Chapter 18
The relief didn’t last long. Nearly two hours later, Nymiria was going through another wave. Breathless and desperate, she assured Aziel that she would be fine, that it wasn’t nearly as intense as the first.
He took to running her a lukewarm bath, carrying her to the tub and lowering her into the water.
She’d attempted walking, but every step she took sent a wave of pleasure coursing through her body, her knees shaking in response.
They continued with this process three more times before Hilla came to deliver Dieve’s tincture.
By this point, Nymiria’s body felt so heavy with exhaustion that she could hardly hold the vial to her lips.
She drank it greedily, her tongue seemingly shriveled and her vocal cords like dry-rotted ropes.
Within minutes, her body had cooled and relaxed enough for her to sink down into the mattress.
Aziel handed her another vial shortly after and when she looked up at him, his head was turned away from her.
“What is this?” She asked. Aziel swallowed. In all the time she’d known him, she’d never seen him look so… shy. “You can’t hand me something like this and not tell me what it is—it could be poison.”
He scoffed. “You believe I would poison you? After all that has happened in the last twenty-four hours?” When Nymiria’s pointed glare did not waver, he released a groan of displeasure and sank onto the mattress beside her. “It’s a preventative.” He said, finally.
“A preventative for what, exactly?” The harder she pressed, the more visibly uncomfortable he became.
For a moment, she believed she saw his cheeks turning a very pale hue of pink.
“Pregnancy.” Nymiria chewed at the inside of her lip.
Seeing her confusion, Aziel placed a comforting hand upon her knee.
“This preventative should stay in your system for roughly a month. Just in case.” She finally took the vial into her hand, giving him an unsure look.
“I told you, I do not want to be with anyone else. I meant that. I can’t stomach—”
“There is a chance,” he blurted. “There is a chance that I may not be as infertile as I once was.”
She stilled at the confession, her heart thudding loudly as she looked over his sharpened features. He seemed uncomfortable with this revelation, the cloudiness in his eyes giving a glimpse at the storm that raged within his mind. “H-how?”
He gave her a side-long look as he leaned forward, resting his elbows upon the tops of his thighs. “You are not just the Goddess of Life. Fertility is also within your realm of power.”
Rolling the glass bottle between her palms, Nymiria drew in a deep breath. After watching the green liquid slosh around inside of the glass, she let out a chuckle. The chuckle turned into a laugh that turned into tears streaming down her face. Aziel watched her, utterly bewildered.
When she saw his expression, she only laughed harder, holding her hand up as if to signal for him to give her a moment to collect herself.
Finally, after wheezing and clutching at her stomach for another few minutes, she released a shaky breath and shook her head.
“It’s not every day that a woman can sincerely say that she has a magic cunt. ”
As soon as the words left her mouth, Aziel fought as hard as he could to suppress his smile, burying his face in his hands to hide it. “Gods, Nymiria.”
“I’m sorry,” her laughter had returned in full force, tears springing into her eyes almost immediately. “I couldn’t help myself!”
Hilla was still lingering by the door, her face red and hands wound together. “Dieve did want me to inform you that the tincture for her Caddat could cause spells of delirium.”
Aziel gave her a look. “This is not delirium, I assure you. It seems as if the tincture did its job—she’s entirely back to normal now.
” Hilla nodded, glancing between the two of them before she awkwardly left the room.
Once her footfall was out of hearing range he turned to the woman curled up in his bed.
“You’ve quite the foul mouth, don’t you? ”
Nymiria was already nestled into the pillows, the blankets pulled nearly up to her chin.
She gazed at him sleepily, swollen lips still pulled back into a smile.
There was not much left for her to say, no amount of further damage she could unleash upon her good reputation.
She supposed she’d tarnished that with him the moment she punched him in the throat all those months ago.
When she recalled it, bordering on the line between reality and the realm of dreams, just how magnificent he’d looked standing over her in that garden.
