“I won’t spy on her. I won’t let you or Aiden speak to her as you have in the past. And if Aiden goes anywhere near her, I’m well within my right to kill him.”
Chasten curled back on the divan. He ran his middle finger down the outer edge of his mouth, deep in thought.
Corin had never been proficient at reading his father, but it had somehow become worse. Before he’d known this happiness, toughening his skin had been enough to survive the day. He’d only thought he’d known pain, until he’d seen Yesenia endure it.
“None of that sounds unreasonable,” Chasten said at last. “She is with child, after all.”
“How could you know that?” Corin immediately wished he hadn’t asked it. Questions like that had always been his father’s font of power.
“It didn’t require spying, if that’s what you’re inferring. I can see it, and so could you if you weren’t blind to her.” Chasten laughed to himself. “The truth is, I knew before you did.”
“What?”
“Three of our seers foresaw it. You’re fortunate the child is yours, or we’d be helping her rid herself of it.”
“Who else’s child could it be?” Corin snapped. But was it not a relief to hear this? That his fears about Erran were unfounded? She’d told him nothing had happened, but fear wasn’t rational. Fear played by its own rules. He was a fool for ever doubting her, but a relieved fool nonetheless.
“Who knows? But it’s yours. Maeryn was evidently never with child to begin with, so Aiden is working to fix that. I was tempted to have your child sent into exile, as it would not do to have Aiden come in second to you, but Lord Warwick was very insistent in his wording. Neither you nor her, nor any child she carries or births, are to be harmed or punished. Even I cannot spin the idea of exile into a positive outcome.”
“No one cares about who comes in first, other than you.”
“You’d be surprised, Corin. You’d be surprised.”
Corin folded his arms and leaned back. The air outside his father’s perch rustled with the first stir of a midwinter storm. “Why did you even sign that? I thought you welcomed a war against the Southerlands.”
“I do, yes,” Chasten said, his mouth playing at a grin, “but the king? He’s made it clear that is the opposite of what he wants. The Warwick way would scorch the earth. They’d drown and burn their mines until there was nothing left. We’d arrive to collect a barren land and the ire of a king who enjoys, more than he’ll say, watching us simply hate one another.”
Corin was taken aback by his father’s openness. His words bordered on sedition, so why share them with the unworthy son? The unpredictable one who had chosen his enemy wife over his flesh and blood? “Why... Why make us come back at all?”
Chasten poised to answer with a deep intake of breath, but Corin kept talking.
“I know how you feel about me. How you’ve always felt.” Corin leaned in, his words pouring forth with courage he didn’t recognize and that might soon leave him. “I know I disappoint you. I see how the disappointment vexes you. It was relief I saw in your eyes when Aiden nearly killed me.”
“Yes. To some of that,” Chasten replied. A darkness soon followed, spreading over his careful expression. “But had Aiden... had he killed you... he’d have taken two sons from me that day. Your disbelief in that doesn’t make it less true.”
Corin burst with laughter. “You’ve never punished Aiden for a single one of his sins! You encourage them! You’re glad he’s the way he is, so he can do what you will not.”
“He has a lord’s mettle,” Chasten said with a soft sigh. “But a monster’s heart.”
“Wonder where he inherited that from.”
“I taught Aiden to be cold,” Chasten admitted. “But not cruel.”
Corin shook his head. “Ah, if what you think you offer is merely coldness, I would hate to see your cruelty.”
“You are my son,” Chasten said more firmly. “I know I have not always made you feel that way.”
“Not always?” Corin gaped at him, slack-jawed.
“Gretchen is more like me and could have done more for this family had she been born a man. You are more your mother. As the head of this house, I shouldn’t have punished you for this, but instead found you a role suited to your unique strengths.”
“I don’t want or need a role in this family.” Corin slowed his racing pulse. He lowered his head into his palm. “I just wanted, then and now, to live in peace.”
“You are a Quinlanden,” Chasten replied. “There is no peace to be found in that. Your son or daughter will be the heir to the Easterlands until Maeryn produces her own.”
