The Dark Calling (The Arcana Chronicles #5)(3)

Aric had hired him, inviting him back here to do anything and everything—castle maintenance, vehicle repairs, cooking, cleaning.

“Well, he hasn’t been loyal to me.” I pulled my knees up to my chest. “And where’s your loyalty? I told you that I wasn’t ready to have kids, that I didn’t want to bring a child into a world like this.” For a split second, I wondered if Aric had conspired with Paul. My resentment simmered hotter and hotter. I understood why the Fury Card spat acid. I wished I could right now. “You can’t truly want a kid.”

Seeming to tread carefully again, Aric said, “I don’t not want it. Maybe your pregnancy was inevitable. After all, a fertility goddess imbued you with powers. For ages, the Empress Card has been associated with motherhood.”

And with wrath; I’d been imbued by the goddess Demeter as well. When she’d gotten enraged enough, she’d laid a curse on the entire earth.

I remembered the red witch saying, “Demeter withholds viciously—and gives lavishly. GIVE,” right before I’d euthanized a colony of plague victims. Matthew had told me, “Power is your burden.”

Not lately.

Aric continued, “When you wanted to use contraception, I agreed. But for whatever reason, this is our situation now. And I, for one, welcome it. After all the death I’ve caused—”

“I’m seventeen!”

“Your current incarnation has lived that long, but over your lifetimes, you’re much older.” Equal frustration showed in his expression, but he stifled it. “Can you not see why this could be a good thing, sievā? We will change history. Overturn the game. Perhaps even end it.”

That prospect called to me. Before I’d lost Jack, I’d wanted to end the game more than anything. But the fact remained: I wasn’t pregnant.

Aric cupped my cheek. “Talk to me. I need to know all the thoughts in your beautiful mind.”

Jack’s possible survival. Paul’s lies. Aric’s coming disappointment. Claws. Poison. Punishment. “I’m done.” With my bath. With waiting to vent this rage.

I stood in the tub, glaring when Aric used his speed to lift me and wrap a robe around me. “I can walk.”

“As you wish.” He slowly set me on my feet. Back in our room, I passed the full-length mirror, pausing to take in my appearance. My eyes were glassy, my cheeks pale. I didn’t look pregnant.

In the reflection, I spied the white bloom in a vase beside my bed, the rose plant Aric had grown from a seed after we’d had sex for the first time.

Over the millennia, he’d always carried a white rose on his standard. I’d painted one on the wall that overlooked our bed.

Was that budding rose one of those memory waypoints my grandmother had told me about? If so, what else did it signify?

Aric stood behind me and put his hands on my shoulders. For everyone else who’d ever lived, contact with his skin was lethal. For me, his touch was warm and pleasurable. Together we were different.

If Paul had given me a dummy shot, why wouldn’t I have gotten pregnant? After all the times Aric and I had had sex?

Potentially unprotected sex.

I swallowed thickly, then closed my eyes to take a mental inventory of myself, using the same power I’d used to find seeds deep in the earth.

Sensing, sensing . . .

I opened my eyes, staring into my own hollow-eyed gaze. Oh, dear God. Something felt fundamentally off with me.

Another glance at the white bloom. Aric had planted more than a rose seed two months ago.

I was . . . pregnant.

“You perceive something, do you not?”

Life and Death had gotten together—how could I think there’d be no repercussions? Realization struck: I was always going to get pregnant by him. He was right; it did feel inevitable.

Didn’t mean Paul would escape my wrath.

Over the last several months, we’d been puzzled why my powers had grown weaker. Aside from the global destruction of plants, I’d blamed the Bagman bites I’d sustained or the weather—cold and lack of sunlight in the endless night. Aric had blamed my bottled-up grief over Jack.

Whatever the cause, a pregnancy couldn’t be helping things.

How would I contribute in the battle against Richter like this? I was now effectively benched—and would be for months to come.

Aric caught my gaze in the mirror. “Love, all will be well if you trust me.”

Paul had garnered my trust. The doctors in the mental ward had wanted me to trust them. Gran had. Matthew had. The Hermit had. Just tell me your story.

I was tired of trusting, could barely bite back that acid rage. The Empress didn’t get caged or contained.

Or compromised.

Aric had seen me as a bloodthirsty red witch in the past and must fear I’d return to form. He should.

If Paul had screwed with me, he’d die.

I told Aric, “I am pregnant.”

His eyes glittered with emotion. “So you are, little wife.”

I smiled into the mirror. “Which means I’m going to kill Paul.”





2





“This can’t be undone,” Aric told me as I laced up my boots. “If you’re wrong, you will have murdered an unarmed mortal who’s been of great service to everyone here. Guilt for things in the past already eats at you.”