I blinked into the dim stairwell, unable to move as I failed to think of what would have been better. A place in our rooms? The babe’s basket set just so on the chest at the end of the bed where I’d always imagined I’d one day place my own?

Laughter, accompanied by cooing and fussing and a short cry, echoed up the stairs.

Rorn cursed. “Bloom, wait.”

“Another day,” I lied, in hopes he did not follow as I returned to the parlor.

A piercing scream woke me from my unintended nap and curdled my blood.

It was not the scream of an infant.

Lurching from the chaise, I hurried out of the parlor and down the stairs as I heard another, followed closely by shouted pleas.

The commotion was coming from the entrance to the towers.

A group of guards, not wanting to let me pass but doing so reluctantly, stepped aside to reveal Rorn standing in the middle of the drive.

Breath fled me so fast, my ears began to ring with my screeching heartbeat.

Carelda, her meagre belongings strewn across the pebbles, was being restrained by two guards. “You cannot keep him and not me,” she seethed, noting my arrival as I slowly came to a stop mere feet away from the king. “He is mine.” Her face was wet, heated, and her teeth bared as the two males struggled to escort her to the awaiting carriage.

“He will be well cared for, this I vow,” Rorn promised, yet he would not even look at the distraught female. He spoke to the trees lining the drive, his hands clenched behind his back.

I stared at them, the squeezing, bruising grip purpling his fingers.

Stars, he wouldn’t…

But he was.

“He needs me,” Carelda cried. “My milk and my touch—you cannot do this, Rorn. Stop.” She tripped backward, but the hold of the guards was too tight for her to fall. “Please,” she screamed, and in the few battles I’d witnessed, I’d never heard such pain. Not from the wounded. Not from the dying. Not even from the grieving.

It sliced through me to bind with my own—a growing drumbeat that caused my blood to churn and roar. “Let her go,” I said before I was aware that I’d planned to say anything at all.

But my voice was brittle. I was ignored.

Rorn nodded to the guards, and they once again attempted to maneuver the squirming new mother into the carriage.

Carelda swung her legs and planted her bare feet on either side of the open door, howling and struggling like an animal being led to slaughter.

“Unhand her,” I stepped forward and ordered Malex, who continued his attempts to pull her leg away from the carriage.

He was forced to stop when Pandel, the other warrior, ceased his own efforts. He looked from me to the king, unsure, and shifted in his boots.