Chapter Twenty-Six - Lucifer #4
“Wait… They’re… I’m going to be…” The word caught in my throat so badly I almost laughed at myself. “A father?”
Malach’s expression softened. “It appears so.”
I looked at Evie. She was pale and exhausted, and still so sick. But somehow she was carrying the most impossible thing I had ever been given.
“Our babies?” I asked.
Her smile was small and tired and luminous in a way that hurt to look at.
“Yes, Luc,” she whispered. “Our babies.”
For one wild second I almost laughed. Then Malach cleared his throat.
I looked at him slowly. “What.”
He folded his hands. “There is something else you should know.”
Evie let her head fall back against the pillows. “There’s always something else.”
Malach glanced to the screen again. “Twin pregnancies are already considered higher risk.”
Evie let out a sigh, “Can anything ever be easy?”
Despite myself, my mouth twitched, and I almost smiled.
Then Malach said, “In approximately one percent of twin pregnancies, the babies share both an amniotic sac and a placenta.”
The smile died before it could happen.
He looked at us. “Your babies are doing that.”
The room went silent.
Evie blinked. “What does that mean?”
“It means,” he said gently, “that your twins are sharing a single amniotic sac and a single placenta.”
I stared at him. “And that’s bad,” I said.
Malach gave a small, grave nod. “It’s rare. And it can be… dangerous.”
My hand tightened around Evie’s.
He pointed to the screen again, his tone measured now, careful. “Because they are sharing the same sac, there is a risk that their umbilical cords can become tangled or compressed. If that happens, it can become very serious very quickly.”
Evie closed her eyes for one second. “Of course.”
Malach went on. “But… it also means they are identical.”
Her eyes flew open. For a moment, she just stared at him. Then at the screen. Then at me.
“Really?” she asked, breaking into a grin.
He nodded.
“Holy shit,” she said softly, letting her head fall back against the pillow.
I let out a short, stunned breath that might have been a laugh in another life.
She looked back at the screen, then at me again, still pale, still weak, still trying to catch up to the fact that the universe had apparently decided to be absurd in one more very specific way.
“Only we could end up like this,” she muttered.
“True,” I said.
“If they’re identical,” she said suddenly, looking back at Malach, “can you tell us the sex? Boys or girls?”
Malach shook his head. “Not yet. We’ll probably be able to tell by around twenty weeks.”
Evie let out a tired breath and sank deeper into the pillows.
Malach’s expression gentled, but his tone stayed serious. “You will need close monitoring. At least weekly, perhaps more often. You may need bedrest.”
I looked at him. “May?”
“She definitely needs to take it easy until we get the nausea and vomiting under control,” he said. “What you are experiencing is hyperemesis gravidarum. Severe nausea and vomiting in pregnancy. It’s common in twin pregnancies, and in most cases it improves in a few weeks.”
Evie gave him a look. “A few weeks,” she repeated faintly, like she was considering whether murder was worth the effort.
“For now,” Malach continued, “I want to keep you in bed for the next couple of days. Fluids. Ondansetron. Take it easy.”
I almost laughed in his face. Instead, I looked at the IV line in her arm, then at the screen, then at the hollowed-out exhaustion in her face.
“What do you need from me?” I asked. “Tell me exactly what needs to happen.”
Malach finally looked at me less like a king and more like a man who had just found out he was in over his head.
“Compliance would be a charming beginning, sire,” he said.
I stared at him.
He went on anyway. “Rest. Hydration. Monitoring. Absolute avoidance of unnecessary stress, if that miracle can be managed in this household. And when I say more bedrest may be required, I mean it.”
I looked at Evie. She was still staring at the screen, dazed and sick and stunned, one hand resting unconsciously over the towel on her stomach.
Two babies. Ours.
I looked back at Malach. “She won’t lift a finger,” I said.
Evie made a weak sound that was probably meant to be a protest. I ignored it.
Malach gave a small nod. “Good. Then perhaps these children have a chance to continue being as impossibly dramatic as their parents.”
Evie turned her head toward me, pale and exhausted and still somehow luminous through it all. “Luc.”
“Yes.”
“If somebody hands me a bedpan, I’m throwing it.”
I looked at her. Then at the screen. Then back at her and shrugged.
“Absolutely not,” she said.
Malach, to my surprise, chose that moment to speak up. “My lady,” he said dryly, “you may still get up to use the bathroom. I am recommending caution, not medieval humiliation.”
Evie stared at him for one long second, then nodded once.
“Good,” she muttered. “Because I’m already suffering enough.”
And for the first time since we’d been back, despite this new danger and the fear and the absurdity of all of it, something in the room almost felt like hope.