BMT belongs to Trudi Canavan

Chapter 37 - Promise Fulfilled

Akkarin opened his eyes to the now familiar dappled pattern made by the early morning sun on the ceiling above the bed, an indistinct dancing of light, faint at first, but gradually becoming stronger. This intrusion of the dawn came from the tiniest of gaps in the shuttered windows of his and Sonea's bedroom. That sliver of light was all that was needed to wake the black magician; Akkarin still did not sleep well.

Slowly, he turned onto his side and looked at the woman sleeping beside him – his wife. The term still felt unfamiliar to him as it rolled around his mind. The union of binding was not something that Akkarin had ever seriously envisaged for himself; not before he left the Guild as an arrogant, ambitious young magician, and certainly not after he had returned. Thanks to his parents' attempts to make good political matches for their son, the young heir of Devlon saw little value in marriage beyond what advantage it might bring to his family. When he had returned from Sachaka, battered and broken, the idea of even friendships was anathema to him, let alone more. But that was a long time ago now, before many things. Before Sonea.

The diminutive girl from the slums had intrigued him at first; a rare Natural; a fiery spirit in the face of adversity, powerful and talented. But it was in the enforced intimacy of their circumstance, cloaked in cold bitterness for a long time, that a bond had sent out its first unlikely, tentative tendrils. And by the time Akkarin and Sonea stared at each other across the smoking crater that marked Kariko's demise, that bond, those ties, had become as farensilk – each one gossamer thin and delicate, but so many strands born out of so much that together they were unbreakable. Much of who the two black magicians were now was to be found in each other, inextricably woven; they could no more sever than they could cut off a limb.

Following Sonea's slow recovery, formalising that bond seemed a natural thing to do. The Ceremony of Binding could not give full expression to what no one else could possibly understand, but it served somewhat as a declaration to the world of Akkarin's intent and of his feelings towards his former novice. Something tangible and incontrovertible. Akkarin had had his fill of the gossips and their whispered half truths. He was done with doubters.

But, wife? It still would not settle into a comfortable resting place. It was too generic, too normal. It was too inadequate.

He looked at Sonea's sleeping face and thought it the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. He pushed a dark strand of hair from her cheek and his fingers lingered over her smooth skin before slipping under the bed coverings and skimming gently over her body, not with desire but with reverent tenderness.

His hand came to rest below her naval, his fingertips caressing the faint line of a scar on her hip where Kariko's knife had plunged in, and then, in unspeakable cruelty, his probing thumb had followed. Akkarin closed his eyes against the memory, the feel of it, the sick shock and blind-buzzing whiteness of it. But as time passes the heart's memory learns to blur the bad and magnify the good, and so it was mercifully proving for the former High Lord.

The moment of horror, of pain, was fleeting and Akkarin opened his eyes once more and drank in the sight of his wife. How could Kariko's vengeance prevail now that the two black magicians had both survived and somehow, somehow, made it back to each other? It couldn't; Sonea said so once and she was right. His wife. Always the rightness to his wrong.

The seeping, golden sunlight; the bright, awakening birdsong; the distant sound of a door slamming. The Guild, shocked and recovering still too, pulling itself into a new day as he and Sonea lay cocooned together. It seemed impossible to imagine a purer, simpler happiness than those tranquil mornings before Akkarin arose to face the demands of the day, and this morning he was more reluctant than ever to leave his new-found comfort.

Delaying, he laid the palm of his hand lightly on the softness of Sonea's stomach, cherishing its warmth and the regular, undulating rhythm of the rise and fall of her diaphragm and he allowed his dark lashes to flutter shut once more.

His magic pooled languidly beneath his fingertips, so much a part of him, and filaments of it escaped their physical boundaries and spooled into the connecting flesh of Sonea, sinking into her. Then, suddenly, Akkarin's black eyes flew open once more and he pulled in a sharp intake of breath. Sensing the abrupt tensing of the man at her side, Sonea's lips murmured unintelligibly and she shifted beneath Akkarin's hand. He lifted his fingers, obliging her movement and anxious to not wake her. Not before he was sure, before he had checked.

