Blooms of Consequence (Dusk Gate Chronicles - Book Four) Read online

  “S’okay.” She blinked, and put her hand over her eyes. He stretched his hand toward her forehead, even though his lips had just been there.

  “I’m not sick, Will. It was probably just a nightmare that I don’t remember or something.”

  “It’s okay. Whatever it was, I’m here.” His fingers still went searching for the pulse at her wrist, and she rolled her eyes.

  “Really, I’m fine.” She pulled his hand away from her wrist, though she held on to it. “I promise.” He wrapped his other arm around her and pulled her against his chest, stroking her back for a long time. Finally, her heart rate slowed, and she relaxed against him, feeling more normal.

  “Do you want to try to go back to sleep?” he asked, his breath warm against her temple.

  She shook her head. “I’m wide awake now. What time is it?”

  He glanced around the room. The bedroom of the guest suite they were in was well-appointed, from the fresh flowers on the bedside tables, and the candles in crystal holders on the mantel, but there was no clock in here. “Dark? Unless those are the best curtains in the castle.”

  “Do you want to go back to sleep?”

  He shook his head. “Are you hungry?”

  Sometime late in the evening, when they’d finally stopped to check out the rest of their surroundings, William had discovered a note that Thomas had slipped under the door of the sitting room, letting them know that Ben and Marcus had returned, and Quinn’s family was safely through the gate. It had also mentioned that there was dinner outside the door when they wanted it.

  He’d opened the door for long enough to bring in the large silver tray filled with plates of sandwiches and fruit on a bed of ice.

  Much care had been taken in the preparation of this little suite for them – for the only honeymoon they were likely to get anytime soon. The armoire had been stocked with several changes of clothes for each of them, and the bathroom shelves held all of their personal items. They’d even found bathrobes for each of them hanging on hooks behind the door.

  It had made Quinn feel a little strange to see all of their things side-by-side like that, sharing space – a heady mixture of excitement and nervousness that this was real. They were actually married. And now he was here, with her, in bed.

  “Quinn? Do you want some food?”

  In truth, she was a little hungry, but it wasn’t really food that she wanted right now. She almost told him what she did want, but discovered quickly that she was still a little too shy to come out and say something like that. So instead, she nodded.

  William took her hand to help her off the bed, but before he led her out to the sitting room, he leaned in close to her ear. “We’ll get better at this,” he said, giving her the peculiar sensation that he’d read her thoughts. “We have the rest of our lives.” And the way he smiled at her right then told her that he hadn’t read her thoughts at all – he’d just had the same ones.

  It was a long time before they made it to the sitting room.

  Later, William was standing at the little buffet table, putting more glasberries on Quinn’s plate when there was a sudden loud pounding on the door. Quinn leapt from the couch like she’d been shocked, and William dropped the plate, shattering it, sending shards of glass and green berries everywhere.

  He looked at Quinn, alarm on his face. “Who is it?” he called.

  “It’s Thomas. I’m sorry, but can you open the door?”

  William glanced down at himself, and then at Quinn – checking to make sure they were both covered, she supposed – before crossing the room in three quick steps and turning the lock – the feature in this room they’d both been the most impressed with.

  “What’s going on Thomas?” he asked.

  “Linnea isn’t in here, is she?”

  “What? No. Why would she be?”

  Even as William spoke, Quinn’s insides quickened and froze into hard, black ice. “How long has she been missing?”

  Thomas entered the room, and she noted immediately that he was dressed in regular clothes, but his hair was messy, and still bore traces of whatever he’d used to style it for the ceremony yesterday. He hadn’t showered. And from the looks of the dark circles under his eyes and his sunken in cheeks, he hadn’t slept, either.

  “I don’t know,” he said, running his hand through his hair – that was what had mussed it up so badly. “Mother noticed it late last night when she went to say good-night to her. I thought she’d gone to bed early or something. I can’t even remember the last time I saw her. Not since the ceremony, I don’t think.”

