fic: storm born - chapter forty-five
Title: Storm Born
Author: Morgen
Summary: It was supposed to be their one chance to be together. Instead it plunged them straight into a nightmare.
Disclaimer: I don't own LOTS or profit from it in any way. Just worship it from afar.
Rating: PG-14
XLV. ENTWINED
It seemed forever before they were alone again. The next time Kahlan awoke, there were maids in the room. Richard took a walk with Amara, while they dressed her in a fresh nightgown and helped her use a shallow bowl to relieve herself. She would have been embarrassed if not for the maids who used to fuss over her every move in Aydindril. When they were done, she almost felt clean again. She tried to stay awake until Richard returned, but he was gone a long time, and she drifted back to sleep.
The next time she opened her eyes, Zedd was there. He made her swallow a spoonful of something thick and bitter tasting. It sunk her immediately into a deep, dreamless sleep.
The sound of Amara crying was what finally woke her again. She opened her eyes to see Richard almost out the door, a fussy baby in his arms.
“Where are you going?” she called before the door could swing shut.
A moment later he reappeared, an apologetic look on his face. “I was afraid she’d wake you,” he said. “I was just going to get Jessica.”
“Who’s Jessica?” The question came out sharper than she intended.
Richard stepped back into the room, swaying from foot to foot and shushing Amara. She ignored his efforts and wailed louder. “The maid who’s been nursing her. She just woke up, and she’s starving.” He glanced down at the writhing infant, “Make that mad and starving. She hates waiting.” He started for the door. “I’ll be back soon.”
“Give her to me.” Kahlan struggled to sit up, pushing the pillow behind her for support.
He stopped short. “What?”
“Give me my child, Richard. I’ll nurse her.”
“But you can’t.”
She glared at him, folding her arms carefully beneath her breasts. They were tender and swollen in size again. She had milk for her child, maybe not enough to manage every feeding on her own, but she wasn’t about to let a stranger nurse Amara any more than absolutely necessary. “And why can’t I?” she asked, raising her voice to be heard over the baby’s cries.
Richard crossed over to the bed, his face as stern as his dark eyes were sad. “You’re still getting your strength back. You need to take care of yourself before you worry about anyone else.”
“She’s my daughter.” The sound of Amara wailing made her heart clench. “Please, I’ve already missed so much.”
That was enough to make him give in. His expression softening, Richard bent down and handed Amara to her. She’d hoped the baby would stop crying once she held her in her arms, but she kept up her sobbing, sucking in a heavy breath and then wailing again. Kahlan rocked her in her arms and looked up at Richard, suddenly unsure. “What do I do?”
He smiled then. “Unbutton your gown.”
I knew that,” she muttered. Feeling flustered, she reached for the first button. Amara cried louder. “I’m sorry, Amara. I’m sorry,” she said as she hurried her way along the row of buttons. She pushed the fabric down, scooting her daughter towards her breast. She hesitated when Amara kept crying, and glanced over at Richard, realizing she had no idea what to do next. “Should I just hold her there?”
He moved closer, leaning over the bed. “Here,” he murmured. He stroked a finger down Amara’s cheek and along her lower lip. Immediately she stopped crying, turning her head towards the finger and opening her mouth wide. “Now,” he said. “Just push it in.”
Kahlan did as she was told, and a moment later, her daughter was latched onto her breast. She felt her begin to suckle and looked back up at Richard. “Am I doing it right?”
“Does it hurt?”
She hesitated. It felt strange, but it wasn’t painful. And Amara was staring up at her intently, her dark eyes very bright. “No,” she said softly. “It doesn’t hurt.”
“Then you’re doing it right.”
Kahlan raised an eyebrow. “How do you know all this? You knew just what to do.”
His cheeks pinked, and he looked away, shrugging his shoulders. “When we first brought you here, your milk came in, and Jessica, she said it would be very painful for you unless you nursed her. So…” He shrugged, his blush spreading to the tips of his ears. “I was alone with the two of you a lot, so I figured some things out.” He met her eyes. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.” Kahlan smiled and looked down at her daughter. “I’m glad you did. You’re her father.” And it soothed something inside her to know that, even when she’d been unconscious, she’d still been there for her baby in a way. She settled back against the pillows, listening to the sounds of Amara suckling. Her little hand rested against her breast, and was opening and closing into a fist again and again.