Sonea's mind eased itself into peaceful sleep again and Akkarin's hand hovered over the gentle concavity of her pelvis. His long fingers shook slightly and he clenched them before placing them decisively yet carefully on his wife's skin. One, two seconds only he let them rest there before snatching them away and rolling onto his back to stare once more up at the ceiling with its drifting patterns of light. Akkarin's early morning peace was shattered. His mouth went dry, his face bone-white as his jaw clenched convulsively and he raked his hands through his black hair. Words then drifted back to him and his eyes pricked with tears so that they sparkled like obsidian in the half light.

"You must do it for both of us...Promise me ...promise...my friend."

The two red-robed men stood at a respectful distance but their eyes never strayed from the tall figure some paces away, back to them and seemingly oblivious to their presence. Akkarin was getting used to his constant guard whenever he left the confines of the Guild grounds; the guards, however, were far from used to having a black magician amongst them and their gaze always belied their wariness and an undercurrent of fear, still.

There had been some debate as to whether the area of the residences and graveyard were to be treated as Guild lands or not, and whether Akkarin and Sonea , when visiting these areas, required the constant warrior presence that restricted their lives now whenever they set foot out of the University and it surrounds. It had been Akkarin himself who had wearily ended the argument, the need to visit his friend's final resting place overwhelming the menial details of who should or should not accompany him. He had found his feet taking him to Lorlen's grave many times since, and today, after the revelations of first light, the pull to be near Lorlen had been great indeed.

The black magician's long fingers lightly traced the engraved lettering that etched the late Administrator's name. It momentarily made Lorlen's death seem more real, less elusory and tears pricked Akkarin's eyes. His fingers lingered before he drew them away as a familiar hopelessness weighed heavy in his stomach.

"I kept my promise, old friend, "he said with a sad curl of his lips. " And I have never felt so scared or as helpless," he added with a whisper. Watching intently, the warrior guard saw the slight droop of Akkarin's dark head but they did not hear his words, or see behind them as two other figures approached.

Tobin glanced briefly at the red-robed men but walked past them silently and approached her brother. The smaller woman who accompanied her hung back hesitantly, her face pale and tense. The warriors recognized her, their eyes suddenly widening and flickering uncertainly between her and the black magician. A little belatedly they made a stiff bow to the second newcomer as they looked beyond her for the presence of a palace guard, but it wasn't there.

"Akkarin." Tobin spoke softly though she knew her brother was aware of her behind him; she had seen him straighten at the sound of her approach and had felt the familiar tendrils of power nudge at her consciousness.

"You could have just turned to see who was coming, "Tobin said with a soft edge of annoyance though a smile pulled at her lips. "You know, those two things at the front of your head – eyes, that's what us mere mortals call them, "she concluded sarcastically.

Her brother turned to face her at last, schooling his features into the familiar half-smile, and it wasn't totally forced – it had been some weeks since he had seen his sister and he loved her dearly. As she looked up at his crooked mouth, Tobin felt the urge to embrace her brother but fought it, less used to the watching strangers than him.

"Now you are just being ridiculous, Tobin," Akkarin addressed her in between planting a kiss firmly on each cheek. "You are no 'mere mortal' and you know it," he stated teasingly. "But eyes….." his lips now pulled in mock consideration, "well, eyes have some uses at times, I have to concede." And Tobin rolled hers in exasperation as if to prove his point.

"Seriously, though," Akkarin continued, sobering. "I apologize for probing; I shouldn't do it but it's almost instinctive. Am I forgiven?" And the smile came out again, transforming his somber face in that way it had; irresistible and as part of his magnetism as his darkness was, even if more rarely seen. Tobin sighed.

"You have to ask?" She replied before her gaze shifted to the smooth, pale stone behind him, resting on the starkness of the freshly etched name. "It is I who am sorry for disturbing you, here. " She re-focused on her tall brother. "We did call at your residence first; your servant told us where we could find you. " Tobin unknowingly bit her lip and she glanced obliquely over her shoulder. "It seemed a shame not to talk with you when we had already made the journey, and…..and when we have something to ask you."

