Chapter 63- Dont panick
Ophelia had insisted she was not tired.
She said it while blinking too slowly over lunch.
She said it while staring at the same piece of bread for nearly a full minute as though waiting for it to explain something important.
She said it after losing track of the conversation twice, once while I was speaking and again while she was, which seemed more difficult.
She said it while shifting in the heavily padded chair every few minutes, one hand pressing discreetly against her lower back whenever she believed I was not looking.
I was always looking.
That was the problem.
Before she became sick, watching her had been something I did without needing to think about it.
I knew where she was in rooms crowded enough to hide armies.
I knew the sound of her steps, the difference between her tired silence and her angry silence, the exact way she breathed when pretending pain had not reached the point where it frightened her.
I watched because the world had spent too long proving that what it could reach, it would eventually try to destroy.
Now I watched because every small movement felt like evidence.
A hand tightening around a cup.
A breath held too long.
A wince she tried to hide by looking toward the garden.
The way her gaze wandered throughout the meal, not with curiosity, but inward, as though some quiet conversation was taking place between her mind and body and neither had invited me.
By the time we finished eating, her eyes were barely remaining open.
I had planned to show her the nursery.
That thought had been carrying me for days.
The room had become a private form of madness while she was gone.
Every object placed there had allowed me to imagine her returning.
Every folded blanket became a promise. Every small piece of clothing became proof that the future still existed beyond physicians, poison records, and flowers hiding death between their leaves.
I had pictured Ophelia standing in the doorway.
Her expression changing slowly as she noticed the cradle, the painted birds, the shelves, the terrible stuffed rabbit Veronica insisted improved the room.
I had imagined tears.
Laughter.
Arguments about the number of locks.
I had not imagined her nearly falling asleep while holding a spoon.
So I said nothing.
There were times when love meant keeping a promise exactly as spoken.
There were other times when it meant knowing the person you loved no longer possessed the strength to receive what you had prepared.
The nursery could wait.
She could not.
I told her she needed to rest.
She told me she felt perfectly awake.
Then she went to bathe and fell asleep almost immediately.
I found her sitting in the warm water with her head resting against the edge of the bath, eyes closed, breathing slow.
For one horrifying second, I thought she had fainted.
My entire body stopped before hers moved faintly with another breath.
Relief arrived so violently that it became anger before I could control it.
"Ophelia."
Her eyes opened.
Barely.
"I am awake."
"You are asleep."
"No."
"You were sleeping in water."
"I was resting."
"Unconsciously."
Her face tightened in mild offense. "You are being dramatic."
"You could have drowned."
"The water is not high enough."
"That does not improve the situation."
She had stared at me for several seconds, likely trying to build an argument and forgetting where she placed it.
Then her eyes closed again.
I removed her from the bath before pride could kill her.
She complained through most of the process, though weakly enough that the complaint sounded more like a collection of disapproving breaths.
By the time she was dried, dressed, and came back into the bedchamber, she remained determined to prove that exhaustion had not won.
She insisted she did not need the bed. She did not want to sleep yet.
She wanted to see the nursery. She wanted to know what had changed in the palace.
She wanted to review the physician reports.
She wanted to speak with the kitchens because apparently several disasters had occurred in her absence and I lacked the moral courage to explain the poultry incident.
I told her no.
To everything.
She looked at me with betrayal.
Then climbed onto the couch behind me and fell asleep before I finished arranging the second blanket.
That was how we ended up there.
Not in my office, where the desk, chairs, lamps, and filing systems would have made our work more efficient.
Not in the council room, where reports could be spread across enough surface to stop them from sliding into one another.
We remained in our bedchamber because I did not want to wake her, move her, leave her, or allow any distance greater than the few feet between the couch and the place I had chosen on the floor before it.
The arrangement was not comfortable.
I did not care.
Ophelia slept behind me, built into a fortress of pillows that made no architectural sense.
One had been wedged behind her lower back at a severe angle.
Another supported her stomach. A third rested beneath her knees.
Two smaller cushions had somehow become trapped between the couch and the wall, though she appeared to be using one of them to support her shoulder in a way that should have dislocated something.
I did not understand it.
She looked comfortable.
Mostly.
That was enough.
I sat on the floor with my back against the couch, papers spread across the rug and several documents balanced on my knee.
Elias occupied the chair to the left of the fire.
Veronica sat on the couch opposite us, one boot resting against the low table while she read through lists of palace workers connected to the flower storage room.
The fire burned steadily, warming the bedchamber until the windows had begun fogging at the corners.
We should have moved to my office.
No one suggested it.
Veronica understood why.
Elias was simply bored.
He had arrived twenty minutes earlier carrying a pie, a fork, and absolutely no intention of contributing anything useful.
He claimed he was there to guard Ophelia.
This might have sounded respectable had he not immediately placed his feet on a table, begun eating, and spent the next several minutes criticizing the palace wine selection despite bringing none of his own.
I looked at him over the edge of the report in my hand.
"Would you like to help?"
Elias's face twisted in immediate disgust.
"No, thank you."
I stared.
