After the Evening Bells

11

"I have something I have to tell you," she said to him when they were outside the town walls.

He looked her over. His eyes were bloodshot and his mouth seemed to be bent into the slightest of frowns. "I have something to tell you too."

"Please. You first," she said. She wanted to delay her telling as long as she could. Little did she know that, as a result, she would never tell him.

There would be three times in her life that Kellah would receive what she considered "terrible news." The first of these was when, as a child, her father told her and Farek that their mother had left and was never returning. This night was the second of the three. The third and final instance would be some years later when her midwife would inform her that her daughter, her second child, was stillborn. Of the three occasions, this second with Haman was the only of the three where Kellah did not cry. One might take this as evidence that it was the least of the three, but in fact, it was the opposite. She was shocked beyond tears, hurt beyond her body's ability to respond. She had been too young to truly understand what her mother's departure meant; her dead daughter had been inside her a mere seven months when she passed. Haman, she had wanted all her life.

It was his father who'd arranged it, he said. He didn't want this. Yet the marriage pact had been made and now he was promised to another.

She told him she didn't understand. What was he talking about? Their fathers were best friends, and had always informally agreed they'd be married.

"Your father is the one who encouraged my father."

"You're lying," she said. "He would never... why?" Her hands were shaking.

"The soldiers are leaving. Business will be slower. My family will be able to make use of a large dowry."

Dowry. That's when she knew it was true. This was something her father, ever the pragmatist, would encourage.

And then something dawned on her. "Is it... is it... Melandrah?" She tried to be brave, told herself that she would be able to bear this terrible news—despite the predicament she now found herself in, despite the baby growing in her womb—so long as it wasn't Melandrah.

"No. It isn't," he said.

She was relieved. And yet the look on his face suggested that she shouldn't be.

"Then who?" she said.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't want this."