She glanced back up at Richard. “You know, this is the longest I’ve sat up without getting dizzy.” She took a deep breath, trying to prepare herself. There was so much she still needed to talk to him about. So much she needed to apologize for. He’d been kind and hadn’t mentioned confession, but she still remembered what she’d tried to do to him in the Underworld. “We should talk,” she said quietly, but Richard ignored her. He looked suddenly tense and uneasy.
“Do you feel all right?” he asked, pressing a hand to her brow. “Maybe it would be best if you lied down again.”
“I’m fine,” she said, but he looked unconvinced. A moment later he got to his feet and began to pace while she nursed Amara. Now and then she caught him casting nervous glances her way.
“Are you sure you don’t need to rest?” he said, stopping his pacing to stare at her openly, that haunted look creeping back into his eyes. “You’ve been up a long time.”
“I’m sure. I am resting. Richard, what’s wrong?”
He shook his head and sat back down on the stool. “Nothing.” He smiled at her, but his posture was one of coiled motion, his hands and feet restless, his eyes clouded with worry. He drummed the toe of his boot against the floor in a ceaseless rhythm.
At last she could take no more of his fidgeting. “What is it?” she snapped. “What aren’t you telling me? I may be stuck in this bed, but I’m still a Confessor.”
Richard dragged his hands down his face. “I’m not hiding anything.”
She felt her magic stir in response to his words. “And now you’re lying,” she said sharply. He stared at the floor, fingers knotted in his hair.
“Is it about Amara?” Sudden panic flared up in her breast, and she clutched her nursing child tighter. “Because I swear, Richard, if there’s something wrong with her, and you lie to me because you think I’m too weak to handle it, I will get up out of this bed and--”
He grabbed her hand. “It’s not Amara. It’s not her. I promise I will never lie to you about our daughter.”
She stared at him bewildered. “Then what are you lying about?” She gasped, clutching his hand tighter. “Spirits, is it you? Is something wrong with you?”
But again he shook his head. “I’m fine, Kahlan.” He wasn’t fine. She didn’t even need eyes to see that, but he wasn’t lying. He wasn’t worried about himself. That left only…
“Me.” Her voice was soft. “It’s about me, this secret.”
Richard said nothing, and that was answer enough. “Tell me,” she said.
He scrubbed his hands over his face. “It’s nothing,” he said, his voice trying for lightness. “I just need you to be okay.”
Kahlan frowned. “I am okay. This is the best I’ve felt since I woke up.” But Richard still looked wrecked, watching her with fear in his eyes. Her voice wobbled, “Am I not okay?”
For a long time, he didn’t answer. “Zedd doesn’t know why you’re awake,” he said at last, studying his feet instead of her face. “How you’re awake… The poison, he says it hasn’t gone away. It’s still inside you, just as strong as when it was killing you. He can’t explain it. And you’re sitting here smiling at me, and I want to be happy, but I keep thinking it’s going to snatch you away again. That I’ll turn around for a moment, and you’ll be gone.”
She sat there stunned, trying to let his words sink in. The poison was still there. She’d assumed it had faded somehow, but it was still in her somewhere like a lurking shadow. Kahlan pushed the thought away, not wanting to consider what that meant. “I’m here now,” she said. Richard nodded, but she could see tears pooling in the corners of his eyes.
She stretched out her arm to him. “Come here,” she whispered, and he did, leaving the stool to perch on the edge of the bed. She wrapped her arm around him, pulling his head down to rest against her shoulder. She felt his tears fall hot on her neck. Oh, this man. He had spent countless sleepless days and nights caring for her, but he’d walked the Underworld too, and nobody had thought to care for him.
She heard him sniffle and stifle a sob. “Don’t die,” he whispered, like a child trying to bargain with eternity.
“I’ll do my best.” She pressed a kiss to his hairline before glancing back at Amara. She had all but stopped nursing, just giving an aimless suckle now and then. Her eyes were drowsy, and she looked as if she could fall asleep again. Kahlan smiled and touched a finger to the tip of her nose.
Already Richard was straightening up and wiping his eyes on his shirtsleeve, determined to be the strong one. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t want to worry you.”
“It’s all right,” she soothed. “I’m here now. And I’m not going anywhere without a fight.”