We? Akkarin's brow creased slightly at the pronoun shift and, with difficulty, he pushed all lingering thoughts of his discovery that morning aside and focused intently on his sister in a way that would have made it impossible for many to hold his gaze. But Tobin had looked into those dark, unremitting eyes in their first hour of life and she stared at them steadily now, undaunted.

"We?" Akkarin repeated, aloud this time before scanning the surrounding graveyard, but he could see no one other than the warrior guard who stood silent and watchful some paces away. Again, invisible threads began to seethe from the black magician but, remembering his sister's veiled indignation at his intrusion just now, he reigned them back in. He looked at Tobin expectantly but she stood, unsure and fidgeting - and silent. It was his turn to be exasperated.

"Well, when my eyes fail me and you berate me for using magic, I'm afraid you will have to enlighten me as to who this 'we' is, and what you have come to ask." He glanced sharply at the flashes of red, bright against the green-gray surroundings. "Unless you mean that my guards wish to ask me something, though I am beginning to doubt they even have tongues," he added dryly, his eyebrows raised, and he was darkly satisfied to see the two men squirm slightly at the jibe.

At that moment, the woman who had accompanied Tobin stepped out from behind a tall stone plinth that headed a tomb a few paces away.

"Cami," Akkarin breathed and he could not disguise the surprise that whipped his voice from his throat. He blinked once, twice. He then turned slowly and lay a hand reverently on Lorlen's headstone before gently guiding Tobin from the grave to where his other sister stood.

Cami's mouth was dry and she licked her lips before inclining her head to her brother. He reciprocated the formal gesture, required even amongst siblings when one was the protector of the Imardin and the Guild's former leader, and the other was betrothed to the king and Kyralia's future queen.

Tobin looked from one to the other, and the words - drenched in grief and fear and dipped in madness - that Cami had spoken in ragged whispers as they had cowered in the darkness during the Ichani invasion, screamed in Tobin's head so loud that she wondered whether her brother and sister could hear them, gifted as they both were. But neither were listening in, they were intent only on each other.

Cami knew that neither Merin nor Tobin had told anyone of her condemnation of Akkarin prior to his exile, or of her part in that banishment coming to pass; of her spying on her siblings and of her persuading of her future husband to turn his back on his High Lord and friend.

Yet, despite their ignorance of these facts, Cami's guilt had kept her away from the black magicians since the invasion. This was the first time Cami had set eyes on her brother since that first terrible day of exile, and she knew he was no fool. Guilt has a way of seeping out of the soul and leaking, unwanted, onto the pages of the face and only the most skilful can blot it out. Cami knew she did not have that skill, so she had stayed away, though she knew her brother would wonder at it.

But guilt also has a way of eating at life like a canker, consuming all else until only truth can free you of it to live again; a new life, a changed life, maybe, but with a lightness of spirit that only the unburdening of confession can bring. Cami was young, soon to be bound to the king, to be a ruler of a people; she could not begin that journey with the weight she carried. She had come to unburden herself at last.

And Akkarin knew, he knew…...guilt when he saw it - who was more qualified than him, after all? Yes, he had wondered at Cami's absence – on his visits to the palace, at his binding to Sonea – and he suspected but buried the suspicions deep, wanting only to help Sonea and the city recover.

A picture of his younger sister's face flashed through his memory then; it was blanched and shell-shocked before the black magicians' hearing, and Cami had clearly not wanted to be seen by her brother – not there, not then. But there was something else in her face that day, something that, in his seething turmoil of peril, of fear, of love, Akkarin had not processed for what it was. But now, now he saw it. Guilt.

Abruptly, his dark eyes glittering but revealing nothing, he leaned down and kissed Cami on both cheeks before scooping her hands in his and squeezing them. "Come." And his voice reverberated low like distant, rolling thunder, but he smiled gently as he spoke. "Here is not the place to talk. This is a place for endings, not beginnings." And he released her hands, cupped her face and brushed away the tears that streamed silently down her cheeks.

A while later, back at the Guild, and the warrior guard, unspeaking still, had never been so relieved to be free of their brooding charge and his equally sombre siblings. They hurried off to the food hall for some sustenance following their unenviable task and did not look back as Akkarin ushered the two women into the Black Magician's residence.

