Fire & Water
Ashe: Book Two
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Chapter Twenty-Four
In common with most lovers, each of them shared a wish to shield the other from the worst. Just as Ashe kept from Betany the strange dreamscape in which she’d encountered Ardan and Rhea, and her second death at the hands of Alexis (was it only her second? it felt like more.), so Betany kept from Ashe the full details of Rhea’s leaving Caer Arianrhod. But Betany need not have worried. Since meeting with Ardan in the dreamscape, Ashe’s liking for Rhea had died.
It had been Rhea’s finest hour when she defied the Elders of the Lammoran court and supported the queen’s choice of consort. That glittering moment of defiance had earned her a lifetime of respect (within the Lammoran court) and had won her the tower as her permanent home. The realisation that Ashe would be not be selected by the princess to be Laure’s consort had come clearly to Rhea, but it been one of her last moments of second sight. The wise woman only realised what was intended by Calypso and Alexis when they arrived at her door and entered the tower room. Strong and remarkable as Alexis’s powers then were, she could not have overcome Rhea so easily had the wise woman’s powers not begun to crumble.
Just as Betany kept her secret, so Ashe refrained from mentioning that Alexis had killed her (again). It was the one piece of information that would have had Alexis ejected from Caer Arianrhod in seconds flat. And in bits.
As Rhea left Caer Arianrhod, and heard the city’s gates slam shut behind her, she told herself that all were all idiots and simpletons within. So far as she cared (and she told herself that she did not care at all), the entire population of Caer Arianrhod could live or die without it mattering one jot to her. She had already dismissed all memory of Ardan, and had no thought at all for the karg left howling and bloody in its cell.
*****
Miles from Caer Arianrhod, the wise-woman shook her staff at the moon above her, and tried to follow the track that shone in the bright white light. The words that she spewed forth dropped upon the night like clods of earth, and were as dull and stupid as the expression on her face. Without knowing that she had done so, Rhea had just stumbled onto an unrelenting and final path.
Long before they met in the dreamscape Rhea was already furious with Ashe. She was furious with Ashe for being a Guardian. Why hadn’t she seen as much? And why hadn’t Ashe known? How the hell had she failed to recognise Ashe’s potential? Rhea had been well educated: she knew all about the Guardians. How then had she missed recognising one when it was paraded before her? When she heard about the destruction of Laure’s newly-built palace and of her probable death, she felt cold fury. How could she have failed to foretell that? “They’ll soon be saying that I’ve lost my powers,” she thought, missing, incredibly, the void that had opened up within her; an sudden ignorance and a cold space.
Rhea could not tell if Laure was dead or not. In all that rubble and mess it would surely have been hard to tell. That acerbic, beautiful, self-obsessed egomaniac dead? It made no sense. Rhea imagined a white and silky hand, a hand that had never done a day’s work, sticking up from beneath the dusty bricks. Rhea chuckled at the image. Soon she was screaming her laughter into the night.
Her feet struck hard on the beaten path, and Rhea winced, her amusement gone. It was not fitting that a wise-woman should be forced to leave the court on foot. A real essay in ignominy. Not fitting at all. Perhaps it was as well that Ashe had settled for someone as unimaginative as the ruler of Caer Arianrhod. Perhaps Ashe was not in fact a Guardian at all, just a fool with ridiculous aspirations. Oh, but it was hard to bear dismissal. As the city’s gates had been drawn back for her to make her exit, Rhea had spat on the ground in contempt. A young guard, witnessing the insult, had very nearly spat back, filling her mouth with saliva before thinking better of it. It was as well: her aim was much better than Rhea’s.
While she had never anticipated miracles, Betany had hoped that Rhea’s skills would save Gowdie. But they had not. On her arrival in Caer Arianrhod Rhea was at first kindly, and helpful, and very welcome, but as the days became weeks and wore on, it seemed to most of the court that the woman was along for nothing but the ride. She was becoming indifferent toward Gowdie, and although she still treated Betany with all civility, the castle inhabitants began to grow uneasy at Rhea’s strange and changing moods.
So what if Rhea had once defied the Elders of Lammor? In those days it would have taken an earthquake to stop her. Back then she’d been a primal force, tearing up the countryside and drawing people to her like salmon to the sea. She’d had the young captain as an admirer - Cairo who’d hero-worshipped her, and who had brought Ashe to meet her - she had befriended them both. Hell, she’d made them what they were! Rhea’s feet were bitten by the hard ground beneath them and she shook her fist at the shadows. She could - she guessed - have had the young captain as a lover, should she ever have wanted such a thing. Wouldn’t that have knocked Ashe over backwards, if Rhea had taken Cairo to bed?