He nodded and sat back down on the stool. His eyes were still so scared, but a smile played around the corners of his mouth. “I could watch you with her forever,” he said softly.
Kahlan eased Amara off her breast, and lay her down in her lap. When she waved a hand over her, the baby reached for it, tugging on her fingers as if they were new and interesting objects. She looked up at Richard through the curtain of her hair, doing her best to ignore the knot in her belly. It tightened whenever she let herself remember she had tried to order her daughter’s death. “I confessed you,” she said. She didn’t know where else to begin.
“It didn’t work.”
Kahlan shook her head. That was a lucky fluke, some consequence of the Underworld and Richard’s own death. She went on, “And then I ordered you to kill us. I know what that would have done to you.” He had awakened from confession before to a nightmare not of his own making, and she had sentenced him to the same fate again.
“It would have destroyed me. To wake and find you dead at my own hands, I…” His voice shook. He looked gutted, as if he’d dragged himself down the raw edge of a blade. “There would have been no coming back from that. I would have stayed down there. Stayed dead.”
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, tears brimming unshed in the corners of her eyes. “I’m so sorry, Richard.”
He waved her words away. “I understand why you did it.”
“You do?”
“Yes.” He leaned forward to give Amara a smile before looking back at her, the smile fading as quickly as it had appeared. “I didn’t have a plan. I had no idea how I was going to get you out of there. If Amara had been born in the Underworld, she would have been bonded to the Keeper for eternity, and she had the stone in her hand.”
Kahlan gasped. “What?”
“You don’t remember that?”
“I remember she wasn’t breathing,” said Kahlan softly. “After that, no. I can’t remember anything at all.” She looked down at Amara, touching her perfect fingernails like little pearls. “She really had the stone?”
“Clutched in her fist. It’s how I was able to seal the rift.” Richard pushed the hair out of his eyes. “If you’d given birth in the Underworld, we would have delivered the Stone of Tears to the Keeper.”
Kahlan shivered and lifted Amara back up to rest against her chest. She held her close, needing the reassurance of her tiny body. It was okay now; their daughter was safe. Richard kept talking, his voice heavy, “If it hadn’t worked, if Darken Rahl hadn’t been destroyed by your touch, I told myself I was going to have to do it anyway. That I had to kill you both, but I don’t know that I could have managed. Not of my own free will. You did the right thing, Kahlan. The only thing.”
She pressed her lips to her daughter’s head, breathing in her scent. She had never smelled anything more wonderful in all her life. It calmed her, and gave her a way to keep speaking. “I should have trusted you’d find a way out.”
“You were dying,” he said. “You could barely speak at that point. You did what you thought you had to do to keep the world safe. I could never fault you for that.”
“You make it sound so simple.”
“It is that simple. I love you. There is nothing to forgive.” He picked up her hand and kissed her palm. “Between us, there is nothing to forgive.”
“Okay,” she said. How many months had it taken him to be able to say those words and mean them. Not too long ago, he would have thought his torment to be exactly what he deserved. But no longer. She hoped it would always be so simple between them. She looked up, surprised to find him beaming at her.
“Besides,” he said. “It didn’t work.”
She shook her head. “I know it didn’t work! I didn’t realize the Underworld would interfere with--”
Richard interrupted her. “But the Underworld didn’t interfere with anything. Your magic worked! I felt it in me, just as I felt Annabelle’s when she confessed me.” His grin widened. “It just didn’t work.”
Kahlan gaped at him, her hand frozen halfway to her mouth. “But how? That’s not possible.”
“It is,” he insisted. “It searched my mind. I could feel it, but there was nothing for your magic to change.” His smile faded and he leaned forward, his voice low and serious and a little sad. “I…when I was confessed to Annabelle, I loved her. I held her as dear to me as I have always held you, but no more than that. There is no more. I cannot love you any more than I already do. There is nothing in me for your magic to take. No part of me that is not already yours.”
She tugged him close, and Richard scooted forward until his knees bumped against the bed. “Tell me this isn’t a dream,” she said.
“It’s no dream.”
“I don’t…” Her heart felt light inside her chest. She reached out, pressing her fingertips to his cheek. “Are you sure?”
“Yes. Zedd is too; I spoke to him.” Kahlan stared up at him in wonder, wanting to believe.
“I really can’t confess you?”