She remembered believing that he was some sort of spirit, having come to whisk her away to a place where pain no longer existed.
Pain still existed in this place, no matter how bright and brilliant it seemed to be. But she’d noticed, as the world around her darkened and her mind drifted, that it hadn’t been nearly as hard to navigate as it was before.
There were people who loved her here—people who cared enough about her that made those dark days not seem so dark at all. Nymiria no longer believed that she and those she loved would be better off with her dead.
“If you believe that I would be angry with you for something like that, I would say that you don’t know me well at all, little flower.” Thorn laughed, setting his tea back onto the table.
According to Hilla, who had come to observe her in Aziel’s absence, she’d been asleep for nearly two days. Even so, her body still ached. Her thighs were sore and the muscles in her back felt as if they were squeezing around her spine any time she turned too far to the left.
Her cycle had left her feeling cold and depleted, but it was nothing she hadn’t dealt with before. She would take any ounce of mild soreness over what she’d felt before.
It was nearly noon when she managed to find her father.
And after apologising to him for leaving her celebration early, he’d merely laughed it off.
She was not foolish enough to think that he didn’t know what’d happened in her absence—from the night they had at the Twisted Willow, to the flaring of her cycle, she was sure that Thorn knew everything.
He had eyes and ears around the kingdom, as well as his keen fae senses.
“Aziel informed me that you’ve made progress with your Grace.” He continued. Nymiria flashed him a cheeky grin, merely snapping her fingers to produce a rose. She held it out in his direction.
“It still feels strange,” she expressed.
Thorn took the rose from her fingers and placed it in the empty vase at the center of the table.
“After not having any ounce of control over it for so long, it feels odd. Like not having an arm for an entire decade and then waking up with one having sprouted from your body. Aziel said that it is just like learning how to hold a quill or a lead.” She flicked her fingers again, but instead of a flower springing from the tips of her fingers, there was nothing but a small silver spark.
“But I still struggle to grasp it unless I channel with intent.”
“Do you remember how I taught you?” He hummed, brushing a blackberry spread over his toast.
Nymiria chuckled. “Yes, I do. Alas, I do not believe my imagination still allows me to pretend that I am on a battlefield and the only way to save myself is by shooting roses at the enemy.” She shot him a look and took a bite of her pastry.
“It worked, though. Got you to produce them immediately.”
“Because you were throwing things at me.”
Thorn raised one shoulder, smug. “Unimportant details to a beautiful story.”
Having been raised a warrior back in his home kingdom between Alvaros and Eadyn, Thorn’s ways of teaching and playing were generally incredibly violent.
He wouldn’t have allowed her to truly get hurt, but he surely made her fear it.
He was not all battle scars and brooding, though.
Thorn had been a gentle parental figure when the time called for it, and stern when he needed to be.
Nymiria genuinely believed there was no better father in the world.
And as a child, before she knew that he’d sired her, she would watch her friends with their own fathers and daydream about Thorn being hers.
Perhaps a part of her had always known.
“What did you see in my mother?” The question escaped before she had a chance to rein it in, her gaze distant.
She could see her father shifting in her periphery, wetting his lips.
For a moment, she believed that he would change the subject, as the tension that radiated from him was strong enough that she could feel it settling in her own shoulders.
“I came from Alvaros,” he said quietly. “Nan raised us there, my brother and I. We were forced to enlist in the military when we became of age. Theron and I were some of the best soldiers that Alvaros had—high ranking officers, both of us beautifully decorated. We worked hard for our titles and took pride in them, but our loyalty was with our men and not our king.” He took a slow sip of his drink before looking at her again.
“Theron started a rebellion with his men. Got himself in a mess of trouble and eventually went into hiding because of it. The king, Everand’s father, personally asked me to resign and I did.
A deal was made that I would come to Nym and negotiate for peace between the two kingdoms and because I wanted your Nan to have a safe place to live outside of the circumstances Theron created for her, I brought her here with me. ”