“No.” Corin shook his head. “Maeryn will bear him a dozen children, if that’s what he wants. Yesenia and I are to be left alone. That was the agreement—”
“You aren’t listening to me, as usual. We are saying the same things, Corin. No one will touch your wife or your child, not because of this agreement, which means little to me, but because of who your child may be, one day, if Aiden fails.”
“Aiden won’t fail.” Bitterness dripped from Corin’s tongue, running down his throat and into his heart. “He never does in your eyes.”
“You and Yesenia, vexing as this is to me, are popular here. Your love, or whatever it is, is something the common people admire. Her unnatural but theatrical rescue of you has kept all their tongues wagging, and your return will be celebrated.”
“Ahh.” Corin smirked. He shook his head. “I knew there was more to it. “
“I want you to be my ambassador for the merchant class,” Chasten said abruptly. “This goes beyond the beggar girl who fell from one of our perches. Yes, I knew about that. I’m not angry. Someone has to deal with them, and few are capable in the way you are.”
“You never cared before about the merchant class.”
Chasten set his mouth in a tight line. “There have been some... skirmishes, in some of the towns.”
“Skirmishes.” Corin snorted.
“We must subdue them, before they gather more moss and swell into something bigger.”
“What does that mean?” Corin swallowed the tremble in his voice.
“You don’t have to pretend to care for their well-being, as we do. They know this. It’s why they adore you.”
Though his father’s words were an invitation, everything about the conversation screamed warnings from within. “Is that all?”
Chasten looked surprised by the question. “Are you so ready to be rid of me, when you’ve only just returned after almost half a year away?”
“Yes.”
Chasten laughed. “You’ve changed.”
“Also yes.”
“Very well. I’ve arranged for separate apartments for you, until Yesenia is safely delivered.”
“Not necessary.”
“But happening, just the same.”
“No. She needs me right now, and I’m staying with her, in our apartments.”
“Maeryn will be with her during the day, and your mother will tend to her in the evenings. What she needs now is to debride herself of the past months so she can bring a healthy Easterland child along. Your emotions will only confuse her.”
Corin jumped to his feet. “You can’t keep me from my wife. I won’t allow it this time. I won’t allow the same mistreatment, of her or of me.”
Chasten sighed open-mouthed, his exhalation becoming a light smile. “Then consider that these will be her wishes by the time you make it back to her.”
“Yesenia wants me at her side.”
“But will she when she learns of how you fed us information about her? When she learns you agreed to spy on her?”
“What?”
Chasten joined him on his feet. “As I said. Neither of you will come to harm. The child will be the safest in the realm. But that child belongs to the Easterlands until Aiden can fulfill his own duty. Aiden is with Yesenia now and has explained things as they are. She now knows that you spied on her, for us. So, it is not I who will impose this separation. I expect she will choose this all on her own.”
“No, no.” Corin shook his head. Once more, his father had led him down a path he hadn’t predicted, and he’d followed, easily, willingly, foolishly. “She’ll understand why I did it. She’ll know nothing I told you was damaging.”
“Will she care? I don’t think she will. I’ve never met a bigger firebrand. Not even your brother wears that crown.” Chasten fixed his collar and smoothed out his dressing gown. “If what passes between you is truly love, she’ll see fit to forgive you when the time is right. For now, this will keep her focused on what’s important until she’s safely delivered.”
“Why would you do this?” Corin hated himself for asking, for giving his father yet one more thing to hold over him, but he had to know. No matter the answer, he needed to hear it in his father’s words.
“Everything I do, always, is with the Easterlands in mind.”
“But I’m your son.”
“I gave you what you want. You are now free to associate with the merchants without hiding it from me. Is that not a gift, Corin? Is that not a father attempting to understand his son?”
“You’ve taken more than you’ve given, though I’ve come to expect that as your personal standard,” Corin spat. He narrowed his eyes. “But you’re wrong about Yesenia. She knows me. She knows I would never betray her.”
Chasten cast his eyes upward. “Then go find out who’s right. The apartments are prepared for you, just the same.”