Chapter 29
Hannalinde
She couldn’t sleep, so she stitched. The contractions were strong enough that she had to stop her stitching to get through them.
These weren’t the practice pains that had been tightening her belly for weeks. They were a deep, rolling pressure that started in her spine and wrapped around to the front. It felt like she was being squeezed by a fist.
Another one arrived. She set her embroidery down and gripped the edge of the worktable, breathing the way Aalis had taught her, slow and measured, until the fist loosened its grip. She picked up her needle again.
Another interrupted her work only ten or fifteen minutes later. Then another.
“I think we should call for Aalis,” she said to Carlijn when it was clear they were coming more often.
Carlijn closed her book, seeming to notice for the first time that Hannalinde was gripping the edge of the table with white knuckles. “Now?”
“Now.”
Carlijn jumped into action, ringlets bobbing as she summoned maids and message boys. Hanna was bustled into the bedroom and dressed in a clean shift, missives were sent to the Tower to let Aalis and Rikard know that the child was coming.
Then, while water was boiled and linens were laid out, she combed and plaited Hanna’s hair. She distracted her with funny conversation between contractions. And when a brutal one bent her in half, Carlijn rubbed her back until it passed.
Hanna straightened, shooting her friend a grateful look. “I’ll do this for you when it’s your turn.”
But then she noticed something strange. The ever-present pressure at the base of her skull was gone. The oily darkness of the mate bond wasn’t dulled down or quiet, it was completely absent.
She held very still, probing the empty space cautiously in her mind. She braced, expecting him to lash back, to fill her skull with fire. But he simply wasn’t there. Her knees buckled.
Carlijn caught her and helped her to bed. “Hanna, are you all right?”
“I’m fine.” She was more than all right. She was free. Even if it was only a side effect of labor, it was a welcome reprieve.
For the first time since that terrible night in the alley, the invisible leash was severed, the hunter gone.
She didn’t know how or why, and at this particular moment, with contractions coming every seven minutes and a gargoyle child begging to be born, she didn’t care.
The darkness had lifted, and the labor ahead of her, which should have terrified her, felt instead like something she could embrace.
Aalis arrived then, entering through the balcony door. She examined Hannalinde with her gnarled hands, announced that dilation was progressing well, and settled onto Rikard’s roost to watch.
Betje came through the more traditional entrance twenty minutes later, her apothecary’s bag packed to the brim with helpful herbs and potions. She checked Hannalinde’s pulse, gave her a tincture for the pain, and took up a spot near the fireplace to warm her hands after the chilly walk.
“Now we’re only missing Rikard,” Hanna said, settling in to wait. “We’d best keep busy until he arrives.”
Carlijn set up the scaccus board on the bed and sat on the other side, holding Hannalinde’s free hand during contractions and releasing it between them so the game could continue. She gnawed her lip, glaring fiercely at the board as she planned her next move.
“I thought scaccus was too dull for you,” Hanna teased.
“I have a taste for war lately, now that I have an enemy.” Carlijn set her jaw and moved her piece, taking out one of Hanna’s.
She meant Lucan, of course. She was still reeling from his rejection and spent too much time lately staring out the window and pacing up and down the upstairs hall.
Hannalinde was starting to worry about her.
“Who knows, maybe by the time your baby is born, he’ll come around. I’ll ask Rikard to speak with him again.”
Carlijn shook her head miserably. “Even if he did, I wouldn’t entertain him. He doesn’t deserve to be loved the way I’d love him.”
“It’s not too late to take a tincture if you want a fresh start,” Betje remarked from her spot by the fire as another contraction stole Hanna’s breath.
“I don’t know,” she heard Carlijn say, but the pain made it hard to focus on her words. “A fresh start means the wool merchant in Meravenna. I’m not sure he will even have me now.”
The contractions shortened their intervals, lengthened their duration, and deepened their teeth.
Hannalinde abandoned the scaccus board when the pain made it impossible to play any longer, and after that she held onto hands or her pillow or the edge of the mattress.
Anything else that was solid and within reach.
What was taking so long? Where was Rikard?
The child was large. Aalis had warned her it would be. She had a lot of work to do.
Hours passed. Labor was a vast landscape of pain. Each contraction felt like a continent she crossed on her hands and knees.
“Where is he?” she gasped during a rest between them.
Carlijn and Betje exchanged a look.
“We sent messages to the Tower,” Carlijn said carefully. “I’m sure he’ll come when he can.”
He’ll come. But the hours accumulated, and he didn’t arrive. Why not?
The child isn’t his. The thought surfaced, ugly and cold, between contractions. He said he thought of it as his own, but perhaps the imagining was different than the reality. Perhaps he couldn’t watch another gargoyle’s child emerge from his wife and still love it. Still love her.
“You need to push now, Hannalinde,” Aalis said sternly. “You can’t put it off any more.”
So she pushed and pushed and the child came, and blood came with it, more blood than the basin could hold, more than the linens could absorb. The room swam.
“She’s hemorrhaging,” Aalis said somewhere in the dreamy distance. “I need pressure here, and more cloths. Someone hold her legs while I—”
The voices blurred. The white field of her vision darkened at the edges, contracting inward. The baby cried, thin and furious, and she was momentarily suffused with happiness at the sound until she remembered Rikard was not here to greet his son or daughter.
“Where is he?” Her voice came out a whisper.
“Stay with me, Hanna.” Carlijn’s face above her, blurred, wet. “Stay with me. He’s coming. He’ll be here. Just hold on.”
She wanted to ask about the baby, but her mouth wouldn’t form the words. The silence was cold, and she let it take her.