And so, sat in his guestroom, Cami told Akkarin of her one inherited magical gift, too weak and singular to be detected during Guild testing, but there, nonetheless: of being able to hear the surface thoughts of those close at hand without being noticed.

Her eyes were downcast as she spoke– she did not have Tobin's courage – and she was pale but resolute. She told how she had used her gift to survive the brutal intrigues of Court. In the physical realm, she might have been just another girl of the Houses, playing the game, but in the unconscious mind she was all-powerful; an invisible marauder, unseen and unfelt - sifting and gleaning the truth of people. Often, it was ugly.

Slowly, that ugliness had tainted Cami's inherent goodness, and, as is frequently the case, that acquired malice became insidiously directed at those she most envied, and those distant enough to not give a lie to the truth she had created for them. And Akkarin... he fitted that criteria perfectly. Akkarin she envied most of all.

Cami's voice went as thin as paper, shame shaving the layers from it and plunging her, full-bodied, back into the burning immediacy of what she had done. She had persuaded the king to send his friend, her brother, to certain death. She was not that person anymore; the Ichani attack had cleansed her innate goodness of the clinging, ugly parasite that had seeped, unsuspected, through the door of her mind when it had been open to another's. But the shame, it was part of who she was now and could never be shrived. The roots of the shame though, they could be halted from further malignant growth; they could be expunged, if she could be forgiven.

When she was done, Cami stared down at her hands in her lap. Tobin had been next to her and had been gripping her sister's fingers as she told her truth. Akkarin, opposite, had sat stone-still, his eyes dry but wide and unblinking as the puzzle pieces snapped together. For, so it had been -a puzzle - and more than that, a torment. Of ...of why? Why had Merin condemned him so easily to death, though he did not have the courage to do it directly? And here was the answer: for love, for the trust at its core. For his sister. Once, Akkarin would not have understood the usurping of friendship for anything, but now, now he did.

"Do I... do I disgust you? " Cami asked. And then, with the last thread of her voice: "Do you hate me? Do you forgive me?"

Akkarin felt many things for Cami in that moment, seeing her tension and the fear and misery bound up in it, and none of them were disgust, and none of them were hate.

Quiet, deferential Cami, always in the shadow of her intelligent and bold sister, and both eclipsed by their powerful, enigmatic brother. How stupid he'd been not to see past it; but then how could he have, when he'd left for the Guild at fifteen and his sisters' lives far from a priority in his new one? Now, everything shifted just enough, and it was like tilting the angle of the sun so that instead of glancing off a window-pane and blinding you, it shone through it to illuminate what was within, and all of it was through the lens of what Akkarin knew now about Cami replacing him as the focus of their mother's cruelty.

Liessa may not have told her children bedtime stories; whispered wonders of tales told in the warm and drowsy cocoon of blankets and starlight. It would never have occurred to her. But the children's nursemaid did, more a mother to them in every way that matters than Liessa ever had been. And those tales, they were filled with sugared fruits and rainbow fountains, faraway places of sunsets and verdant forests full of beautiful creatures; they spilled with heroic deeds and impossible quests, vast spiralled fortresses precariously perched on unbelievable landscapes, and the moon and stars were strung on necklaces. And they brimmed, brimmed with magicians.

After Akkarin had left the family home, Cami would lie, quiet and still, sometimes feeling the ache and rawness of her back from Liessa's earlier attentions, and she would listen with a terrible intensity to the stories and they brewed in her such a stew of envy and longing. She grew to hate the magicians and their wondrous skill, but she also wanted to be one of them. To escape her life. Just like Akkarin had. To be honoured, venerated, loved – really, and not just in the superficial ways of Court. That was Cami's dream as she closed her eyes to sleep at night, the nursemaids tales ringing in her ears. And since she couldn't have any of it, it all took the form of spite, layered atop her longing, and it was like laying darkness over laughter. She loved her brother but she hated him too. For leaving her, for being a magician, for not seeing that she needed his help.