  “You didn’t see her after she walked us up here?”

  “No. And as far as we can tell, nobody else has, either.”

  The sitting room did have a clock on the mantel. Quinn saw William look at it at the same time she did. “It’s almost six in the morning!” he nearly shouted. “And you’re just telling us now?”

  “Not…uh…disturbing the two of you was sort of a priority,” Thomas said. “They didn’t want me to come in here even now. Mother is highly distraught about taking the only peaceful night it looks like you might get, but I knew you’d be even more upset if I waited any longer.”

  “All right. We’ll get dressed and meet you…”

  “In Father’s office. The little ones are still sleeping. We don’t want them to know yet.”

  William nodded.

  “I’m really sorry for bothering you.”

  “We’d rather know, Thomas,” Quinn said, suddenly more than a little freaked out about waking up the way she had a little while ago. What did it mean?

  “You okay?” William asked, after he closed the door behind Thomas and turned back to her.

  “No.” Her hands were shaking furiously, and she wasn’t sure that she wasn’t going to throw up. “Are you?”

  “No.”

  William walked into the bedroom and pulled open the armoire, throwing clothes toward the bed without really looking at them, while Quinn headed for the bathroom. “Wasn’t Ben supposed to be guarding her?” she asked.

  “I’m guessing she disappeared while he and Marcus were going to the gate with your family,” he said. “That was just a seriously overprotective precaution, anyway. She was inside the castle, for the love of roses. There’s not somewhere safer.”

  Quinn knew he was right. She also knew that the other questions that were floating around her brain, like were they sure they’d searched everywhere in the castle, were ridiculous. They’d never have come to William and Quinn if they weren’t sure this was really an emergency.

  In under five minutes, they were both dressed and back in the sitting room. William paused before he opened the door. “I’m sorry,” he said. “This is not how I imagined our wedding night.”

  “I think at this point, it would be a little disingenuous to be surprised,” Quinn said, wrapping her arms around his waist. “In any case … I thought the first part was pretty good.”

  “Just pretty good?” he asked, mock chagrin on his face.

  “Hmm . . . maybe more like earth-shattering?”

  He cocked his head to the side, looking up thoughtfully. “I can live with earth-shattering. Even if we’re not technically on Earth.”

  “Fine, Deusterros-shattering, then,” she said, trying out the name she’d only recently learned, after she’d realized that Eirentheos and Philotheum didn’t make up the whole of this world.

  He grinned, and leaned down to kiss her one more time.

  * * *

  Quinn’s transformation was complete before they even reached his father’s office. Upstairs, with him, she’d been so . . . soft, somehow, blushing and uncertain . . . so warm, and so beautiful.

  Now, she was still beautiful, of course, but there was nothing soft about her at all. As they’d walked – dashed – through the corridors, she had pulled her hair up behind her, fastening it with an elastic band she must have slipped on her wrist while she was putting on the linen pants and shirt, and the thick, cr
eam-colored sweater. The drafty hallways were a little chilly this morning; he wondered if it was still raining.

  The crowd in his father’s office was small and distressed. His mother and father were there, along with Simon, Thomas, Marcus, Ben and Nathaniel. William was shocked at how distraught Ben looked; he was nearly tempted to cross the room and give the guard – usually such a stoic – a hug.

  “I’m so sorry!” Charlotte burst out, as soon as they entered the room. “I told him not to go and bother you yet.”

  “It’s all right, Charlotte,” Quinn said. “We would rather know.”

  “Did he wake you?”

  His father shot his mother a look that he didn’t quite understand, until a second later when Quinn stumbled over the answer. “Uh, no. We were . . . awake.”

  Heat flashed all the way to his toes, and he saw that pink had already spread down Quinn’s skin.

  Either nobody else in the room caught the innuendo, or they were all polite enough to ignore it.

