Gold as the Crown

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

(/Shade/)

            "Well there has to be some record of something, anything." I argued as I paced along the rows and rows of books in the Lerolorn estate library. Julian Jacos, who had remained seated during the entire hour long conversation simply sighed again and replied, "There would not be any records of any such occurrence. A Red and Silver having a child is considered an unspeakable social offence. You know that it would mark a Red woman a blood traitor, and it would exile a Silver man completely if they had the child out of mutual understanding. And I'm sure it works the other way around as well. No one would want to tell the truth if those were the punishments."

            I grabbed a book off the shelf and tossed it into my makeshift pile, not even bothering to look in the index's anymore for the topic I was searching for. As far as I was concerned this was a futile exercise to try and ease my frazzled mind. Evangeline getting pregnant had never been a thought in my mind, let alone one in her own. We'd never done anything to prevent that from happening, because we had just assumed her body had done it for us. Now we were paying the price for such a mistake, and I wasn't sure what the cost would be.

            At the table on the other side from me, Mare was flipping through some of my pile with Cal. The two of them were pressed together at the shoulder while they looked through two separate books. Honestly they looked like two little lovebirds perched on a tree, observing everyone below them. My stomach twisted in knots as I frantically kept searching the shelves, trying to ignore the fact that they were not in the same situation as me. How were they not in this situation? I mean, they had been together in a much more serious manner for a much longer period of time. As much as my mind burned at the thought of my sister experimenting and the like, I wondered if they ever had. They had never made any inference that anything had happened, and my sister never seemed to have that characteristic glow that my mother always talked about. So was it safe to assume that the two of them just had infinitely more willpower than me and Evangeline? Cal was a twenty year old guy though, a little older than me, who had a serious relationship for the first time in his life. There was no way he had as much willpower as he presented when it came to my sister.

            "If you stop panicking for a moment Shade, we can talk about this like responsible adults." Mare said with a huff as she turned and page and squinted at the fading text. I tried not to snort at her use of "responsible adults". If I had been one, I wouldn't be in this situation right now. Evangeline wouldn't be hundreds of miles away from me, panicking over what to do like I was. It had been a relatively long conversation for her to get it out anyway when we had been on the radio together. I'd only been able to speak with her three times in the time that I had been down here, regulations and rules for protecting the base and such, and the first time we had spoken had been when we had first arrived and I had called to tell her that I was safe along with the others. She'd been impossibly relieved, telling me that she was speaking with Farley about traveling down there on her own with Torin to get him medical help from Sara. She had been denied her request, as the riots that had broken out all across Norta had posed a dangerous threat for her and anyone who left Tuck. After she had found out about her pregnancy too, it had been deemed by the medic Garrett much too dangerous for her to travel alone. If Samson got ahold of her, there was no telling what would happen, and with Silvers crawling the streets looking for us, there was a much higher chance of her getting caught. She had been furious, but had eventually called me two months later to tell me everything. That second call had been only yesterday, but it felt like it had been centuries ago. After she had uttered the words that had ultimately changed both of our lives, I had been in shock, and unable to answer. For a moment, she had sounded panicked on the other end, her voice weak and quite as she'd asked if I was okay, if I was still there. I'd replied that I was, a few heartbeats later, and then told her that I needed to see her immediately. Farley had turned down the idea of me going to Tuck alone, and had shut down Evangeline's pleas to go down and meet me. In the end, the mutual understanding had been that she would travel with Farley and Torin down to the docks of Harbor Bay, where we were set to meet everyone, and from there, we would travel inland to grab the only train that could take us close enough to the border of the Lakelands. After that we would be left to trek the next hundred miles to Trial where we would be meeting up with the Scarlet Guard faction there.