While the court discussed - in private - Rhea’s changing behaviour, Betany had obligations to meet. Every day she put on her role as queen and ruled Caer Arianrhod as best she could. She was kind and patient even when kindness and patience had to be forced under glass, but she was becoming tired of Rhea.
Becoming tired? It was true: she had invested too much hope and belief in Rhea’s abilities. Betany would have coped so much better had Rhea simply come to her to say that she was sorry: she could not heal Gowdie. As it was, while the moon got full and fat again, Gowdie spent more time as karg than woman, and Betany thought that she could read a message in the karg’s bright eyes: decide for me, sister. The decision was no longer over whether Gowdie should stay woman or karg. Now the decision was over to live or die. Rhea’s potions all had failed, and Gowdie was lost.
It had been a hard time for Betany. Gowdie was lost, the baby was making itself felt and there had been no word from Ashe. She could only hope that Alexis had found her and was keeping her safe. In the late stages of pregnancy, Betany found that she could not sleep. Some nights she gave up the unequal struggle, got up and wandered the corridors of Caer Arianrhod. These white nights were generally known, and there was much gossip among the castle occupants who had, to a woman, come to distrust Rhea. The wise woman had not healed Gowdie, and now she was failing to help their queen. Betany’s closest staff wished fervently that Rhea would go back to the mess that was Lammor.
Had Ashe been resident within Caer Arianrhod, she would have been the first to see how much her former associate had altered. Content once to be the rebellious one of the Lammoran court, the wise woman had grown callous, and there was no doubt amongst the palace guard, whose duty and love to Betany was bone-deep, and who saw most of Rhea, that the wise-woman was becoming unhinged. Rhea had become isolated and her behaviour bizarre, withdrawing from the slightest attempt at conversation, and muttering to herself. Her laughter often echoed up from the cells, and the sound chilled the blood of anyone within earshot. But Betany could not dismiss the woman simply because she had failed to heal Gowdie. Rhea was her guest, and the queen’s manners were as reliable as her rule. But even Betany could be pushed too far.
It had all happened one ordinary night when Betany had walked - as silently as ever - along the corridor that led to Gowdie’s cell. That night the karg was in the ascendant, uttering little, painful growls, and Betany stopped dead - appalled - at the sight before her. Rhea, cackling like a maddened hen, was teasing the karg by pressing against the bars scraps of raw meat, taken from the kitchens. The karg, scenting blood, was throwing itself against the unyielding bars again and again, becoming raw itself.
The sound had cantered down the corridor on either side of the cell, and one of the night guard came running in. Rhea’s mad giggling was become manic when Betany reached out to seize Rhea by the throat and slipped. But for the guard, who dropped her spear and simply ran, she would have fallen. Betany was mute with rage and horror, and the young guard would remember for the rest of her life those three faces: the blunt and bleeding muzzle of the karg with its pain-filled eyes; the hectic, flushed and exultant grin on the wise-woman’s face and the ice-cold fury and disgust on the face of Caer Arianrhod’s ruler.
From then on, it was all over bar the cheering. Rhea was taken directly to the city’s gates and flung outside, escorted by the newly-promoted soldier who had caught up Betany when she fell. Betany herself had applied a healing balm to the karg’s cuts, and, superficially, Rhea was nothing but a bad memory by the following day. The evil impression of the wise woman seemed to linger, however, in the depths of the castle.
*****
It was coming on for night as Alexis and Ashe made their way up the final incline and came out onto the top of the track to look across at Caer Arianrhod as it stood fine and glowing in the last of the sunset’s touch. Another five miles and they would be home. Neither paused for breath as they began the march toward the city gates, but then the night turned bitterly cold, and the wind, which had been negligible all day, opened its jaws and roared.
Ashe felt the assault of the wind like a personal attack. Her cloak was gone in an instant, the fabric fortunately ripping free of her throat before it could strangle her. She bent her head and ploughed on, horribly resolute. Alexis, for her part, reached for her sword, as if the wind was an enemy she could fight. No, she thought, we will not fail now. I don’t care if it kills me: I will get us both home. It was the very first time that she had ever thought of Caer Arianrhod in quite such terms, and the knowledge was both surprising and comforting. “Keep going, Ashe,” she shouted, though the wind tried to tear the words away before they could reach her companion.