And so her hardness grew as a kind of self-preservation. By the time Cami's gift surfaced - not enough to be of interest to the Guild- the ugliness of other's minds found a fertile breeding ground when they crept in the door Cami had unwittingly opened for them. When she had decided that day of the royal hunt to spy on her siblings and use what she had heard against her brother, she was such a simmer of emotions that she was beyond extracting her true self from the cauldron of other's hates and fears and jealousies. Her mind was like chemicals, thrown together in an alembic: fear like a sulphur fog, bitterness as sharp as salt, and fickle mercury for failure and desperation.

And as he listened to her faltering confession, Akkarin understood it all; his own mind the swirl of liquid in an alembic, potent and boiling. He thought of the Ichani, of the Sachakan Wastes and the wars that created it; of the resentful conflict that it created. He thought of the mistrust engendered along the ages from one fearful tongue to the next, and recalled the ignorant superiority of his own people, blinded by fear of that which is different - the fear that had led to his own condemnation. He thought of the injustice, the waste, of judging a people by their poverty rather than by their merits, his own shame striking a barb as he recalled how he had once regarded all Dwells as nothing simply because they owned nothing. And, sharp as bite, the memories of slavery surfaced and pierced him; the immeasurable cruelty of one living being to another.

He thought of Kariko then. There were bad people in the world - no question, no excuses- and bad people do bad things. But good people do bad things also; Akkarin knew that now. He accepted it. He accepted himself.

Amongst these roiling thoughts and emotions one thing distilled and rose to the top, pure and unsullied by the poisons it had escaped below. Akkarin skimmed it from the rest and knew it as truth:

Some things could never be forgiven, but choosing not to meet hate with hate, that was the gift of redemption for the good should they choose to take it. And oh, oh, the sweet change that could unspool if they did.

His mind slipped to Sonea – a new beginning, for him, for her, and the future. No more fearful tongues keeping hate alive for them; their very togetherness was a testament to that. One small beginning in one small part of the world, but then weren't all beginnings once so – minute and seemingly insignificant? It was no excuse not to try; a lesson he had recently taught Merin, and now the King had ended the Purge.

And words whispered to him across the years, a distant echo from his past but which was the seed planted so long ago when his life was a misery of other men's making. But Her heart and been good -his first love's – and she had made her choice then in the midst of her torment and now, a lifetime later, he was fulfilling that choice for them both.

There are other ways to live. Yes; yes there were. Better ways.

Back in the moment, he slipped off the couch and knelt in front of his sister, taking her hands from Tobin and gripping them firmly in his. "Do you forgive me?" was all he said to her at last. Cami looked up sharply, keenly and the thankfulness and gratitude, bright in her eyes that met his own, was the only answer he needed.

"Maybe we should all leave the past behind us," Tobin offered as she leant forwards and gripped her siblings clasped hands together in hers. "Can we do that?"

Could they? The question seemed everything.

"That seems an excellent place for the past," said Akkarin after a moment's pause. "If you don't leave it there, it clutters everything up and you just keep tripping over it – trust me." Holding his sisters' eyes, he smiled softly, and they smiled back.

"Good, that's settled. Now," he said with a long intake of breath, "I believe you came to ask me something – what was it?"

Much later, sat in his study, Akkarin was musing over the requests his sisters had made, pulling absently on his lip as he wrestled with the answers he had given them. The decision to take up the invitation to dinner with Cami and Merin was made with only a heartbeat of hesitation. Sonea had yet to meet them, but Akkarin knew she would be given a genuinely warm welcome, and, with that in place, any other minor social awkwardness would be handled adeptly by Sonea – she had, after all, dealt with the bigots of the Guild for years now.

Cami's other invitation however...Akkarin shivered as a chill scraped down his spine. There had been no hesitation in the Black Magician's answer to that, and it was unequivocally in the negative. His dark brows drew together, casting his dark eyes into deeper blackness as he recalled his sister's plea, but he could not be persuaded and Tobin had gently placed her hand on Cami's arm in clear signal that she should accept his decision.

Had he made the right decision, he wondered. The Akkarin of old would have been unwaveringly sure of himself and this newfound uncertainty lapped uncomfortably in his stomach, right next to the butterflies that had been fluttering whenever he cast his mind back to that morning's revelation.

"Arghh!" he growled softly in his throat as he scraped his long fingers through his hair. He was about to request that Takan bring him some refreshment when he heard the soft click of the door below.