  Quinn cleared her throat. “So Linnea has been missing possibly since late yesterday afternoon, right after the wedding.”

  “Yes.”

  “So, clearly, someone took her.”

  “We know there’s no way she would have left to go anywhere on her own.”

  William nodded. Linnea had a defiant streak, and he knew she occasionally felt a little claustrophobic about the restrictions that she’d been living under recently, but he remembered the haunted look she’d carried when Thomas was missing. No, Linnea would never to that to them. Not even for a few hours. She would have at least told Thomas if she was sneaking off somewhere.

  “And the suspects are pretty much everyone who’s not in this room.”

  “We can probably clear the children,” Thomas said, without a trace of humor.

  “I don’t have any reason to suspect any of the guards who are Friends of Philip, all of whom were immediately accounted for and who are now conducting searches of the castle and the grounds, and questioning the other guards who were on duty,” Stephen said. “All of our visitors from Philotheum were also found in their rooms asleep when we began the search. They seem as concerned and upset as we are.”

  “Does Tolliver ever come up with something more inventive than kidnapping and fires?”

  William put his hand on her arm, stroking it softly with his thumb. “Do armies in your world ever get tired of bombs and guns? Fighting is about being effective, not creative.”

  “In any case, we’ve always known that Linnea was who Tolliver was really after, if he could somehow get her across the border and to the castle … I will be deploying additional troops to the border today,” Stephen said. “For the time being, we will hold off on actually sending troops in to Philotheum, but if I get any indication that Linnea has crossed the border, then that will change.”

  William swallowed hard.

  “So what can we do?” Quinn asked. “How do we start searching for Linnea?”

  “At first light, we will attempt to locate Zylia and send her searching so that we can follow. But they may have a lead of over twelve hours on us and with the rain . . .”

  “What can I do?” Her voice was a little more forceful this time, her hands clenching and unclenching repeatedly.

  “You can do nothing Quinn. At least nothing to directly search for Linnea. In a few hours, you will begin your journey to Philotheum. You’re our best hope for ending this thing. Ellen and Charles are already packing. Henry is going with you, but Thea and her children will be staying with us.”

  Marcus stepped forward from his position behind Stephen’s desk. “Ben and I will be also traveling with you. As we’ve discussed before, we need to be able to protect you, but still keep our group as small as possible to avoid notice. We also need to leave some trustworthy guards here at the castle. As tonight’s events have more than demonstrated, we can’t take for granted our trust of anyone.”

  Quinn’s gaze swung back to Stephen. “You’re sending your two most trusted guards with me, when you need them here – when they could be searching for Linnea?”

  His father took a step toward her. “Marcus is not my guard, Quinn. He never has been.”

  She frowned.

  Marcus cleared his throat. “Since the beginning, Princess, my family has held a special position. It is a task that belonged to my father, and to his father before him. We guard the heir to the Philothean throne. My son and I intend to travel with you – to restore our family’s honor, to return the new heir to her rightful place. My father never got over losing Samuel – he was eventually hung for treason when he dared to accuse Hector of the truth, of plotting to kill your father. As for me, I held out hope always that I would live to see you, to guard you, for my family to continue serving yours, as it was meant to be. Will you allow us the honor?”

  Marcus and Ben both knelt in front of her then. The single tear that fell down her cheek was the only break in Quinn’s composure during that meeting.

  18. Rain

  “Remind me never to go that long without riding, and then try something like this again,” William said, coming up to where Quinn was leaning against a tree.

  “I don’t remember planning it that way this time,” she reminded him.

  “Are you holding up okay?” He glanced down toward her leg, which was a lot better after a week of healing, but he had only just taken out her stitches before they left.

  “I’m fine.”

  “Liar.”

  “There’s not really another option, is there? Besides, I spent all that time throwing knives and stuff in the practice arena. I’m in better shape for this than you are.” She pushed playfully at his chest.

