“I can’t lose another child.” Drae’s voice was broken.
I nodded, folded the book, and handed it back to him.
He grasped the edges of my face and forced me to look at him. “But I still want you.”
I glanced over at the other girls. They were all talking to Annabeth and Dr. Elsie, waiting on the king no doubt.
“If I cannot give you a child, then you should not pick me,” I told him truthfully. “The future of all of Embergate depends on that.”
He frowned, peering over his shoulder to stare at the girls and then back at me. “What if I still married you… but I lay with them?”
I gasped.
“Purely to have a child—once pregnant I would stop. The magic of my people only needs me to have an heir. It doesn’t care if that child is a bastard or not.”
“You’re asking me to marry you knowing you will have mistresses?” I was so hurt I couldn’t even think straight.
He shook his head. “I’m asking you to spend the rest of your life with me, allowing me to bed those women once or twice in order to save thousands of lives.”
I frowned. “Bed all of them?”
Not Kendal. Please not Kendal.
He swallowed hard. “Dr. Elsie thinks it will give me the best chance at success.”
I chewed the inside of my lip to keep from crying as bile rose in my throat. “What you’re asking feels impossible… but I’ll think about it. I’d like to be alone now.” I ripped my face out of his hands and then took off running through the practice fields.
“Arwen!” he yelled, but didn’t come after me.
Bed three women while married to me? And not just once. It took months to get pregnant, and then if the baby died he would continue until he had a living heir.
It was hard to believe that just hours ago he was confessing his love to me and saying he wanted me to be his queen, and now he wanted to sleep with my friends? I couldn’t process it.
But part of my mind thought back to my mother and what she told me about my father’s seed. Was this any different than what my father had allowed to get Adaline?
Not really.
My feet pounded the grass as I cut through a lavender farm, my chest heaving with grief. I mourned the loss of three people. Joslyn. Regina. And now Drae.
The pureness that a marriage between us might have held would be defiled with three mistresses. Would he bed them and then sneak in to sleep by my side? Would he fall in love with one of them in the process?
If Drae and I were at risk of having a child who wouldn’t even live more than a few hours, it meant that he’d never bed me! I’d die with my purity while my husband slept with half the realm.
No. I can’t.
A sob ripped from my throat, startling me. I hadn’t realized how much I’d allowed myself to envision a life with him. How much I’d grown to care for him and see myself by his side. I didn’t know where I was going until I saw the small outcrop of weeping willows up ahead.
A resigned sigh escaped me as I ran to the comfort and devastation that those trees held. It was as if this small piece of land was a place you could fill with your sadness. Drae and Amelia filled it with the loss of their children. Then Drae filled it with the loss of her and another child. Now I would fill it with the loss of a future I would never have but was promised to me for a mere few hours. That’s all it took to break someone, a few hours of hope. When ripped away it left a gaping hole that felt impossible to fill.
I knelt before Queen Amelia’s grave, unsure why I’d come here, why I was standing before her resting place of all people.
Maybe because she would understand—perhaps the only person who could. They might have had an arranged marriage at first, but they had grown to love each other. She would understand my sorrow at losing the chance to be properly loved by him.
I looked out at the other small gravestones and my heart grew heavy. What had started as a simple and joyous task, having a family, had ended in horrifying loss. No parent should have an entire graveyard of their young.
None. Not ever.
I realized then that asking Drae to remain faithful to me would end just like this. In a field riddled with children who lived only moments. Numbness spread throughout my body as a heavy depression settled over me.
I couldn’t give him what he needed, what our people needed, and if Kendal or one of the others could… then I needed not to be selfish.
A twig snapped behind me and I spun, standing and putting my arms out to fight.
Upon seeing Drae, I relaxed and wiped at my eyes.