“No.” He lifted her hand from his face, and slid it down to wrap around his throat. “Try it right now, if you have the strength, and you will see.”
“Richard…”
“Trust me. If I was not certain, I would not risk it. I couldn’t do that to you and Amara. I know the truth. All I want is for you to see it for yourself.”
She stared up into his eyes and nodded. “All right. I’ll do it.”
“Should we move her first?” he asked, already reaching for their daughter.
“There’s no need,” said Kahlan. “She’s immune. All confessor daughters are to their mother’s magic. Think of how many times I released my power with her inside me.” Her very first memory of her own mother was of her confessing a man while she held her safe in her other hand.
“Okay then,” said Richard, his face hovering over hers. “Do your worst.”
She laughed then despite herself, letting the ever present restraint on her magic slip away to flow into him. While Amara’s eyes stayed clear, his went beetle black almost instantly. She all but screamed then, certain he’d been wrong. But she remembered his voice, his words. Trust me. She held in her fear and waited, slumping against the pillows as her magic left him. She felt as weary as she had in childhood, when she was a young Confessor first using her power.
“Are you still you?” she whispered.
He gave her a quiet smile. “I’m me.”
And yet she had to test it. “Go stand on your head,” she said, using the first outlandish command to cross her mind. If confessed, he would rush to comply with utmost sincerity, and then she knew her heart would shatter.
Instead, he grinned down at her, looking far more pleased with himself than a confessed man had ever dared to be in her presence. “I’d rather not.”
“It didn’t work,” she wept. With a feeble hand, she tugged him down into a kiss. His mouth was warm and familiar, and he cradled her in his embrace. He was gentle with her, as if he feared she might break, but she felt the world unfolding before them all the same.
When he broke the kiss, he held his weight up over her on an arm. “Kahlan?” He sounded suddenly uncertain. “I know it’s soon to be asking, but when you’re well again…”
Amara squirmed against her chest as if she too was anticipating his question. Kahlan smiled through her tears. “It’s not too soon. It’s time.”
His smile grew a little bolder. “Then will you marry me?”
She nodded, her hair rustling against the pillowcase. “Yes,” she said. The room suddenly seemed very bright. “Yes. I’ll be your wife.”
Author: Morgen
Summary: It was supposed to be their one chance to be together. Instead it plunged them straight into a nightmare.
Disclaimer: I don't own LOTS or profit from it in any way. Just worship it from afar.
Rating: PG-14
XLV. ENTWINED
It seemed forever before they were alone again. The next time Kahlan awoke, there were maids in the room. Richard took a walk with Amara, while they dressed her in a fresh nightgown and helped her use a shallow bowl to relieve herself. She would have been embarrassed if not for the maids who used to fuss over her every move in Aydindril. When they were done, she almost felt clean again. She tried to stay awake until Richard returned, but he was gone a long time, and she drifted back to sleep.
The next time she opened her eyes, Zedd was there. He made her swallow a spoonful of something thick and bitter tasting. It sunk her immediately into a deep, dreamless sleep.
The sound of Amara crying was what finally woke her again. She opened her eyes to see Richard almost out the door, a fussy baby in his arms.
“Where are you going?” she called before the door could swing shut.
A moment later he reappeared, an apologetic look on his face. “I was afraid she’d wake you,” he said. “I was just going to get Jessica.”
“Who’s Jessica?” The question came out sharper than she intended.
Richard stepped back into the room, swaying from foot to foot and shushing Amara. She ignored his efforts and wailed louder. “The maid who’s been nursing her. She just woke up, and she’s starving.” He glanced down at the writhing infant, “Make that mad and starving. She hates waiting.” He started for the door. “I’ll be back soon.”
“Give her to me.” Kahlan struggled to sit up, pushing the pillow behind her for support.
He stopped short. “What?”
“Give me my child, Richard. I’ll nurse her.”
“But you can’t.”
She glared at him, folding her arms carefully beneath her breasts. They were tender and swollen in size again. She had milk for her child, maybe not enough to manage every feeding on her own, but she wasn’t about to let a stranger nurse Amara any more than absolutely necessary. “And why can’t I?” she asked, raising her voice to be heard over the baby’s cries.
Richard crossed over to the bed, his face as stern as his dark eyes were sad. “You’re still getting your strength back. You need to take care of yourself before you worry about anyone else.”
