Page 38 of Angel in Absentia
Clea continued rubbing her face. She’d met Eticia a couple of times when she’d come to visit her father, but the visits had been infrequent. She vaguely remembered the woman with long, light hair and sharp features that vaguely resembled her mother’s. Eticia and her mother had been friends, sure, but her mother had been fiercely independent and had only been truly close with a couple of women who had since died.
“Did you not want me to utilize my good health?” he asked, and she cringed.
“Please don’t,” she whispered. “I don’t think I’m ready for this.”
“You charged in here quite ready,” he replied and continued without hesitation as if this were her punishment for barging in. “You restored my health in its entirety. Eticia’s husbanddied in battle two years ago. She comes from a good family we know well. She is still young and capable of producing several children, and she was more than willing to oblige. She is also quite well-made.”
Well-made.
Clea looked up, her hand having slipped from her eyes over her mouth now.
Her father might as well have confessed his love for the woman. She was a pleasant enough woman, but quiet and subdued, nothing like Clea’s own mother had been. Clea didn’t mind either quality in the woman—she could often be that way herself—but it was such a distant separation from her own mother that she’d never imagined her father and Eticia in a partnership. Clea had nearly forgotten the woman existed until now.
Her heart wouldn’t stop pounding despite her temper calming slightly.
Her father circled the desk and eased down into a chair beside her.
“Thank you,” he said, the emotion in his eyes unreadable.
Clea only straightened in response as if resisting any attempt he made to calm her down. She searched his face. “I know you’ve known her for a while,” Clea said, “but still, three days? You couldn’t have given me at least a week to wake up?”
“In light of this marriage,” he continued steadily as if unsure how she would interpret what he would say next, “you now have the option, if you so choose, to delegate your responsibilities.”
Clea stared, unsure what responsibilities he was talking about but feeling a leap of enthusiasm in her chest.
“At least for the moment, so that you can focus entirely on cultivating a bond with Idan,” he added, scolding her apparent eagerness with his eyes. “There will be no need for your marriage in the immediate future. That said, you will be expected to marry Idan in order to solidify our relations with Ruedom. Just because you are free of some obligation does not mean you have the freedom to slight your entire bloodline. Do you understand?”
“No,” Clea said. “You’ve been pushing for children and more children and suddenly I have time? You—” She paused.
Her father’s expression didn’t change.
“You mean,” Clea started. “Already?”
Her father lifted a hand firmly. “Only the High Council knows.”
Clea leaned forward. “Already?”
He scolded her with his eyes, and they waited in silence for a moment. Clea sat and then leaned slowly back in her chair.
“Now, would you like to argue some more?” he asked as she stared forward. “I must warn you, I have quite the ferocious energy lately, and I can guarantee your more recent victories will not be repeated,” he said seriously.
They sat in silence for a long moment. Clea mulled over the dramatic shift in her position. She could leave the walls. She could continue to actively advance the cause of her people in her own ways.
“I suppose healing has its limits,” she said at last, smiling slightly as she watched her father sigh and lean back in his chair, folding his hands in his lap.
“I suppose congratulations are in order. Another heir,” she whispered, but her mind still had not absorbed the implications. A half-sibling.
He raised his eyebrows expectantly, and her smile widened slightly, though she struggled with the confusing tangle of joy and sadness. Exhaustion fell over her in a heavy blanket, and she was suddenly too tired to argue any other point. She stood up, rubbing her chest. She felt like she was ready to collapse, every part of her aching for sleep. Walking over to the door, she opened it.
She nodded to him as she turned to leave the study. “I need to lie down. I’ll be back,” she warned him. “This isn’t over.” But in truth, she was unsure what else she had to say.
“Clea,” he continued, and she paused, looking back at him. “I suppose”—he nodded slightly as if it were difficult to swallow the next words down—“that healing does, sometimes, in the right circumstances, have its merits.”
“Absolutely not. It’s child’s play,” she repeated his words back to him.
He gave her the faintest twinge of his lip, his closest offering of a smile, and then she closed the door.
She continued to rub her chest as she began to return to her room. Her father opened the door as if to ensure she hadn’t collapsed in the hallway, but she didn’t look back to acknowledge him. Her mind continued to thumb through theevents of the last several hours. Her pulse would not ease, her heart aching as she walked drearily back into her room and shut the door behind her. She breathed in through her teeth, hissing as she grabbed the bedpost and rested her head against it.