The trees in the distance were being bent almost to the ground by the force of the growing gale, and they were both suddenly afraid. Ashe grabbed Alexis by the arm and shouted, “This is magic. It’s not natural.”
No, thought Alexis, this is not natural. Neither was it simply loud: the two of them were tugged and torn by the wind as it buffeted them both. Ashe spat out a number of curses, all of which were snatched from her lips. “I won’t be stopped,” she roared into the night. “This is my home now and we are going to reach the gates alive and today.”
Alexis watched as something strange and specific began to happen. She saw - the last light of the day fading fast - the wind funnel down until it had narrowed into a ragged shape that crashed down from the sky, a wind wolf, all teeth and claws, hair whipped back, clothes crackling like rags on fire. And she saw Ashe move to meet this new enemy.
Ashe was terribly tired: the past weeks were like weights that held her down, and she needed to lift above the normal world to meet the thing that came at her, its eyes burning, its talons reaching for her eyes. The thought that if she fell now, she would never see Betany again, was the kick she needed to fight. Her tiredness was instantly gone, her thoughts cold and clear. The Guardian in Ashe took possession of her then and Alexis stared in wonder as her companion grew in stature until she stood as tall and broad as the wind wolf. She saw the moonlight strike off the blade of Ashe’s sword, and she reached quickly for her own.
The wind wolf felt like ice when it touched Ashe, and she shivered. The beast was by itself nothing, but Ashe understood it to be the minion of some other power. She knew, too, that if it overwhelmed her even for a moment, she was lost. The anger she needed to face it came from her love for Betany and the still-burning wound that was the loss of Calliope. The force that she used to beat back the beast, even as it clawed at her, cutting her clothes and skin, was a cold, furious anger. She had been going for too long to give up, and that knowledge fuelled her retaliation: the sword that she held, two-handed, crossed through the beast’s fluctuating shape and made it scream.
They rounded on one another, the flickering, hateful beast that kept clawing at her and Ashe, bleeding and shaking with revulsion at that horrible contact. Alexis tried, over and over again, to move closer to the fight, but some aspect of the wind beast wrapped round her like a leathern tendril and threw her back. Struggle as she might, she could get no closer to the fighting.
Ashe fought on, spinning round now as the beast wrapped its tail around her and hauled her close. She looked into eyes of ice and saw nothing even remotely reasoning within. More and more she accepted that what she fought was ultimately unkillable for the simple reason that it did not live; she struggled against nothing more than the extension of an enemy’s mind. That thought, fleeting as it was, provoked an action that she had not expected. Ashe followed the memory of a fairy tale, shut her eyes tight and let her sword-arm relax.
Alexis had finally broken free of the tendril and was moving in, able to see Ashe’s face for the first time. When she saw that Ashe’s eyes were shut she had one strange instant of wondering if they were sharing a very bad dream, and then she understood. In silent appreciation of the move, although she wasn’t entirely sure that it would work, she too relaxed, let her sword arm drop, and forced herself to regard nothing more demanding than the ground beneath her feet.
For an instant Ashe thought that she had chosen the wrong path, and had time to wonder if she would have the words “blatant stupidity” written across her tombstone, before the wind dropped. The sting of the myriad of cuts the beast had inflicted upon Ashe suddenly sang out in agony, and she had to bite her lip so as not to cry. But she could sense that the beast was going, and that concentrated her thoughts away from her own wounds.
She opened her eyes and looked up as the wind beast began to fade away into the night sky. As the substance of the beast became transparent, Ashe saw for an instant what lay behind it, and she shuddered. She saw the beast for one moment longer, as it stretched across the sky, its eyes entirely blind and its mouth open and empty. As it faded from view she saw a distant star flicker and go out. She stood in silence for another moment and then looked toward Alexis. She even managed a very pale smile at the former captain.
Alexis was not going to ask what it was that had just attacked them. She might want to know almost desperately, but she could sense that Ashe needed time. She bent down and picked up Ashe’s cloak and handed it to her. “Enough fun for me for one evening,” she said, lightly as she could. “Let’s go home.”
