She did not hear Kadakithis’s enraged shout or the slapping of his sandals
across the stone as he raced to take her from the priest’s arms.
She experienced nothing at all until the prince’s tears fell into her open eyes
then she blinked and stared up at him.
“We’ve done it,” she explained with a faint smile, letting the now-harmless
knife fall from her scarred, but uncut, hands.
But barely. Shupansea lacked the strength to gather the drops of blood now
welling up on her breast in a second, pristine vial; nor could she take that
vial and place its contents on the lips of first Gyskouras, then Alton. Her eyes
were closed while everyone else prayed that the changed blood would awaken the
Stormchildren and they remained that way when the two boys began to move and a
chorus of thanks rose from the assembly.
“She needs rest,” the prince told the staring women around them. “Call her
guards and have her carried back to her rooms.”
“She is alone with All-Mother,” the eldest of the women explained. “We do not
interfere.”
Kadakithis blinked with disbelief. “The goddess isn’t going to carry her to bed,
is she?” he demanded of their glass-eyed silence. “Well, dammit, then-I’ll carry
her.”
He was a slight young man compared to any of the professional soldiers in his
service, but he’d been trained in all the manly arts and lifted her weight with
ease. The trailing cosa tangled in his legs, very nearly defeating him until he
planted both feet on the gilt brocade and ripped the cloth from its frames. The
beynit, their venom temporarily expended, slithered quickly out of his way.