Epilogue Torgan
One year after the bond, a heartbeat wakes me before dawn.
Not Iona’s.
The smaller one.
Quick. Angry. Entirely awake.
I put my hand over the curve of her belly.
The child kicks my palm.
Iona does not wake.
She is eight months gone and sleeping badly. The child took root within days of her setting the seedward aside after the southern rite. Her ankles swell by evening. Her back aches. She has begun using my ribs as a footrest and denies doing so.
I lie still.
Another kick.
“I know,” I whisper.
The child kicks again.
We have established no language, but the meaning is clear.
Something is wrong.
I listen.
Iona’s heartbeat is steady. Breath deep. No pain through the bond. The room is warm. Fire banked correctly. Shutters fastened. Water within reach. Knife beneath my pillow. Two guards outside. Vess somewhere on the roof because she has become convinced birth can be assisted by surveillance.
Nothing is wrong.
The child kicks a third time.
“Hunger?”
Iona makes a sleepy sound.
The bond carries an image before she opens her eyes.
Strawberries.
Of course.
“You’re awake,” she murmurs.
“No.”
“You’re speaking to my stomach.”
“It spoke first.”
Her eyes remain closed.
“What did it say?”
“Strawberries.”
“That was me.”
“I know.”
“Then why blame the baby?”
“The baby has stronger negotiating leverage.”
She laughs softly and then winces.
I am upright.
“Where?”
“My back.”
“How much?”
“The usual amount.”
“There should be no usual amount of pain.”
“Torgan.”
“I will get the healer.”
“You will not wake six women because I slept crooked.”
“Four women. Two men.”
“You added healers?”
“One is a midwife.”
“She is a shepherd.”
“She has delivered thirty-one lambs.”
Iona opens her eyes.
The look she gives me would stop a lesser king.
I reach behind her and press my hand to the sore place in her lower back.
Her body loosens.
The bond confirms the pressure is right.
“There,” she says.
I keep my hand still.
“Better?”
“Yes.”
I keep my palm against the tight muscle and listen to both heartbeats. Neither changes.
“Certain?”
She opens one eye. “Yes.”
“Any tightening?”
“No.”
“Dizziness?”
“No.”
The child kicks once beneath my other hand. I wait until the movement passes.
“Pain beneath the ribs?”
“No.”
“Changes in—”
She puts two fingers over my mouth.
“The healers gave you that list so you would know when to call them. Not so you could perform it at dawn every day.”
“They were unclear.”
“They were terrified.”
“They should speak more precisely under pressure.”
Iona closes her eyes again.
Through the bond, her amusement settles warm against my irritation.
A year ago, I knew how to hold a pass against four thousand men.
Now the third stair on the east flight keeps me awake.
It becomes slick when the air is damp. I ordered it replaced. The mason said the stone was sound. I replaced the mason.
Ghenn reinstated him the next day and had the stair roughened.
A practical solution. I would have reached it eventually.
The entire hold has adapted to my vigilance.
Council pauses every hour so I can refrain from sending a runner to Iona’s rooms. The kitchen sends written inventories of everything she eats because I was repeatedly entering to check. Vess has formed what she calls the Committee for Preventing the King’s Arrest by His Own Queen.
Its membership is Vess and Ghenn.
They meet whenever I order a road closed because Iona may someday travel it.
Sera ignores all committees.
She moved into the nursery wing two months ago with six trunks of linen, a spinning wheel, and enough opinions to govern a smaller country.
The nursery itself is ready.
Too ready, according to Iona.
The cradle stands near the inner wall, away from drafts. The windows have double catches. The fireguard is iron. Every rug has been nailed flat. There are no edged corners below the height of my knee. The shelves are anchored into stone.
The rowan waits in the sheltered court for the first thaw after the birth.
My grandsire’s line plants one for every child born already chosen.
I have checked the root ball four times.
Ghenn caught me on the fifth.
“It is a tree,” he said.
“It is dormant.”
“Yes.”
“It may be dead.”
“It has buds.”
“Small ones.”
He stood beside me in the snow, studying the wrapped roots with the seriousness of a man inspecting enemy fortifications.
“I can get another tree,” he said.
“I have another tree.”
“Of course you do.”
Three rowans now wait in the court.
Iona does not know about the third.
She knows everything else because the bond makes secrecy difficult and because the household reports me to her.
She reported me to myself last week.
“You are becoming unbearable,” she said at council.
“I have always been unbearable.”
“Not like this.”
“This is correctly informed caution.”
“This is you assigning six guards to a bathtub.”
“The floor was wet.”
“You were in the bath with me.”
“Exactly.”
The council voted.
Unanimous.
Unbearable.
I accepted the verdict and reduced the bath guard to four.
Iona’s breathing changes beneath my hand.
She is not asleep.
“What are you counting?” she asks.
“Nothing.”
“Your thoughts have gone into columns.”
“The bond is intrusive.”
“You bit me.”
“You summoned me.”
“I was in love.”
“You remain responsible.”
She rolls onto her back in slow stages.
The movement requires both of us now. I support her shoulders. She arranges the mountain of pillows Sera insists upon. The child shifts under her skin.
I watch.
I cannot stop watching.
The first time the bond found the second heartbeat, I stood beside the bed until morning.
Iona woke and laughed so hard she needed water.
The heartbeat had been little more than a flutter then.
Now it is a person with knees, opinions, and a habit of driving one heel beneath Iona’s ribs during council.
I put my palm where the movement travels.
The child presses back.
I feel nothing through the bond from it. The healers insist that is normal. The bond joins mates, not offspring.
I continue to suspect the healers lack information.
“Do you think she knows me?” I ask.
Iona’s expression softens.
