Elluin Nevan Past
“That’s it, Your Majesty. One more push—”
Slátra’s deep bay cleaves the sky outside, urging me on. Through our shared bond, the same urgency echoes like a raging roar.
I bottle a scream, using it for leverage to bear down, feeling my body stretch as my youngling’s shoulders ease past. The rest comes smoothly, and with a gush of relief.
All my muscles melt so abruptly my head falls back against the headboard.
I gulp shuddered breaths as nervous tension fills the room …
I pushed for so long. Too long, by the looks my birthing maids pass to each other, quietly moving around the pallet like white-robed ghosts.
A deafening quiet prevails, ruffled only by brisk patting sounds.
Panicked murmurs come from the two maids looking down at my youngling on the pallet between my parted legs. A pallet that’s already claimed too many of my loved ones.
It will not claim another.
It will not claim my child.
I leverage up against the stone headboard, looking at the maid trying to rub life into my limp, lifeless young. “Give me the child.”
“Your Majesty, we’re doing everything we can.” She looks up, all the color gone from her face, and I see the truth in her solemn stare. She believes my baby is too far gone.
Slátra roars loud enough to rattle the windowpanes.
The maid dashes a nervous glance at the open balcony doors. “She’s—She’s been without for too—”
“GIVE HER TO ME.”
A bulge of blue flame pours past the doors, casting the room in an azure glow.
The maid flinches, then rushes into action. Snips our cord and swaddles my daughter.
I tear open my slumbershift to the tune of beating wings, buttons popping from nape to navel, revealing my naked breasts. Some of the maids drop their chins, as though to offer me privacy.
I know better. Know they’re hiding the tears in their eyes. Proof they’ve already lost hope.
They believe mine is useless. I don’t accept that.
Silver light floods the suite, Slátra skimming so close to the palace I’m battered by the cold waft of her beating wings as my daughter is set upon my chest. I don’t waste time looking at her features, taking her in or smelling her—quick to unwrap her from the bind and drape her limp body across my breasts, using the crook of my arm to cradle her head.
I rub her back in firm but gentle strokes, singing the song Mah sang to me in this very room. A tune that always made me feel happy and safe.
Loved.
Liu ath na, juu ta ne guile no …
Too la too. Too la too.
Liu ath na, juu ta ne guile no—
I’m told to push again.
I bear down, tears slipping free as my afterbirth slides out with a warm gush that doesn’t stop, like pulling the plug on a sink … or gently releasing a soul.
I try not to dwell on the thought. To mull over the fact that it feels as though my body is trying to chase my daughter to her end.
She’s staying, even if I’m going. I’ll breathe my final breath into her and make it so.
Eeah to ail. Eeah to ail.
Han dui garl, igath da se se marth …
Cloths are stuffed between my legs, each pulled away heavy with blood and slopped in a bucket, hauled free of the suite.
Tinctures are forced down my throat and rubbed on my abdomen before a maid pushes on my belly, massaging my womb in a way that would make me cry out in pain were my daughter’s continued silence not flaying me to death. Slowly.
Precisely.
Still, I continue to rub her back. Pat her firmly.
Sing to her.
Still, I refuse to abandon hope, clinging to it with every bit of my fading strength.
Eeah to ail. Eeah to ail.
Han dui garl, igath dain to ne …
Everything judders.
There’s the shrill sound of scratching stone as Slátra digs her claws into the eaves, finding purchase on a part of the palace not built for perching dragons.
A churn of luminous movement, and one of the maids fails to stifle her squeal when Slátra blindly threads her massive head through the balcony doorway—just barely able to fit.
The room fills with the brisk chill that radiates off her hide.
She pushes forward, exposing some of her neck, cramming the space with her immense presence. All but two of my maids cower against the far wall.
The next verse is hard to force past my thickening throat.
Lio lo na, lo na …
I look into Slátra’s milky eyes, thankful for her presence.
Thankful that I don’t have to do this on my own.
Duali do, shooth ait nui la …
She sniffs the air, blunt snuffing as I rub.
Pat.
Sing.
Despite her blindness, I feel through the heavy thump of our shared heart just how much she smells.
Senses.
Feels.
She makes a low keening sound that echoes my own agony. Ever so gently, she nuzzles the back of my daughter’s head, whining. A soft probe for her to breathe.
To live.
Lio lo na, lo na—
Slátra chuffs, then pulls back. I frown, looking down as my daughter’s blue face bunches up.
