Into Darkness

81

Richard walked into a beautiful room decorated with cream-colored curtains with a textured pattern and white frame and panel walls. The reflector lamps mounted on the walls were all silver, but none were lit. The carpets were leaf patterns in various shades of off-white. It wasn’t a large room, considering the size of the palace, but it looked special. The bed had four posts draped over the top with a white, filmy material that hung down on each side near the headboard. Through the open window Richard could hear birds chirping outside. In the distance the looming Keep looked down over them, a dark protector of the Confessors.

From that bed, Kahlan’s green eyes were locked on him from the moment he walked through the doorway.

His heart hammered as he stared at her.

She was so beautiful he felt tears well up in his eyes.

In each arm, she held a bundle. He could just see the tops of the babies’ heads.

“Are you all right?” he asked in a hushed tone, feeling stupid because he couldn’t think of anything better to say.

“Now that I see you, everything is good,” she said in a soft voice. “Everyone was so worried. But I knew that you would find a way to come back to me.”

“I’m sorry it took me so long. I wanted to be here when the babies came. But I—”

She was still smiling. “You are back with me now. That’s all that matters to me.”

“You don’t have to worry about the Glee coming after us ever again. No one in our world ever has to fear them again.”

“The Golden Goddess is not the new golden age, then?” she asked.

Richard shook his head. “No. A golden ring helped me get back to you and make our children safe. That golden ring is with us, now, here in our world. I think that is what it really meant when I promised you the beginning of a new golden age. That’s where that promise really comes from. I wanted you to know. It’s nothing else, nothing bad.”

She nodded against the pillow she was propped up on. “One day you can tell me about your crazy adventure, but right now, come and meet our children.”

At long last, Richard carefully stepped to the edge of the bed, close to her. He didn’t think he had ever felt more nervous and expectant all at once.

Kahlan smiled with bliss, with tranquility, and in weariness. It somehow calmed him. Her green eyes calmed him.

“Lord Rahl, I would like you to meet your children.” She lifted the one in her left arm, on the other side of her from Richard, out a little. “This is your daughter, Cara Amnell.”

He stared in wonder a moment at his sleeping daughter.

Kahlan looked down as she lifted the other one, asleep in the crook of her right arm, out a little. “And this is your son, Zeddicus Rahl.”

Richard stared at his son a moment, then bent and gently kissed the top of his head, then leaned farther and kissed the forehead of his daughter.

At last, he finally kissed Kahlan, making everything he had been through melt into nothing.

He straightened as he smiled down at her. “Their names are perfect. They are perfect. You are perfect.”

Both babies reached a tiny hand out, then. They looked almost like they were searching for each other’s hands. Using her fingers on the bundles she held, Kahlan gently smoothed their hands back inside the blankets.

She smiled her special smile at Richard as her eyes closed.

Shale came up behind him and took his arm to urge him back.

“She needs to rest, now,” the sorceress whispered. “You can talk to her again after she gets some much-needed sleep.”

Richard didn’t want to leave, but he wanted all three to rest.