Angelfire | The Whispering Wall #3

Thirty Four: Confrontations

Grace went white and swayed on her feet. "What do you mean?"

His heart threatened to suffocate him. She wasn't confused; she knew, or at least suspected, what he meant. Arlen hadn't been lying, and Akiva had not been mistaken.

But he had to be absolutely certain.

"I won't keep you." He hated how bitter he sounded, but it was the best he could do with panic biting at his lungs. As soon as Arlen had left, he had come up here. Yddris had mentioned he would be out for the afternoon, that he was due to train with Nova that day. Jordan had intended to get Grace's location from her, but it was a stroke of luck — he hadn't decided whether it was good or bad — that Grace had appeared on the training grounds and saved him the effort of chasing her.

"Okay." She barely breathed the word; he saw it more than heard it. Her hands bunched in the loose fabric of the trousers she wore. Yddris hadn't mentioned training Grace today, but then the Unspoken had seemed as surprised by her appearance as Jordan was.

She led him off the pitch and some way down the path back to the castle. He felt Yddris's eyes on his back, but ignored him.

"Someone told me..." He stopped. Swallowed as best he could when all his spit had dried up. "Someone suggested that Harkenn offered you a deal."

Her lips pressing into a bloodless line was his only answer.

"They told me he wanted you to carry his baby."

He waited. He wanted her to laugh, to call him ridiculous. He wanted her to tell him that she planned to train as a soldier without telling him and that was why she was on the training grounds; that sounded good compared to the alternative.

She did not laugh. She did not call him ridiculous. She only stared at him, looking like she might throw up.

"Grace." He'd wanted to be angry. It had all left him when she had appeared on the pitch, looking pale and sleep-deprived, but happier than she had been in weeks. And here he was to snatch it away again. "Please tell me you haven't agreed. Tell me you wouldn't agree to something like that."

She swallowed. Still no answer.

He felt like he was freefalling.

"Grace." But he had nothing to follow it up with. Part of him had been so certain Akiva must have overheard a conversation about someone else.

Grace cleared her throat. Her eyes shone. "I want you to hear me out, Joe. All the way, before you say anything else."

"You agreed." His knees wobbled. The world around him seemed to sway, all sound echoing strangely.

"Listen." Tears spilled down Grace's cheeks. "This is going to be a good thing. In the long run. I'll be paid and guarded for the rest of my life; Harkenn's promised me a huge amount of money. He's promised to free Nova. We could do whatever we wanted, Joe."

"How?" His throat ached. He wondered where all his anger had gone. All he felt was numbness. "I'm still stuck with him. And now I'll spend the rest of my working life seeing him every day and knowing what he did, like it's not already hard enough. I'll have to be around the kid, Grace."

She looked hurt. "He'd be my kid, too."

The idea of Harkenn's son being his nephew was faintly nauseating.

"And anyway," she hurried on, as if sensing she hadn't helped matters, "it's leverage too. I can make things better for you if I'm carrying his heir."

"Did he tell you that? Or did you just assume?"

Her brow crumpled. She suddenly looked furious. "So what, you're the only one who's allowed to climb up on the cross for the sake of someone else? You joined an assassin's guild for my sake, and I don't recall you asking my permission. In fact, you hid that from me for a lot longer than I hid this. Not to mention the name change and the months-long trip out of the city. Perhaps I should have told you earlier, yeah, but I sure as shit didn't need your permission."