Ashe nodded and smiled back and accepted the remains of her cloak with silent gratitude, but she did not put it on. She looked toward Caer Arianrhod and for a single moment wondered if it would not be better if she was to send Alexis on in her place. The Red Temple was still out there, still waiting, and the wind beast would have a thousand siblings if it had one. There were so many things to do before she could settle - if settling was even an option - and she knew that whatever it was that had just chased them would not be kept out by the walls of Caer Arianrhod alone. It was hard to know what to do, hard to want so badly to see Betany again. She said to Alexis, “You know that whatever it is that just came after us isn’t really gone, don’t you? It will return. The inhabitants of the Red Temple will come for us unless we take the battle to them.”
“I should hope not.” Alexis looked sensible and certain. “And wherever you go and whatever you do, Ashe, things and people will try to kill you, or at the very least, attempt to maim and maul you. But you can’t let that stop you. You can’t let a little thing like that stand in your way. And of course, I’ll be by your side. If you want me, that is.”
For one short, blind moment Ashe stared at Alexis, and then she smiled. The Alexis who grinned back at her was a lifetime away from the woman she had fought with. “Of course I do.”
They walked on, wholly at ease with each other for the first time. Alexis felt the beginning of affection for the woman she had only really tolerated before. She might have respected Betany, but she had doubted the woman’s choice of partner until then. As they moved toward Caer Arianrhod Alexis felt a wash of something like pain in her heart as the memory of Calypso was ousted by the beginning of a soldier’s love for Ashe. Before that day Alexis would have fought and died for Betany, but from that time onwards, she knew she was willing to die for Ashe, too. The knowledge was strange and wholly unexpected, and oddly… comforting.
*****
The remains of the wind wolf had been torn into clouds, and the sky was settled again. Deep in sleep, deep in dreams, Rhea had witnessed the battle and its conclusion. As the fragments of the wind wolf dissipated Rhea sighed deeply but failed to shake herself awake. While her snores cracked the silence , and the figure who watched her from a distance nodded, and smiled, but let her dream.
*****
Clean and scrubbed. That was how Ashe should have presented herself to her queen. But there was no time. For the last miles of their journey back to Caer Arianrhod Alexis - herself a soldier of many years’ standing and surely used to such things - had had to work hard to match Ashe’s pace.
Inside Ashe’s head everything was falling into place. It had been madness to leave Caer Arianrhod at all, so why had she? It had taken so much time for Ashe to realise that she’d been waiting for things to go hugely wrong. She’d waited for Betany to tire of her, or to start to treat her with more confidence than affection, and when the feared change had not come, she had decided to pre-empt it. Now she understood exactly how things stood, and Alexis had to shout for the city’s gates to be opened before Ashe simply knocked them down.
Betany had woken to the knowledge that the child would arrive that day, and she was - for one of the few times in her life - afraid. Rhea was gone, Gowdie was still in the dungeons but becoming calmer. The madness that had invested her with the inability to control changes to karg and back was at last fading. Rhea had - unwittingly - broken the spell. Even while Gowdie lay exhausted seven floors below Betany’s chamber, her mind was clear again. The madness had slipped from Gowdie’s being into Rhea’s, exacerbating the insanity already in possession. Now the two psychoses sniffed around each other, hissing like cats in order to scare the other, the two of them rattling around inside Rhea’s maze of a mind like dried corn in a discarded cob.
Betany stood by the window of her room and looked out onto the courtyard. She saw movement there, and looked down at Alexis. Alexis glanced up at that same moment, dirty and tired beyond belief, but cheerful. And if Alexis could smile like that, then - the door opened and there stood Ashe.
There was a moment out of time in which they simply stared at one another, the regal figure of Betany and the much-abused form of Ashe. Then Betany moved toward her and Ashe was already there, her arms around Betany, holding her close. Betany felt the softness of Ashe’s hair as it fell across her face. Ashe inhaled Betany’s own scent, as clean and welcoming as summer. She kissed Betany’s throat before kissing her lips, and then she said, “I’m so sorry that I left you.”
It was the one thing that had kept Betany awake nights. She’d done all she could to make leaving easy for Ashe, without understanding why she wanted to do so.
They moved together across the room and sat down on the edge of the bed. Ashe looked down at her unwashed state and her awful boots, now heavy with mud, and said, “There’s something I need to say.”