  He raised an eyebrow as he captured her hand, pushing it out of the way so that he could move in close to her. “Is that right? I seem to remember keeping up some form of exercise lately . . .”

  She giggled as he leaned in to kiss her, and she stretched her arms up around his neck, but then she remembered why they were out here, and her laughter stopped abruptly.

  “What, love?”

  “It just feels . . . wrong to be playing and smiling about anything when Linnea’s missing.”

  He sighed. “I know it does.”

  “What if she’s hurt or something?”

  William closed his eyes. “We can’t think like that, Quinn. Not that I’m not thinking the same things, but . . . she’s probably safe, wherever she is. Unhappy, I’m sure, but Tolliver wants her so he can marry her. Whoever took her has to be under orders not to harm her.”

  “It feels so wrong to be leaving instead of searching for her.”

  “I know.” He pulled her tight against his chest. “But this is the best thing we can do for her. We need to get to Philotheum, and see if we can get all of this sorted out, and then he won’t need her.”

  “And what if we get there and Queen Sophia doesn’t agree? What if she turns around and has us killed or something?”

  “I’m sure we’ll have a plan by the time we get there that doesn’t have us just walking to our deaths.” He tried to sound confident. “And you do realize, don’t you, that Queen Sophia is your grandmother. That has to mean something.”

  “She has no way of knowing that, Will.”

  “Maybe not, but we can’t think like that, Quinn. You have the exact same color hair she does. And from what I hear, you look very much like your father. Maybe she’ll recognize you.” No, she hadn’t known that. She’d known her hair color was the same as her father’s, but she had no idea that had come from his mother. She wondered who William had been talking to about her looking like her father. Those conversations hadn’t included her.

  “Yeah, maybe it will just be that easy,” she said, placating him because she really didn’t want to think too much about that right now.

  “Do you want some dry clothes?” he asked, after a few minutes, running his hand against the damp material of her shirt.

  “I was getting there.” The first cou
ple of hours they’d traveled away from the castle, it had still been drizzling. The slick riding coat she’d been wearing hadn’t been enough to keep out all of the moisture.

  About an hour ago, the sun had finally peeked through the heavy gray clouds, slowly warming them, though there was still a crisp fall chill in the air. They’d stopped now, in the secluded safety of a thickly wooded area, to rest and let the horses drink.

  “Will! Quinn!” Nathaniel called from down by the river.

  “Come on,” William said, taking her hand. They hurried down to where the small group was huddling on a circle of rocks.

  Ben handed each of them a sandwich before they sat down, and Quinn noted that he looked terrible. There were dark, nearly black circles under his eyes, and his complexion was ashen. She wanted to tell him that it wasn’t his fault that nobody blamed him, but she had a feeling that he didn’t want to hear it. Yesterday, at the wedding, Ben had asked Linnea to dance with him twice, and another time she’d seen him carrying two drinks toward a table far to the side of where most of the socializing was happening.

  She was afraid his devastation now ran far deeper than feeling he’d failed in his duties, and she felt overwhelmingly guilty that Ben was here now, guarding her, rather than searching for Linnea.

  “Marcus and I have been discussing the best plan for our route today. We’ll rest for a little while longer here, and give everything a chance to dry out and warm up,” Nathaniel said, nodding toward a small fire someone had built on the riverbank. “Then we’re thinking we can make it to Cloud Valley before dinnertime.”

  “Are we actually going to stay in Cloud Valley? Is it safe if Eli knows?”

  “Eli is a member of the Friends of Philip.”

  “What? Since when?”

  “For a long time now,” Marcus said. “Eli’s father was one of my closest friends, and a personal guard of King Jonathan’s.”’

  “So he’s from Philotheum?”

  Nathaniel nodded. “Eli’s clinic is one of the places we’ve been sending refugees as we find them. Cloud Valley is secluded and quiet; many people don’t even know the town exists. The people there are loyal to our history and the united crowns. It’s been a safe haven.”