Obsidian Hearts by Linnea Fletcher

Author:Linnea Fletcher [Fletcher, Linnea]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lynda J Cox
Published: 2020-01-26T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fourteen

Together, they stood on the shore of the lake. Heavily falling snow muffled the bells of Glastonbury Abbey calling the followers of the Nazarene to their prayers. Rhiannon raised her hand, looking over the waters. As she brought her hand up, the mists appeared, thicker than she had ever remembered them. She slid her hand slowly to a side, to part the veil.

The infant within her kicked, and her concentration was lost. She gritted her teeth with frustration. Anger flared to instant life in her. She ignored the upraised brow of the Druid who stood at her side. Vivien had been right about him. He was arrogant. What stopped him from parting the mists? Why should she have to do it?

More than once in the past months, she had been tempted to tell him she wished she had left him as she had found him at Dragon’s Keep, but heart would not let her speak those words. And, even as she wished to say them, she knew they were not true. Her heart had bled for him, her pain at his had been so great.

With one hand stroking the restless babe in her belly, she raised the other and pulled the veil aside. Moments later, Aodh and his skiff approached.

Caius gave her a hand into the skiff, then climbed in after her. Wordless, the Pict began to row to the opposite shore. The infant kicked again, driving the breath from Rhiannon’s lungs on a gasping cough.

“The infant knows he approaches home.”

“If she knows that, then I wish she would stop kicking her way out. She will be thrust into this world soon enough.” Rhiannon glanced down into the water gliding past the small boat. This seemed to be a usual form of verbal sparring of late, Caius insisting her child was male, she refusing to admit it could be anything other than a girl child. She could not believe the changes that this babe had created in her life.

Her back hurt all the time. She had never been overly endowed but in the past several months, she felt as if she had become a milk cow. She swore to all and any who would listen that she no longer walked, she waddled. Even her face had swollen.

Caius, of course, had a counter to every complaint. Her back hurt because of the child’s weight. Her development elsewhere was a natural occurrence that came with being heavy with child. She had never waddled that he saw. And, her face was not swollen; she had the glow of a woman carrying a child.

Her humor had been questionable. Damn him, he never became cross or irritable; he just maintained a good humor. Her anger always seemed to be on a short tether, ready to break free. He seemed to have developed the patience of what the followers of the Nazarene called a saint. When she became weepy—Goddess, what form of cruelty is this that You allow women to become overemotional whilst heavy with child?—Caius would let her cry herself empty on his shoulder.

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