Betany watched her, almost afraid, almost happy, but suddenly frightened. Then she looked at Ashe’s face, dirty with mud and blood and saw there such an expression of tenderness that she almost forgot how to breathe. “I never much cared to be in the world until I met Calypso and then I found you. Even the worst parts of this world are made better for me because of you. If you still want me (and don’t say anything yet, because I may well have ruined things, and I think I have begun a war that may outlast us both), then I promise you this: no matter what happens, or how far apart we may be, I will always come back to you. I will stand beside you in battle and, if you will have me, for the rest of our lives. There will never be anyone else in the world for me.” And then she slid off the bed to kneel before Betany, and kissed her hands.
It was hard for Betany: she couldn’t throw her arms around Ashe and keep her held there until lack of breath collapsed them both, and she didn’t want to cry. So she simply held on to as much of Ashe as she could reach, and kissed her. For the rest of our lives, she thought. For the rest of our lives.
*****
Betany had known there would be pain, and there was pain, but somehow it didn’t matter very much any more. Ashe was with her when the labour began and Ashe remained with her until the baby was born. Alexis looked in on them both, and proved to be as handy in her own way as Rhea might have been hoped to be. Something of Alexis’s powers, faded and distant as they were, returned to her for that one night, while the full moon shone outside, and the distant river looked like silver. Even while she worked Alexis was aware that her skills had been simply borrowed from the world, but Ashe looked at her with such kindness and trust that she found herself not caring so very much.
At some time after three, in the early morning, when the moon was almost out of sight, only hours after Ashe and Alexis had reached the gates of Caer Arianrhod and been welcomed inside, the baby was born.
Ashe was aware that there were emotions she should be feeling, worry about the Red Temple and whether war would follow, and anger and disgust at Rhea. But at that moment all she could feel was happiness. There would be time for news, and time to plan out whatever campaign would be needed, but that time would have to wait.
She was aware of an exhaustion so profound it mimicked death. She knew too that soon she would have to sleep, but for the moment it was enough to lie beside Betany on the broad, comfortable bed, and stare in fascination at their daughter. Soon Betany would ask about Ashe’s travels, but that too could wait. And for Alexis too the night held everything she needed. Exhausted, she let Betany and Ashe throw her out - very gently - so that she might bathe and sleep and eat. Saluting them both, and with real affection, she was on her way out of the room when a stray thought struck her. She looked with curiosity at Betany and Ashe and said, “She’s quite beautiful.”
It was only part of what she wanted to ask, but Ashe saved her that trouble by saying: “She won’t be a Guardian. There’s no other-worldly inheritance that I know of resting on her shoulders. She’ll grow up and grow old just as everyone else does.” Me excepted, she thought, but did not add. Alexis saw relief in Betany’s face. Enough - she thought - to have one Guardian in the family. Alexis, too, was happy that Ashe’s daughter would live out her life without any greater burden than that of having two adoring parents. While such abilities as the skill to fight and conquer wind demons were undoubtedly a bonus, they didn’t seem to bring Ashe much pleasure that Alexis could see.
“She is very beautiful,” said Betany, as if she had only just noticed as much. “And her name is Callie.” Ashe felt her eyes fill with tears, and had to look away. But the name was perfect: she wouldn’t have changed it for the world.
“Go and rest now. There’s a room waiting for you and the deepest, hottest bath you can imagine. Come back and see us again when you’re washed, fed and rested.” Ashe closed her own eyes, she was fighting sleep.
The image of such a room after the last few days seemed almost erotic to Alexis. She stretched until her spine crackled, and turned toward the door.
“Oh, Alexis?” Betany glanced up and smiled. “When you have rested and recovered yourself, perhaps you would be good enough to assume your new role as the new captain of the palace guard.” She grinned at the look of surprised delight on Alexis’s face. “Sleep well.”
“And you, both, too.” Alexis’s delight was almost tangible. This time she made it out of the door.
Alone and quiet, Ashe said, “It’s a good name. It’s the only name.”
*****
“You know that Rhea’s gone?”
Ashe was lying on her back on the broad wooden bed, with Callie asleep on her bare stomach. Ashe’s face wore an expression of simple and beatific enchantment: she had never had much time in which to imagine their child, and now that Callie was in the world, she couldn’t stop looking at her or touching her. Seeing the pleasure shift when Rhea’s name entered the room made Betany wish she’d kept her mouth shut.