“She’s my daughter.” The sound of Amara wailing made her heart clench. “Please, I’ve already missed so much.”
That was enough to make him give in. His expression softening, Richard bent down and handed Amara to her. She’d hoped the baby would stop crying once she held her in her arms, but she kept up her sobbing, sucking in a heavy breath and then wailing again. Kahlan rocked her in her arms and looked up at Richard, suddenly unsure. “What do I do?”
He smiled then. “Unbutton your gown.”
I knew that,” she muttered. Feeling flustered, she reached for the first button. Amara cried louder. “I’m sorry, Amara. I’m sorry,” she said as she hurried her way along the row of buttons. She pushed the fabric down, scooting her daughter towards her breast. She hesitated when Amara kept crying, and glanced over at Richard, realizing she had no idea what to do next. “Should I just hold her there?”
He moved closer, leaning over the bed. “Here,” he murmured. He stroked a finger down Amara’s cheek and along her lower lip. Immediately she stopped crying, turning her head towards the finger and opening her mouth wide. “Now,” he said. “Just push it in.”
Kahlan did as she was told, and a moment later, her daughter was latched onto her breast. She felt her begin to suckle and looked back up at Richard. “Am I doing it right?”
“Does it hurt?”
She hesitated. It felt strange, but it wasn’t painful. And Amara was staring up at her intently, her dark eyes very bright. “No,” she said softly. “It doesn’t hurt.”
“Then you’re doing it right.”
Kahlan raised an eyebrow. “How do you know all this? You knew just what to do.”
His cheeks pinked, and he looked away, shrugging his shoulders. “When we first brought you here, your milk came in, and Jessica, she said it would be very painful for you unless you nursed her. So…” He shrugged, his blush spreading to the tips of his ears. “I was alone with the two of you a lot, so I figured some things out.” He met her eyes. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.” Kahlan smiled and looked down at her daughter. “I’m glad you did. You’re her father.” And it soothed something inside her to know that, even when she’d been unconscious, she’d still been there for her baby in a way. She settled back against the pillows, listening to the sounds of Amara suckling. Her little hand rested against her breast, and was opening and closing into a fist again and again.
She glanced back up at Richard. “You know, this is the longest I’ve sat up without getting dizzy.” She took a deep breath, trying to prepare herself. There was so much she still needed to talk to him about. So much she needed to apologize for. He’d been kind and hadn’t mentioned confession, but she still remembered what she’d tried to do to him in the Underworld. “We should talk,” she said quietly, but Richard ignored her. He looked suddenly tense and uneasy.
“Do you feel all right?” he asked, pressing a hand to her brow. “Maybe it would be best if you lied down again.”
“I’m fine,” she said, but he looked unconvinced. A moment later he got to his feet and began to pace while she nursed Amara. Now and then she caught him casting nervous glances her way.
“Are you sure you don’t need to rest?” he said, stopping his pacing to stare at her openly, that haunted look creeping back into his eyes. “You’ve been up a long time.”
“I’m sure. I am resting. Richard, what’s wrong?”
He shook his head and sat back down on the stool. “Nothing.” He smiled at her, but his posture was one of coiled motion, his hands and feet restless, his eyes clouded with worry. He drummed the toe of his boot against the floor in a ceaseless rhythm.
At last she could take no more of his fidgeting. “What is it?” she snapped. “What aren’t you telling me? I may be stuck in this bed, but I’m still a Confessor.”
Richard dragged his hands down his face. “I’m not hiding anything.”
She felt her magic stir in response to his words. “And now you’re lying,” she said sharply. He stared at the floor, fingers knotted in his hair.
“Is it about Amara?” Sudden panic flared up in her breast, and she clutched her nursing child tighter. “Because I swear, Richard, if there’s something wrong with her, and you lie to me because you think I’m too weak to handle it, I will get up out of this bed and--”
He grabbed her hand. “It’s not Amara. It’s not her. I promise I will never lie to you about our daughter.”
She stared at him bewildered. “Then what are you lying about?” She gasped, clutching his hand tighter. “Spirits, is it you? Is something wrong with you?”
But again he shook his head. “I’m fine, Kahlan.” He wasn’t fine. She didn’t even need eyes to see that, but he wasn’t lying. He wasn’t worried about himself. That left only…
“Me.” Her voice was soft. “It’s about me, this secret.”
