Page 96 of The Queens and the Kings
While he couldn’t bring himself to meet her eyes, Selma clearly hadn’t torn hers away. Her lips were parted, her brow wrinkled, like the moment just before a terrified scream.
He rasped a broken, “How . . . how would I?—”
“Henrik.”
She said the name as if testing it.
Again, she said, “Hen-rik?”
Her eyes crinkled at the edges. She shook her head, hair sliding back and forth on her shoulders. Dark brown, like his. Slightly curly, perhaps. She was a petite woman. The passage of time showed in her eyes. They didn’t share eyes, butperhaps something around the nose. Their hair, surely, but most Stenberg citizens . . .
“My son was not named Henrik.”
He stuffed aside the urge to say,they renamed me after you abandoned me to their evil clutches.Instead, he waited. She might not have noticed, anyway. This woman—Selma—had the appearance of being lost in her own thoughts.
Whispering, she said, “My son was Erik.”
His blood stalled.
“Erik?”
She put a trembling hand to her forehead, the fingers barely grazing it. A tear trickled out of the corner of her eye as she cradled her other arm to her chest. “Erik,” she whispered. “They took him when he was five. They . . . they ripped him from my arms.”
A keen bubbled from her throat. She stopped a sob with a fist over her mouth. Her gaze had averted; it didn’t return. He listened carefully, his whole body still, as if readying for a punch.
He knew that sound. Had heard that wail, that mournful panic, over and over in his head for years. So many times. He never thought to recognize it. Surely, memories distorted the truth. Surely, time wrought a change.
Henrik pulled in a slow, deep breath. “Your son,” he said, and his voice sounded low and gravelly against her building cries. “Did he go alone to the soldats?”
“No.”
Her hand covered her eyes. Henrik’s heart escalated.
“Another boy,” she whispered, hurriedly. “The son of a maid in our house. They couldn’t be parted, not even for the soldats. They both showed such promise that the soldats plucked them out.” Her hands crossed her chest with another cry. “From my very arms.”
The wail died. Her moving mouth gave no sound. She shook her head, turning away.
Confirmed.
She’d confirmed it. Einar and Henrik had entered the soldats together. Their tied memories existed as one.
“Your husband?” he asked, unable to hold it in.
Distracted, she waved a hand, “Anders.”
“What was the name of the maid?”
“Alice.”
“Her son?”
“Noah.”
“Did she have any other children?”
“No.”
“Did you?”