“ I assumed she had, ” said Ashe, “ but I hadn ’ t given it much thought. ” She began to tell the queen something of the strange dream set in that white city surrounded by sand. “I don’t know exactly why it happened, but I do know about Ardan. Betany, I ’ m so sorry. ”
“ How could you know … ? ” But the words seemed ridiculous the moment they were out.
Ashe shook her head. “Ah, I’m not psychic, love; I just get odd dreams. ” And few odder than that one. “ I ’ m sorry about Ardan. Really sorry. She and I never really knew one another in this world, but we may have established some kind of connection elsewhere. Maybe I’ll see her there again.”
Callie bubbled sounds and Ashe reached out to support the tiny, shifting shape. The child ’ s warmth amazed her, but it was more the observation of the infinitely fine details that stopped Ashe in her tracks. How could something so utterly vulnerable command such attention? She and Cairo had talked on that subject, a thousand years ago when one was a captain and the other a companion, and the world of Betany and Caer Arianrhod wasn ’ t even a dream.
Betany watched the two of them and felt a wash of relief at their very obvious happiness. She wanted to tell Ashe all about Rhea, but was afraid of poisoning Ashe ’ s homecoming, when Ashe raised her head and said, “I’m not sorry that Rhea’s gone, but I wonder if she knew about the Red Temple. It’s a nightmare that I seem to have begun. It will make our lives very difficult.”
“It sounds like someone had to. It’s a horrible place. It should be destroyed.”
Then Ashe said, “ I ’ m going to end up back there, sooner or later. The thought chilled her. “ But don ’ t worry: you and Callie have nothing to worry about. I won ’ t let anything hurt either of you. ”
“ If you must go again, then take me with you. Take an army. Just please don ’ t go off alone. “
“ It ’ s not something I want to do. ” Ashe stroked Callie ’ s head, and the infinitely soft hair that grew there. “ It ’ s not what I want. If I had my way, I ’ d stay here with you and Callie until we all get old and die. She took a deep breath. “ But I don ’ t believe that the world is going to allow me that kind of wish. ”
It was one of those moments - and they would always be few - when Ashe admitted her own history. They looked at one another squarely and Betany thought: she ’ s not the same Ashe who left here hand-in-hand with Gowdie; she ’ s changed. When I first knew her it was Calliope and Ashe and me. Back then she was still becoming Ashe. Now she ’ s becoming what she was meant to be. A Guardian. And the insane thing is that she doesn ’ t always know. How can she not know? Why can ’ t she just be an ordinary person that I can love and keep here with me? There hasn ’ t been enough easy, ordinary life between us. I wonder how much Ashe ’ s world will let us have.
Evidently reading Betany ’ s mind was another of Ashe ’ s new skills, for as she shifted on the bed to make Callie even more comfortable, she said, “I’m sorry, love, that there hasn’t been much of a normal time between us. We kind of went straight into the deep water, didn ’ t we? No splashing around in the shallow end. Just straight in and swim or drown. ”
Betany smiled. “ I don ’ t mind that, ” she said. “ And you know how I like to swim. ” But it was a lightly spoken response and they both knew that it addressed nothing more than the superficial. Callie woke hungry and Betany began to unlace her dress. Ashe arranged a stack of cushions at the head of the bed and helped Betany settle herself, watched Callie nuzzle and gurgle and smile. She had an instant of that moment in the Red Temple when she had looked down and seen the demons. Unthinkable that that should have existed at all, but unmentionable when she tried to imagine that world continuing in tandem with life in Caer Arianrhod.
Ashe stretched out on the bed beside them, put her arms beneath her head and listened to the soft sounds of Callie feeding. The sound lulled her, and Ashe closed her eyes. Even before the lids were fully closed she felt herself being lifted out of the moment, and back into the dreamscape. She didn’t want to go there again, and tried to step up out of sleep. But she was not quick enough. Another moment and she was back in that strange city, the dusty air blowing around her and the sun a bright white overhead.
Betany stroked Ashe’s fringe out of her eyes and kissed her very gently. “Here it all begins,” she whispered. Callie. What other name could their daughter possibly have? Betany stroked the top of Callie’s head and smiled, at last no longer lonely. She heard the deep sigh that meant that Ashe was sleeping. She said, “I love you,” but very softly. Ashe was in a state of exhausted slumber, and Betany would rather have died than disturb her. It was one of their few quiet moments, and she wanted it to last.
*****
This ends Fire and Water - Ashe: Book Two.
Check out my site for Book Three of the Ashe Series