Lair of Beasts [Book I in the Curse Of Blood Saga]

Chapter XXXIII - The Rift

I stared, with lugubrious eyes, at the snow-covered wasteland that lay outside the bay-window, my cheeks drenched with misery. When would the reserve of tears finally dry up? I bemoaned this fact with an incongruous laugh, my humor verily  ill-placed, but I would lief ponder frivolity as not because the alternative was to deliberate over the pertinent matters that should belabor my mind — like my harsh, new reality.

When would I, once and for all, be easy? There was still too much grief afflicting my eyes and sundering my heart. I brought my hand up to my flattened belly and rested it there tentatively. I did not doubt Godwin's revelations, although he had, for years, been omitting a very significant truth — hiding an abominable secret — that I should have been appraised of afore being bound in eternity to his heir. Try as I might, and I had tried most passionately, I could not heap recriminations on him on the grounds that I unfortunately understood his motives; moreover, he had never lied to me. Not really.

Gradually I had come to realize, with inexorable and stunning clarity, that there was now a babe thriving within me, and perhaps most arresting of all was the fact that I had yet to decide whether or not I despised it or...

No! The thought came to me vehemently, with instant resolve.

I did not hate the child. I could not. I despised not its sire either, despite numerous endeavors to the contrary. To own the truth of it, I no longer knew how I felt about any of Nørrdragor's inmates. I knew only that my dearth of intuition and insight made me all the more lachrymose the longer I considered the conundrum. I longed to liberate myself from these poisonous feelings of disaffection and resentment, but I could not yet find it within my heart to rid myself of the sepsis festering there.

I sat down on a cushioned bench in the oriel window, my vantage point immense, and continued surveying the blizzard raging without. I had cloistered myself within my connubial chamber for the better part of the day; twas already full dark, and supper time besides, but I would not descend to the hall below for my repast. If they wished me to eat, then I would do so here in the solitude I now craved. Howbeit, no one had as yet disturbed me here, not even Anne, and I welcomed it as good fortune. I was not ready yet to face Lucian and perchance he understood this for he stayed away.

I had rushed from Godwin's solar earlier this morning and thence directly to my chamber, neither Lucian nor his father stopping me as I fled. As soon as he had uttered those immutable words, my legs had carried me away without conscious thought from their master — I had been numb and mindless with shock.

"You are already with child." His voice still echoed through my memory, a foreboding and resolute impression. 

A noise at the casement drew me from my dour reverie and I sat up and blinked as a large, dark raven tapped impertinently at the window. Two thoughts struck me at once as I reached for the handle to shoo the nervy pest away: the first being that the poor creature was most absurd to be out in this snowy tempest, at this late hour to boot. Secondly, I tried to imagine why it now demanded entrance all the way up here at my window — where the worst of the wind battered the castle walls.

Like as not it had been swept up by a violent gust and carried hither where it spied the effulgence of my fire's glow in the bleak wintery night, and swooped down to seek refuge. No sooner had I opened the window a crack than the little badgerer swiftly hopped onto my lap and cocked its head to aim a glittering, dark eye at me. I was so stunned by it's effrontery that I allowed it to stay where it now perched while the window, which still lay open, admitted the chorus of the night's foul temper, the howling of the gale now resonant and deep without the barrier to muffle it's turbulence.