing the last echoes of Sethian’s last words. It was generally a
sound of joy, there were even a few tears, but I couldn’t help noticing the one
noble here and there that remained silent while their neighbors celebrated.
Some had their eyes fixed on me; others were looking at some of the other
nobles around them with disdain. It wasn’t just the men. I caught more than one
woman looking at our joined hands with open disgust. I was actually a little
shocked at how blatant these elves were being in their contempt.

It was a little galling to see how right
the queen had been in her warnings, but I wasn’t about to discount those
warnings just because they came from someone I didn’t like. It made me wonder
if that had been her intent all along.

I placed one hand on the stone ledge and gazed out towards the far
horizon while my other hand rubbed my belly absently. Not for the first time, I
wondered what my friend and roommate, Anna, was doing now. I could only imagine
how much she had probably freaked out when she had realized that I was actually
missing. It would have been only a matter of time before she decided to go
through my room and discovered that not only was my car still parked outside
the apartment, but my purse with my driver’s license, wallet, cell phone, and
car keys inside was still sitting on my desk where I had left it.

Was she still living in the same apartment we had shared? The lease
would have ended a month after I had disappeared. Had she renewed it in the
hopes that I would either return or be found? So many unanswered
questions…questions that would forever remain unanswered on both sides.

My chest tightened painfully as guilt surged up within me. Anna had
been there for me during my grief after my mother had died as well as during my
frequent bouts of self-doubt as I pursued my PhD, and this is how I had repaid
her—a lifetime of wondering if her friend’s body was rotting in a ditch
somewhere.

Without warning, something hard and solid hit me square in the back,
making me jerk forward violently against the balcony ledge. For a split-second
I had no idea what had just happened until the sick feeling of falling
registered in my mind, and I frantically reached my hands out blindly in a
desperate attempt to grab onto something,
anything
! My arm slipped
through one of the marble rungs that ran vertically across the entire length of
the balcony, and my hand immediately clutched at it and hung on for dear life
as my arm very nearly wrenched out of socket as I jerked to an abrupt stop, my
hip slamming painfully against the unforgiving stone wall of the castle.

“Help me!” I screamed as I frantically tried to reach my other hand up
to grab onto another one of the rungs and only succeeding in making my grip on
the other more tenuous. “Lariel! Saeria!”

My arm was screaming with pain at the shoulder socket and my feet could
find no crevices within the castle’s outer walls in order to dig my toes into.
Then something seemed to grab onto one of my legs and pull down harshly, and I
shrieked fit to wake the dead when I nearly lost my grip.

“Emily!” I heard Saeria suddenly cry out in horror from above.

She immediately fell to her knees and grabbed the arm above the elbow
that I had wrapped around the rung with both hands just as I was losing my hold.
She jerked up on my arm, trying to heave me up and through the gap between two
rungs, but she could not raise me more than a couple of inches, as though my
body weighed a ton.

Her hands gripping my arm like a vice, Saeria moved from her knees to
her bottom and braced herself with the soles of both feet against a couple of
the rungs just as I saw Lariel drop down to her knees and reach down for me
with a look of utter terror in her eyes. “Rinwen! Summon the guards, quickly! We
cannot pull her up on our own! Emily, reach your other hand up to Lariel!”

I immediately tried to lift my free arm higher towards Lariel’s
outstretched hand, but just as my fingers brushed her palm, my arm suddenly
felt as if someone had strapped a hundred pound weight to it and dropped
helplessly to my side again.

“I can’t!” I cried, my voice high-pitched with fear and panic. “Something’s
pulling hard on both my arm and one of my legs!”

As if on cue, I abruptly lurched downwards with a shriek of pain as my
leg was pulled hard enough that I feared it had been dislocated at the hip.
There was an enormous pressure surrounding my calf, as though a huge hand was
squeezing it tightly. I tried to reach for Lariel’s hand again, but the
invisible weight on my arm was too much. I didn’t dare use more force, afraid
that I would accidentally jerk out of Saeria’s hold.

Then suddenly, impossibly, the air shimmered and warped behind Lariel
and Saeria like a heat wave in the distance, and Sethian faded into existence.
The second he spotted me, his expression melted into a look so horrified that I
knew I would never forget it for the rest of my life. He brushed the younger
girl away without a word as he fell to his knees and thrust his arms through
the rungs to grab my arm over Saeria’s hands. Our eyes met, and my whole body
seemed to freeze.

“Don’t let go,” he told Saeria in a tight voice.

Then the rungs of the balcony above me began to fade and change and my
knees abruptly slammed painfully down onto something hard as on of the couches
in Sethian’s suite faded into view. I grunted in pain as I started to fall
forward, but then Sethian’s chest was suddenly there, his arms reaching out to
catch me before I could fall more than a few inches.