“We do not know she is a girl.”
“Vess knows.”
“Vess is betting.”
“She has not lost since the mare.”
“She bet against the bite.”
“She calls that a strategic investment.”
The child kicks again.
Iona takes my hand and moves it lower.
“There.”
A hard little shape presses beneath my fingers.
“Foot,” she says.
I hold it through her skin.
The shape disappears.
My chest aches with something larger and less clean than the old fang pain.
The bond carries it to Iona.
She looks at me.
“What?”
I do not have a word that does not sound weak or foolish.
So I use the plain one.
“Fear.”
Her hand covers mine.
“Of the birth?”
“Yes.”
“Of me?”
“Yes.”
“The baby?”
“Yes.”
“Anything else?”
“Stairs. Fever. Winter. Bad milk. Loose stones. Horses. Rivers. Time.”
She waits.
“Raspberry leaf,” I add.
Iona groans.
“The universities disagree.”
“The universities can fight in the yard.”
“One says it strengthens the womb.”
“One says it causes early labor. I know. You read both letters aloud during supper.”
“We require a third authority.”
“We require breakfast.”
I consider the light beyond the shutters.
“Strawberries.”
“And bread.”
“Eggs.”
“No eggs.”
“You need strength.”
“I need you to stop issuing orders to my stomach.”
“You said strawberries.”
“The baby said strawberries.”
I look at her.
She smiles.
The child kicks again beneath our hands.
“See?”
I bend and press my mouth to the place.
My horns make the angle difficult. Iona moves a pillow without comment.
“Your mother is unreasonable,” I tell the curve of her belly.
“She can hear you.”
“Good. Learn early.”
Iona’s fingers stroke one horn at the base.
Pleasure runs down my spine.
“Do not start something you cannot finish,” I say.
“Eight months pregnant, not dead.”
“The healer said—”
“The healer said sex is safe.”
“The healer looked frightened when she said it.”
“She was looking at your claws.”
I retract them.
Iona’s amusement brightens through the bond.
Then her expression changes.
She looks past me toward the window.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
The word is too quick.
I listen.
Her heartbeat steady.
The child’s fast.
No change in breath.
Then I feel it through the bond.
A tightening low in her body.
I am out of bed before she can speak.
“Torgan.”
“How long?”
“It is already easing.”
“How long?”
“Half a minute.”
“Pain?”
“Pressure.”
I pull the bell cord.
She grabs the blanket and throws it at me.
“No.”
The bell sounds through the royal wing.
Doors open outside.
“Torgan, it was one tightening.”
The guards enter first. Ghenn behind them with a sword. Vess drops from the window ledge. Sera arrives in her nightdress carrying a kettle as a weapon.
The healer runs in last.
Everyone stops.
Iona sits in the middle of the bed, hair loose, belly enormous, glaring at me.
“I am going to kill the king,” she says.
The healer looks at me.
“What happened?”
“Contraction.”
“One,” Iona says.
The healer sets her bag on the bench and kneels beside the bed. One hand goes to Iona’s wrist; the other rests lightly over the child.
“How long?”
“Half a minute.”
“Pain?”
“Pressure.”
The healer watches Iona’s face rather than mine. “Fluid?”
“No.”
“Bleeding?”
“No.”
The healer’s shoulders drop. Then she puts both hands over her face.
Vess begins to laugh.
Ghenn lowers his sword.
Sera points the kettle at me.
“You woke the wing over a practice pain?”
“There should be no practice.”
“That is not how babies work.”
“It is poor design.”
Iona reaches through the bond and sends me the full force of her exasperation.
Underneath it is affection.
And, irritatingly, a little fear of her own.
I return to the bedside.
The room quiets.
I take her hand.
The healer checks her while explaining, for the twelfth time, that the body prepares before labor.
I listen.
I ask six questions.
Iona permits four.
When the healer is done, she declares that nothing is happening today.
“Certain?” I ask.
“No,” she says, gathering her bag. “Birth is not a siege schedule. But I see no sign that it has begun.”
“Then why did it tighten?”
“Because it is practicing.”
“For what?”
Everyone looks at me.
The room empties slowly.
Sera takes the kettle. Ghenn takes the guards. Vess climbs back out the window despite the existence of a door.
At the threshold, the healer turns.
“Majesty?”
“Yes.”
“Let her sleep.”
“I was.”
Iona makes a sound behind me.
The healer leaves.
I close the door and cross back from it. Iona holds out both arms.
I go to her.
She draws me down by the shoulder, settling my head against her chest and one hand over the child.
“You cannot guard us out of being mortal,” she says.
“I am looking for a way around that.”
“I know.”
I lift my head.
She has found the old blood texts in the deep archive, then.
The bond gives me her answer.
Of course she has.
“We will discuss it later,” she says. “After the birth. After sleep. After strawberries.”
“There may be a way.”
“There may.”
Hope moves between us. Careful. Not a promise.
She presses my face back to her chest.
“Today, you have two heartbeats to guard.”
“Three.”
“The bond does not make yours my responsibility.”
“It does.”
“Then stop trying to frighten it to death.”
I breathe.
Her heart beneath my ear.
The child beneath my hand.
Mine in both their bodies through the bond.
Outside, dawn reaches the treaty orchard and the three rowans waiting for thaw.
Iona’s fingers move through my hair.
“What are you thinking?” she asks.
“The continent should be warned.”
“About what?”
“The succession is secured. The king is compromised beyond military use. The queen demands strawberries before sunrise.”
“I did not demand.”
“You communicated through the heir.”
“Efficient delegation.”
The child kicks beneath my palm. Iona laughs.
Her heartbeat.
The child’s.
Mine.
Three.
I count again as the light reaches the window.