Richard said nothing, and that was answer enough. “Tell me,” she said.
He scrubbed his hands over his face. “It’s nothing,” he said, his voice trying for lightness. “I just need you to be okay.”
Kahlan frowned. “I am okay. This is the best I’ve felt since I woke up.” But Richard still looked wrecked, watching her with fear in his eyes. Her voice wobbled, “Am I not okay?”
For a long time, he didn’t answer. “Zedd doesn’t know why you’re awake,” he said at last, studying his feet instead of her face. “How you’re awake… The poison, he says it hasn’t gone away. It’s still inside you, just as strong as when it was killing you. He can’t explain it. And you’re sitting here smiling at me, and I want to be happy, but I keep thinking it’s going to snatch you away again. That I’ll turn around for a moment, and you’ll be gone.”
She sat there stunned, trying to let his words sink in. The poison was still there. She’d assumed it had faded somehow, but it was still in her somewhere like a lurking shadow. Kahlan pushed the thought away, not wanting to consider what that meant. “I’m here now,” she said. Richard nodded, but she could see tears pooling in the corners of his eyes.
She stretched out her arm to him. “Come here,” she whispered, and he did, leaving the stool to perch on the edge of the bed. She wrapped her arm around him, pulling his head down to rest against her shoulder. She felt his tears fall hot on her neck. Oh, this man. He had spent countless sleepless days and nights caring for her, but he’d walked the Underworld too, and nobody had thought to care for him.
She heard him sniffle and stifle a sob. “Don’t die,” he whispered, like a child trying to bargain with eternity.
“I’ll do my best.” She pressed a kiss to his hairline before glancing back at Amara. She had all but stopped nursing, just giving an aimless suckle now and then. Her eyes were drowsy, and she looked as if she could fall asleep again. Kahlan smiled and touched a finger to the tip of her nose.
Already Richard was straightening up and wiping his eyes on his shirtsleeve, determined to be the strong one. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t want to worry you.”
“It’s all right,” she soothed. “I’m here now. And I’m not going anywhere without a fight.”
He nodded and sat back down on the stool. His eyes were still so scared, but a smile played around the corners of his mouth. “I could watch you with her forever,” he said softly.
Kahlan eased Amara off her breast, and lay her down in her lap. When she waved a hand over her, the baby reached for it, tugging on her fingers as if they were new and interesting objects. She looked up at Richard through the curtain of her hair, doing her best to ignore the knot in her belly. It tightened whenever she let herself remember she had tried to order her daughter’s death. “I confessed you,” she said. She didn’t know where else to begin.
“It didn’t work.”
Kahlan shook her head. That was a lucky fluke, some consequence of the Underworld and Richard’s own death. She went on, “And then I ordered you to kill us. I know what that would have done to you.” He had awakened from confession before to a nightmare not of his own making, and she had sentenced him to the same fate again.
“It would have destroyed me. To wake and find you dead at my own hands, I…” His voice shook. He looked gutted, as if he’d dragged himself down the raw edge of a blade. “There would have been no coming back from that. I would have stayed down there. Stayed dead.”
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, tears brimming unshed in the corners of her eyes. “I’m so sorry, Richard.”
He waved her words away. “I understand why you did it.”
“You do?”
“Yes.” He leaned forward to give Amara a smile before looking back at her, the smile fading as quickly as it had appeared. “I didn’t have a plan. I had no idea how I was going to get you out of there. If Amara had been born in the Underworld, she would have been bonded to the Keeper for eternity, and she had the stone in her hand.”
Kahlan gasped. “What?”
“You don’t remember that?”
“I remember she wasn’t breathing,” said Kahlan softly. “After that, no. I can’t remember anything at all.” She looked down at Amara, touching her perfect fingernails like little pearls. “She really had the stone?”
“Clutched in her fist. It’s how I was able to seal the rift.” Richard pushed the hair out of his eyes. “If you’d given birth in the Underworld, we would have delivered the Stone of Tears to the Keeper.”
Kahlan shivered and lifted Amara back up to rest against her chest. She held her close, needing the reassurance of her tiny body. It was okay now; their daughter was safe. Richard kept talking, his voice heavy, “If it hadn’t worked, if Darken Rahl hadn’t been destroyed by your touch, I told myself I was going to have to do it anyway. That I had to kill you both, but I don’t know that I could have managed. Not of my own free will. You did the right thing, Kahlan. The only thing.”