Finally; Sonea was back.

He pushed back from his desk and let his head roll back on his shoulders, easing the stiffness whilst silently communicating with Takan that he was not needed for the rest of the evening. The Sachakan servant, having witnessed Sonea's tension this morning at Akkarin's unusual absence, and now detecting the same underlying emotions in his master, wasted no time in exiting the residence to seek refuge in the new, comfortable quarters he had been given elsewhere. There was no such refuge for Akkarin.

Since his sisters had left some hours earlier, Akkarin had immersed himself in papers and documents that had demanded his attention in an attempt to quell the nervous anticipation that catapulted his stomach into his heart every time he thought of his wife. He hadn't been entirely successful, and waiting for Sonea to return from her studies at the university had dragged mercilessly.

He had left her sleeping that morning, not ready yet to face his discovery; not ready for her to face it. Sonea had queried his absence of course, sounding a little perturbed in her mental questioning of her husband as to why he had left the residence before breakfast. It was rare for him to do so, but not unprecedented and he had managed to bank down his turmoil and offer an innocent enough explanation.

But this was Sonea, and Akkarin was still one of the few not to underestimate her. He had detected the suspicion whispering insidiously beneath her mental communication. She too had tried to bury her feelings beyond the reach of her husband, but this was Akkarin, and not much escaped him when another's mind was opened to him.

When the sound of Sonea's light step on the stairwell never materialised, he sighed and knew the conversation could not be put off. Ususally, if Akkarin was still engrossed in work when she returned, Sonea would always hurry up to his study to greet him – and often successfully distract him – with a kiss...or two. The fact that she hadn't meant that Sonea's disquiet had probably grown throughout the day.

The conversation should not be put off anyway, Akkarin reminded himself severly, but he couldn't help the sigh that escaped his lips as he thought of how Sonea might take this news. She had been through so much in the last year. Her body had been through so much.

As he made his way downstairs, Akkarin also felt a worm of guilt; maybe she would blame him. They had been careful, making sure that one or the other of them made the necessary adjustments to the internal mechanics of their bodies to ensure this didn't happen, but there were one or two times when, well, events had overtaken them. One or two, or...a few, at the very most.

Maybe they both unconsciously wanted this. After the discovery of Sonea's first pregnancy only after it had ended, an idea had been planted; a hope for the future that had helped to fill the void the lost child – unknown about, unplanned, unwanted even, but theirs, theirs– had left in both of them. A hope that was more eager to grow than maybe either of them had admitted, not least to each other.

Did he want it? Akkarin had been avoiding that question all day. The Akkarin of not too long ago would have not hesitated in his response and the answer would have had no more than two letters in it, as implacable as his answer to Cami's second invitation earlier. But now...? Now...Now the answer was to be found more in Sonea than himself, and this was the root of his reluctance to share his knowledge. What if Sonea did not want this?

He entered the guestroom, which was dimly lit with a single globelight that flickered warmly to Sonea's will. She was bent over the hearth, stoking the freshly lit fire with a long poker. Akkarin saw her stiffen slightly as she became aware of his presence and the crackling logs suddenly hissed and snapped in annoyance at Sonea's increased fervour of ministrations. Akkarin watched her for a moment, unmoving, before gliding over to a low side table against a wall and pouring himself a glass of dark red liquid from a decanter. He then sat down patiently and waited for his wife to gather herself and face him.

Her hair, its earlier neat, thick braid now tufted and messy, glowed like a burnished halo of down around her head, the flames bringing out the deep red tones that so fascinated Akkarin who, like most Kyralians, had hair so dark that it only ever reflected a bluish tone of whiteness. The braid hung down in front of her and the smooth line of her neck was exposed. The flat plane of her cheek, just visible, was pink tinged, but not from the heat of the fire, Akkarin knew from experience.

As he took in her jerky movements with the poker, and the stiffness of her spine, Akkarin couldn't help a smile touching his lips. He also couldn't help the blossoming of a very real need to pull her onto his lap and embrace her, but it was an impulse he was able to resist for the moment - he'd had years of practise after all.

