18. Almost Unmade #3
They didn't hesitate. The midwives scrambled for the door, dragging their unconscious companions with them. Even the guards outside stumbled backward, refusing to meet his gaze as the women fled past them into the corridor.
The door hung crooked on its broken hinges. Rain blew in from the hall, mixing with the blood and water on the floor.
Kalemon appeared in the doorway, eyes wide. She took in the scene, the carnage, Malec standing in the center of it all with magic still crackling across his trembling hands. She moved cautiously, circling around him like he was a wild animal, keeping her movements slow and deliberate.
She reached the bed and immediately put her hands on Allora, checking her pulse, her breathing.
Malec's head snapped toward her. "Get away from her. NOW."
"She's my healer!" Allora's voice cut through the tension, raw and desperate. "I need her!"
Malec froze. His glowing eyes locked on Allora's face, seeing her truly for the first time since entering. The blue light shuddered, wavering.
He shook his head violently, like a dog shaking off water, trying to clear the rage. His breathing came in harsh pants, chest heaving. The magic across his hands sputtered and died.
Then he really looked at her.
Bloody. Sweaty. Hurting. Her eyes glazed with pain and exhaustion. Her body trembling. So vulnerable it stripped him of everything he'd built to keep himself together.
He rushed to her side, dropping to his knees beside the bed.
Allora flinched violently, her body recoiling even as a contraction seized her. Terror flashed across her face, raw and undisguised.
Malec recoiled as if she'd struck him. The look in her eyes, that fear, it cut deeper than any wound ever had.
His hands shook as he yanked off his coat, fingers fumbling with the buckles.
He tore off his gloves next, tossing them aside.
His bare hands hovered over her, not quite touching, as his eyes raked over her body with desperate intensity.
Looking for injuries, for what was broken. And trying his best to fix her.
Blood streaked her thighs. Her belly swollen beneath the thin sheet. Sweat and tears mixed on her face.
Allora's eyes cracked open, black and glossy with pain, and found his.
The tether wrenched inside him, searing and inescapable, and her pain arrived through it all at once, flooding him like fire through dry kindling.
"No... no, you can't be here!" Her voice broke under the strain, raw and desperate. "You'll kill it!"
The words cut him, but Malec didn't falter. He was already at her side, his knees sinking into the blood-soaked rushes, his hands braced against the edge of the bed as he reached for her trembling fingers. They were slick, hot, shaking in his grip.
"I would never harm you," he said, his voice eerily calm, too calm, like the quiet before a knife cut through flesh. His light ochre drank her in, tracing every line of pain on her face, the sweat shining on her brow, the wild curls clinging to her temples.
Through the haze of pain, a desperate thought clawed at her: Tell him. Tell him it's his!
But he wouldn't believe her. Awyans and Canariae couldn't have children together.
Everyone knew that. It was impossible. And even if she swore it and begged him to believe her, she could see the madness burning in his eyes.
He would think she was lying, trying to save the child's life with a desperate fiction.
And even if some miracle made him believe her, she wasn't sure he'd care.
Not if the child threatened her life. Definitely not in this moment when he looked half-feral with fear and rage.
No. He had to see it. The only way for him to believe is for him to see the baby with his own eyes. See the pointed ears, the features, the undeniable truth written in flesh and blood.
Only then would he believe.
"Malec," she gasped between sobs, her chest rising in ragged bursts. "Swear to me you won't touch the child."
For a moment, he only stared. The firelight carved hollows in his face, deepening the fury coiled inside him.
His gaze swept over her: drawn, streaked with tears, eyes fever-bright with exhaustion.
Then it drifted lower, catching on the crimson-soaked sheets, on the mound of her stomach heaving with each contraction.
His fingers twitched. The urge to reach for his dagger was instinctive, primal. To end what he thought did not belong to him before it ever drew breath.
But her pain was killing him. The tether screamed at him to save her and stop her suffering, to do anything that would ease the agony tearing through them both.
The child had to come out. Now. Before it killed her.
Without a blink, without hesitation, he lowered his head.
"I will not."
And he lied.
Because if the thing in her belly came from another male, it had no place in the world.
He would cut its cord with his own blade, snuff it from existence the moment it left her body.
And then he would bury the memory so deep she would forget.