She pressed her lips to her daughter’s head, breathing in her scent. She had never smelled anything more wonderful in all her life. It calmed her, and gave her a way to keep speaking. “I should have trusted you’d find a way out.”
“You were dying,” he said. “You could barely speak at that point. You did what you thought you had to do to keep the world safe. I could never fault you for that.”
“You make it sound so simple.”
“It is that simple. I love you. There is nothing to forgive.” He picked up her hand and kissed her palm. “Between us, there is nothing to forgive.”
“Okay,” she said. How many months had it taken him to be able to say those words and mean them. Not too long ago, he would have thought his torment to be exactly what he deserved. But no longer. She hoped it would always be so simple between them. She looked up, surprised to find him beaming at her.
“Besides,” he said. “It didn’t work.”
She shook her head. “I know it didn’t work! I didn’t realize the Underworld would interfere with--”
Richard interrupted her. “But the Underworld didn’t interfere with anything. Your magic worked! I felt it in me, just as I felt Annabelle’s when she confessed me.” His grin widened. “It just didn’t work.”
Kahlan gaped at him, her hand frozen halfway to her mouth. “But how? That’s not possible.”
“It is,” he insisted. “It searched my mind. I could feel it, but there was nothing for your magic to change.” His smile faded and he leaned forward, his voice low and serious and a little sad. “I…when I was confessed to Annabelle, I loved her. I held her as dear to me as I have always held you, but no more than that. There is no more. I cannot love you any more than I already do. There is nothing in me for your magic to take. No part of me that is not already yours.”
She tugged him close, and Richard scooted forward until his knees bumped against the bed. “Tell me this isn’t a dream,” she said.
“It’s no dream.”
“I don’t…” Her heart felt light inside her chest. She reached out, pressing her fingertips to his cheek. “Are you sure?”
“Yes. Zedd is too; I spoke to him.” Kahlan stared up at him in wonder, wanting to believe.
“I really can’t confess you?”
“No.” He lifted her hand from his face, and slid it down to wrap around his throat. “Try it right now, if you have the strength, and you will see.”
“Richard…”
“Trust me. If I was not certain, I would not risk it. I couldn’t do that to you and Amara. I know the truth. All I want is for you to see it for yourself.”
She stared up into his eyes and nodded. “All right. I’ll do it.”
“Should we move her first?” he asked, already reaching for their daughter.
“There’s no need,” said Kahlan. “She’s immune. All confessor daughters are to their mother’s magic. Think of how many times I released my power with her inside me.” Her very first memory of her own mother was of her confessing a man while she held her safe in her other hand.
“Okay then,” said Richard, his face hovering over hers. “Do your worst.”
She laughed then despite herself, letting the ever present restraint on her magic slip away to flow into him. While Amara’s eyes stayed clear, his went beetle black almost instantly. She all but screamed then, certain he’d been wrong. But she remembered his voice, his words. Trust me. She held in her fear and waited, slumping against the pillows as her magic left him. She felt as weary as she had in childhood, when she was a young Confessor first using her power.
“Are you still you?” she whispered.
He gave her a quiet smile. “I’m me.”
And yet she had to test it. “Go stand on your head,” she said, using the first outlandish command to cross her mind. If confessed, he would rush to comply with utmost sincerity, and then she knew her heart would shatter.
Instead, he grinned down at her, looking far more pleased with himself than a confessed man had ever dared to be in her presence. “I’d rather not.”
“It didn’t work,” she wept. With a feeble hand, she tugged him down into a kiss. His mouth was warm and familiar, and he cradled her in his embrace. He was gentle with her, as if he feared she might break, but she felt the world unfolding before them all the same.
When he broke the kiss, he held his weight up over her on an arm. “Kahlan?” He sounded suddenly uncertain. “I know it’s soon to be asking, but when you’re well again…”
Amara squirmed against her chest as if she too was anticipating his question. Kahlan smiled through her tears. “It’s not too soon. It’s time.”
His smile grew a little bolder. “Then will you marry me?”
She nodded, her hair rustling against the pillowcase. “Yes,” she said. The room suddenly seemed very bright. “Yes. I’ll be your wife.”