After an interminable time Sonea finally seemed happy with the flames she had coaxed in the hearth and she sat down on the opposite twin of the rich, velvet couch Akkarin sat on. Her eyes danced over him in that way they used to, touching every part of him except his own dark gaze. As the twin blooms of her cheeks deepened under his unwavering scrutiny and the light in her eyes glinted with deep-felt emotions, Akkarin's crooked smile widened in spite of himself and his butterfly-filled stomach. This was the Sonea he fell in love with – this woman, small but fierce – and this glimpse of her again, of her spirit still there, after everything, still lightened him beyond words each time he saw it.

Sonea's eyes slid to the wine glass in her husband's hand. "You could have got me one," she remarked in a clipped tone. "I've had alchemy all day, and Lord Halken was relentless. Which was good," she hastily added. "I hate it when they wrap me in swaddling cloths, but I am tired now. Anuren dark is just what I need," she concluded pointedly but her husband made no move to fulfil that need.

Indeed, Akkarin's brow furrowed momentarily at her implied request but she did not notice. She looked at him then directly and there was a challenge in her earth-brown eyes and it wasn't for him to fetch her a glass of wine. Akkarin looked across at the decanter on the table behind his fellow black magician, but instead of rising to oblige Sonea, he turned to the fire which was now crackling merrily in the hearth as if in mockery of the tension in the room.

"You could have just used your power," he stated matter-of-factly. Sonea frowned in annoyed confusion.

"What?" She snapped, in no mood for her husband's famous obtuseness.

"The fire," he said nonchalantly, nodding at the flames. "You didn't need to abuse the poker in such a way – that's there for Takan's benefit; you could have controlled the fire with your mind." Sonea's features were fixed in a state of confused incredulity but the evasive, irritating provocation of Akkarin's tongue was not done yet.

"In fact," he blundered on, "you should use your magic to conjure the flames; your mastery of fire will be part of your final warrior skills assessment."

"I...what are you...? My warrior skills assessment?" Sonea finally asked, her frown deepening as she shook her head in angry bewilderment.

"Yes. You should not be overly complacent. There are some warrior skills that you didn't use during the invasion – not many, I admit – but you should practise them at any opportunity." Akkarin's previous, fleeting joy in Sonea's spirit was gone now and the butterflies in his stomach were clammering chaotically, absurdly, out of his throat.

"Akkarin, what are you talking about?" Sonea demanded crossly as the tether of her patience snapped. "You are making no sense. You leave at dawn without waking me; you don't return for breakfast; your mental barriers have been so high all day that I doubt even one of Cery's best burglars could have scaled it, and now you are prattling on like Lord Jerrick with a timetabling issue to solve!" He stared at her for a long, drawn out moment, wide-eyed as the tirade burst out of her.

And then, the last of Akkarin's butterflies took wing in a whisper of a voice. "You're pregnant, " he said.

"You're hiding something. You're tense." Sonea continued, not catching his words and too embroiled in her own indignations to even care. "I thought there would be no more secrets between us," she concluded sadly and she hung her head, her anger abruptly gone and turned to fear.

Akkarin placed down his glass and stood up, moving to sit next to his wife. He took her small hands in his and caressed the palms tenderly with his thumbs. "Look at me, Sonea," he breathed, the timbre of his voice scraping low. When her eyes rose to meet his, the hurt in them pierced him as it always had. He hadn't handled this well – not at all. But then, he'd had no practise and he was running blind.

"I said - you're pregnant, Sonea. "

She blinked slowly and her face drained of the colour that only a moment before had stained it angry. Her dark eyes widened and, for an instant, there was disbelief and fear and uncertainty before all were suddenly eclipsed by something else. Akkarin watched her carefully, an infinitesimal pull to the side of his mouth as he saw the emotions play across her face and finally settle unmistakeably into joy.

"But how do you...how do you...?" She stammered.

"This morning," he interjected quietly; "I was..." he looked down at their entwined fingers, abashed. "I was reminding myself of my wife's body and I heard – felt- something; so, so faint but there, where it wasn't there before. I focused my magic and...well, there was no mistaking it – "his lingering doubts fled then and his lips peeled back to reveal his brilliant, beautiful smile –"a second, rapid heartbeat. You are carrying another life within you."