She releases a wobbly wail that pitches through the room, and I make a similar sound, almost crumbling beneath the crush of relief that drops on my chest.
I tremble, loosening from a knot I didn’t realize I was bound within, distantly aware of the maids gasping, praising the Creators. Some drop to their knees, crying out or kissing the ground.
My daughter breathes deep before screaming again—shrill and trebled. Like she sank to the edge of her end and rose up frightened, desperately trying to get away.
I tuck her closer. Comfort her as Slátra sniffs us both, unsurprised when I hear murmurs of how my bleeding has begun to slow. There’s nowhere else I’d rather be than right here, with her.
Time blurs …
Slátra stays despite the calm that settles through the suite; a quiet sentinel while I sing, smoothing my thumb across my daughter’s brow. I repeat the motion until all the rumples ease from her face.
I kiss her head, search for Kaan in her delicate features. Find him in the tone of her skin and the strong cut of her cheeks. Certainly not in the tuft of white hair that’s so like Mah’s.
My throat clogs at the thought, knowing how proud she’d be if she were here.
Even though I’m not so proud of myself.
Mah bound for love against all odds, straining political ties. She found a way to compromise everything but the love she had for Pah, while staying fair and just to her folk. To her responsibilities as The Shade Queen.
I’ve taken the only path I was able to see, but nonetheless, a path that cost Kaan … this.
Being here as I birthed. Meeting his daughter for the first time. Hailing her into the world with his strength and warm presence.
Slátra keens as more tears slip down my cheeks, and I quietly vow to be stronger.
Better.
To smooth the injustices in this world. To make it a better place, one way or another. For our daughter.
For—
“Her name is Kyzari,” I announce to the room with all the strength I can muster, reciting Mah’s middle name past the lump in my throat.
A quiet ode to both her and Kaan.
My only hope is that one dae Kaan and Kyzari will see the connection now threaded through the generations. That beyond the heavy sentiment of endowing her with a piece of my beautiful, lovely Mah, there’s a broader reason I gave my daughter a name that starts with K.
“Kyzari Neván Vaegor,” I whisper, because fuck Tyroth for forcing me to take his name. For not giving me the choice.
Mine will live on. Through my daughter.
From my peripheral, I see every maid dip their head, one of them moving to the desk.
She jots Kyzari’s name on the official announcement scroll that’s passed through the door—no doubt handed to one of the many guards filling the hall outside.
Soon to be read to the crowds packing Arithia’s streets full, waiting to hear of the outcome of my labor.
A maid drapes a shawl around my shoulders, protecting my modesty while Kyzari nuzzles my breast, rooting for sustenance. Again, I mourn the absence of Mah’s counsel, awkwardly nudging my nipple into Kyzari’s mouth.
She suctions, tugging softly. Her little hand pads around, coming to rest on my finger.
A smile lifts my lips.
All the fight leaves both of our bodies as we find a gentle rhythm, nestled together like both dragons on Kaan’s málmr.
I choose to ignore the quiet sense that this moment is a gift. That it won’t last.
There’s no space for that in my heart right now.
When a maid comes to my side bearing a tray heavy with a trio of vials, I barely pull my attention away, so transfixed on Kyzari’s pale lashes fanned across her cheek. On the way her little body curls so perfectly against me, and the quiet suckling sounds she makes.
“This is to help you pass any remaining afterbirth without a further bleed,” the maid says, gesturing to a purple vial.
I take it, blindly tossing it back.
She gestures to the brown one beside it. “This is to encourage your milk supply, and this is for—”
There’s a screeching roar. A tear of orange flame rips through the sky, filling the room with an angry glow.
The maids’ gasps are drowned out by Slátra’s fierce snarl.
She pulls her head from the doorframe, so fast she smashes against the sides, the blow of pain radiating through our shared bond.
Though that’s the last I feel before she slams a solid silver wall between us.
Blocks me out, then shoves off the palace, like she’s trying to protect me from her rage of thoughts and emotions.
Not that it helps.
Panic pitches through my chest as a trio of Moltenmaws tears past the windows, chasing Slátra’s trail. Out of sight, though I hear them shrieking.
Roaring.
I rip off my iron ring and open to Clode, listening to her squeal away from the eruptions of dragonfire—
The sound evaporates like a snuffed flame.
My head begins to swim, as though I’m being dragged beneath a lake of oil. It takes me too long to realize I’ve been drugged. That there’s a terrible reason I can no longer hear the Creators.
A wild lash of horror flays me. “Somebody lock—”
The door shoves open so fast a maid screams.