I couldn’t help it. All the fear and panic came rushing out in an
overwhelming avalanche of emotion, and I burst into tears just as he gathered
me up into his arms.

I almost died! I almost died! Oh my God, I almost died!

That terrifying realization ran through my head like a mantra stuck on
infinite repeat as I clutched the front of Sethian’s robes so tightly that my
fingers ached and sobbed noisily into his chest. I don’t know how long I
remained in that state, but when my sobs finally began to die down and the
world outside my head came into focus again, I became conscious of the fact
that I was sitting sideways across Sethian’s lap with one of his arms wrapped
snuggly around my body and his other hand gently stroking through my hair. He,
in turn, was sitting on one of the couches. I had been so far gone that I hadn’t
even felt him lift me up and carry me over.

I drew in a slow, shaky breath in an effort to stifle the last of my
sobs and snuggled even closer to his body. I would have been fine to remain as
we were for the rest of my life, to not have to deal with what had just
happened, but as always, reality had a bad habit of intruding.

A loud knock sounded at the front door, and I practically jumped out of
my skin with a cry of alarm. I felt Sethian stiffen beneath me, but then
Lariel’s familiar voice called through the door and he instantly relaxed. He
began to run my back soothingly.

“Enter,” Sethian called, and the front door swung open to admit both
Lariel and Yara, my healer.

I immediately lifted my head from Sethian’s chest and began scrubbing
at my eyes vigorously, embarrassed to be seen in the aftermaths of my emotional
breakdown, even by my friend and a woman I had grown to trust implicitly over
the past three months.

Both women came into the room only a few steps and bowed to Sethian
while the guard that had admitted them closed the door behind them. The room
was so silent that I easily heard the guards bolting the door heavily from the
other side.

“Hold on to me,” Sethian said suddenly, turning my attention back to
him.

I hastily put my arms around his neck as he gathered me more securely
in his arms and stood.

“She will be more comfortable in the bedroom while you examine her,” he
directed at Yara before proceeding to carry me, bridle-style, to the bedroom.

Sethian carefully laid me down onto the bed without bothering to draw
down the blankets. I winced when I started to straighten my legs and a sharp
pain flared up in both my hip and my knees. Now that I was no longer sobbing, I
realized just how much my body was hurting.

“Where does it hurt?” Sethian asked, his brows furrowed in concern.

“Almost everywhere,” I replied truthfully, “but the worst places are my
left hip and both knees. I remember hitting both pretty hard.” I rubbed a hand
over my swollen belly. “I was lucky,” I said softly, my throat tightening when
I felt a little flutter of movement inside and another onslaught of tears
threatened to rise. “I didn’t hit my stomach at all, not even when I went over
the edge of—”

Sethian placed a finger against my mouth and shook his head. I flushed,
realizing that what had just happened wasn’t something I should be discussing
in front of the healer.

He lifted up the skirt of my dress and I gasped loudly when I saw the
huge blood-red bruise that had already formed along my hip and extended
half-way down the side of my upper leg. The look on Sethian’s face was almost
murderous as his eyes moved from my hip down the length of my legs. A couple of
reddish bruises had also begun to form on both knee caps, but nowhere near as
alarming in appearance as the one on my hip.

“I shall deal with these injuries,” he said, turning to look at Yara.
“It is the child I wish you to examine.”

That’s right. I had completely forgotten that he had mentioned healing
as one of his abilities. I hadn’t really thought about what that meant, so I
had no idea what to expect. I lay still and watched quietly as he gently ran a
hand over the bruise on my hip while Yara placed both of hers onto my stomach
as she always did when examining me.

I had always been able to sense that Yara was doing
something
,
as though I was somehow being touched on the inside of my abdomen. However, whatever
Sethian was doing was definitely causing some kind of change because for the
first few seconds, my hip lit up sharply with a pain very much like the pain I
had suffered when that elven mage had transmuted my body into its current form.
I let out a startled whimper, but managed to keep from moving as the pain
swiftly lessened. The ugly red blotch on my skin began to noticeably fade along
with the pain until the skin returned to its normal color and all I could feel
was a pleasant warmth.

Sethian looked up at me, concern swirling in his eyes, and I flashed
him a watery smile. “I’m fine,” I assured him.

He nodded and moved down to tend to the bruises on my knees. I braced
myself for the coming pain.

“All is well,” Yara announced a few minutes later just as Sethian was
finishing up my second knee. “The child was not physically harmed at all by the
accident. I have calmed her energies, so there should be no lasting trauma to
either.”

I closed my eyes in relief. “Thank God,” I whispered.

Yara removed her hands from my stomach and drew the skirt of my dress
down again. I opened my eyes in enough time to see her bow again to Sethian.