Sonea scrutinised his face, taking in that, oh so rare treasure of his full, full smile that took her breath away. Akkarin could play emotionless at will – no one better- but happiness? Unfettered joy? No, those he could not fake. But still, she couldn't help herself, her own uncertainties finding an echo in her question. "You are ... you are ...happy, aren't you?" She asked tentatively at last.

Akkarin didn't answer her with words. Instead he pulled her into a tight embrace, clasping her head to his shoulder, his lips pressed to the crown of her hair, and he opened his mind to hers and his heart poured out. They sat like that, enveloped in their joy and their hearts and minds raced. You learn what you want when you have lost something. Akkarin and Sonea had both discovered that lesson over the last months, and they both wanted the same thing, and so they both eased with relish into the idea of them being a family, their initial fears pushed aside.

After a while, Sonea pulled back and stared up into Akkarin's face and, though she was brimming with wonder, her eyes suddenly narrowed. "So, you've known all day and didn't tell me? Why? Why didn't you wake me and tell?" There was no bitterness, nothing accusatory in her question, only the merest hint of regret that he borne it alone these past hours.

"I...I was scared. I am scared: for you, because of what happened before and the challenges your injuries have left you with. I know Vinara said there are things the Healers can do to help you carry a child as it grows, but..." his voice trailed off. "I didn't know what to think, " he murmured," except that, that a promise had been fulfilled." Sonea looked at him quizzically and she tilted her head.

"Lorlen. " Akkarin stated in answer, his voice soft with sadness. "I made a promise to him as he lay dying; to live for both of us - the lives we should have allowed ourselves but for our skewed sense of ambition and duty. To love and be loved ,and for that to be enough. To have children... I went to his grave to tell him ... to tell him...Forgive me, Sonea, I was scared. I was scared." Akkarin choked off as a muted sob escaped his throat and he covered his face with his hands. Sonea's own eyes brimmed with tears and her heart twisted inside her as she saw his pain, his guilt tangle hopelessly with his joy. She pulled him to her and she stroked her fingers slowly down his back.

"Of course I forgive you. Always. " When she felt him soothed and they sat there awhile, quiet and contented in the flickering firelight, she asked:

"Are you sure I'm pregnant? I've been trying to hear for myself as we've sat here, but I can detect nothing and, and I don't feel any different. I don't feel pregnant."

He smiled again. "Not all women suffer those early signs of pregnancy, Sonea, and I think the heart only started beating recently, otherwise I would have heard it before; you must only be about six weeks along."

Abruptly then, Akkarin straightened and disentangled himself from her embrace. "May I?" he asked as his fingers went to the sash of her black, silk robes. Sonea inclined her head and her husband loosened the silk belt and gently parted the garment beneath. "Here," he said as he guided her hand to rest on the warm skin below her naval, placing his own lightly on top. Sonea's brow creased in momentary concentration as she struggled to focus her magic on anything other than the hammering of her own heart. But then, her eyes flared wide and her lips parted before curling into a shy, amazed smile.

"Oh," was all she could manage and Akkarin laughed.

"Oh, indeed!"

"But how...?"

Akkarin leaned in to kiss Sonea lightly on the lips. "How?" he breathed against the softness of her mouth and she felt the amused upwards curve of his lips. "Shall I show you how, Black Magician Sonea?" His hands slipped from hers and were heavy on her skin, gliding beneath her robes over the flare of her hips to encircle her waist. Her flesh was hot velvet and trembling under his touch and his intense gaze asked a question with its almost unbearable tenderness.

With a merest tilt of her body, she answered him. Without another word, Akkarin lifted Sonea and carried her up the ebony stairs of their residence as though she were made of silk and air, and he willed the door of the bedroom shut behind them. For the moment, there was still just them, and Akkarin…..well Akkarin did what all sensible prospective first time parents should do - he intended to make the most of their solitude.

A/N: Hi there. This is the last-but-one chapter. The next will definitely be the end. Sonea will meet Tobin - and Akkarin's parents! Akkarin and Sonea argue and Akkarin meets someone he will love more than Sonea, if that's possible. Thanks to all my reviewers - it's a simple kind of joy for me atm and I'm grateful. x