She would forgive him he would make sure of it.
But most importantly she would still be his.
The lie curled in his chest like smoke.
Allora's black eyes found his again, burning through the haze of pain. "Swear it," she begged again, her voice raw and breaking. "Don't harm the child."
His expression went rigid, but he didn't look away. "I swear."
"She's beyond the edge," Kalemon muttered, throwing open her satchel.
Her hands flew over bundles of herbs, flasks, and cloth, pulling what she needed with practiced speed.
"The child's magic is anchoring to her life force.
It was trying to protect her from those idiot Awyan midwives when they shoved poison down her throat to induce labor.
Now it's clinging to her. If it's not guided out, it'll take her with it. "
"Then get it out," Malec growled, his voice low and dangerous.
Kalemon's head snapped up, eyes narrowing. "She’s not a damn calf, we do this slow. Gentle."
The sound of boots and hooves outside drew closer. The ruined doorframe darkened with shadows. The others had arrived, riding hard behind Malec.
Luko burst through first, his face pale, eyes wide as they landed on Allora writhing on the bed. Surian was close behind, her hand pressed against her chest as though holding her own heart together.
"Allora!" Surian cried, stepping forward.
A scream tore from Allora's throat, drowning out everything else.
"She's alive," Kalemon barked, not looking up from her work. "But you lot are about to kill her with noise. OUT!"
The room stilled.
Surin entered last, moving silently. He folded his hands behind his back, his pale blue eyes unreadable as he took in the chaos, the blood, and his son bent at the side of his Vash'telor.
Only Luko stepped forward. He planted himself near the bed, his usual playfulness stripped away, his voice steady, almost defiant. "I'm staying. I was her healer when she first came here. She knows me."
Kalemon flicked him an edged glance, then gave a single, curt nod. "Fine. You stay. The rest, out."
Surian hesitated, tears streaming down her face, but Surin's hand settled on her shoulder. He guided her gently but firmly toward the door. She looked back once, face crumpling, before disappearing into the corridor.
Malec leaned in close to Allora, brushing his lips across her damp forehead. His hands, trembling and blood-warmed, cupped her cheek with a reverence that belied the storm inside him.
"You're going to make it," he murmured, his voice thick with a tenderness that was almost unbearable.
But his other hand drifted to the dagger at his belt.
"I'm scared," she whispered, barely conscious, her words hitching through the fire of her pain. "It feels like something's… trying to shield me. From you."
The child. It knew.
Kalemon felt it too — the pulse, the invisible thrum of ancient power wrapped tight inside the womb. Not Awyan but neither wholly Canariae, existing in the space where both bloodlines collided. A hybrid being born of starlight and earth, blazing and unyielding even before it drew breath.
Malec stroked along her jaw, his expression softened to near sorrow.
But in his mind he pictured the sound of the baby's cry, and his hand closing over its tiny throat.
It didn't matter what face it bore. It wasn't his, it couldn't be, and he would not share her love.
Not with some stranger's spawn, still wet and warm from her body.
If the child lived… it would live in her heart. Which meant there would be no room left for him.
And that was unacceptable.
Allora had been laboring for what seemed like hours of unrelenting torment.
Her screams broke against the stone like waves, her body convulsing with bone-crushing pressure.
The sheets beneath her were soaked crimson, her muscles seizing with every contraction until she thought her body might rip apart.
And through it all, he held her.
Malec—stripped of armor, his heavy coat abandoned in a heap on the floor—had wedged his long body behind hers on the bed, cradling her like an Awyan clinging to what was already half-lost. One arm was wound fiercely around her ribs, anchoring her against him, while the other gripped her trembling thigh, steadying her through each violent surge of pain.
His fingers shook from how tightly he clung to her, betraying the tempest roaring beneath his skin. But his face… his face was carved from stone. Pale, unreadable, yet hollowed by a grief no one else could see.
He was happy.
He was furious.
She had returned to him—his wild, black-haired goddess, trembling and burning in his arms. Every breath of hers stung his lungs, every cry shattered and rebuilt him all at once. She was here. She was his.
But her swollen belly was not his doing. Her agony was not his blessing.
In his mind, the answer was simple. She would survive because he would not allow the world to breathe without her in it. But the child… the child would not.