He took another bite of pie.
"You serve no purpose here." The fork paused halfway to his mouth.
His expression became wounded. "That is cruel."
"It is true."
"I am doing my job."
Veronica did not look up from the paper in her hand. "You are sitting there and breathing."
Elias smiled. "Yes. While guarding the queen."
"You are eating pie." I added annoyed
"I can multitask."
Veronica rolled her eyes.
Elias pointed his fork toward her. "It is not my fault my assignment is more pleasant than yours. My supervisor offers superior benefits."
I frowned. "I am your supervisor also."
"I don't claim you."
From behind me, my wife made a small sleeping sound and shifted among the pillows. Elias smiled toward the couch. "As I was saying my supervisor the queen offers excellent hours. Comfortable furniture. Emotional support. Snacks."
"You brought the pie," Veronica said.
"And she graciously allows me to eat it in her room."
"She is unconscious."
"She has never objected while awake."
I looked back at the documents before murder became distracting.
The storage list had been reduced to twenty-three people.
Too many. Better than the hundreds we began with.
Every maid, servant, guard, delivery worker, gardener, physician, household runner, and noble attendant who entered or passed through the flower storage area had been named.
Their schedules compared. Their movements reconstructed. Their histories opened and dissected.
Still no certainty.
The poisoner understood palace routines well enough to disappear inside them.
I read the same paragraph twice without absorbing it.
Behind me, Ophelia shifted again.
My attention left the page immediately.
She adjusted carefully onto her other side, one hand moving beneath the curve of her stomach. Her face tightened for a moment before relaxing. The movement was small enough that Elias continued eating. Veronica's gaze flicked toward her, then returned to the paper.
I watched longer.
Nothing followed.
Her breathing remained steady.
I forced my eyes back to the report.
Veronica sighed heavily and rubbed one hand over her forehead. "I am taking a break before the names begin moving."
"Good," Elias said. "I am tired too."
Veronica and I looked at him.
At the same time, we said, "You did nothing."
He opened his mouth. A groan came from behind me. Every person in the room went still.
I turned.
Ophelia's face had contorted in her sleep. Her brows pulled together. Her jaw clenched. One hand gripped the pillow beneath her stomach, fingers pressing so deeply into the fabric that her knuckles paled. A faint sound escaped her again, low and strained.
Then, slowly, her body relaxed.
Her fingers loosened.
Her expression smoothed.
Her breathing deepened as though nothing had happened.
I looked at Elias.
He looked at me.
"Is she still sick?" I asked.
The question came sharper than intended.
Elias placed the fork down.
"No."
"You answered too quickly."
"She should not still be sick."
"That is not the same answer."
His gaze moved toward her. "The poison should be mostly out of her body by now. There may be lingering weakness, but not worsening symptoms."
"Then what was that?"
He stared at her for a moment.
"A nightmare?"
It sounded like a question.
Veronica returned from the wine rack with a bottle and glass in hand. She poured generously, sat, picked up her document, and shrugged.
"She is probably in labor."
Silence.
Complete.
Elias and I slowly turned toward her.
"Excuse me?"
Veronica looked up. Her expression suggested we were both inconveniencing her.
"I said she may be in labor."
I laughed.
The sound escaped before thought because what she said was clearly ridiculous and therefore deserved ridicule.
"No."
Veronica lifted one brow.
"She is nowhere near full term."
"She is thirty-seven weeks."
"That is not full term."
"It is close enough for the body to become ambitious."
"No."
Veronica took a sip of wine.
I stared at her.
She stared back.
Elias laughed too, though his sounded wrong. Nervous. Thin. "She is having a nightmare."
Veronica looked at him. He looked toward Ophelia. Then back at her.
"A nightmare," he repeated, less confidently.
Veronica shrugged. "It is only my opinion." Her tone was pleasant. Too pleasant. "But what do I know? It is not as though I have delivered multiple children, given birth more than once, or spent my childhood being trained by a mother who was a midwife."
She lifted the wineglass to her mouth.
I looked at Elias.
He looked at me.
Neither of us spoke.
Several possibilities entered my mind at once.
None were reasonable.
Call the physicians.
Lock the room.
Do not move her.
Bring every midwife in the palace.
Bring no one because one of them could be the poisoner.
Send for Elias's manor physicians.
Burn the flower storage room.
Close the palace gates.
Arrest everyone.
Wake Ophelia.
Do not wake Ophelia.
Check the windows.
Boil water.
People always boiled water during births. Why? No one had ever explained. I rose halfway from the floor.
Veronica looked at me. "Sit down."
I did not.
"Should I call the physician?"
"Not yet."
"Why not?"
"Because she is asleep."
"She made a sound."
"People make sounds."
"Pain sounds."
"Yes."
"That is a reason to wake her."
"No."
"Why?"
Veronica stared at me over her glass. "Because you are already behaving like someone lit the curtains on fire, and nothing has happened yet."
Elias shifted in the chair. "We should perhaps confirm."
"How?" I asked.
He looked at me.
Then at Veronica.
Veronica closed her eyes briefly.
"What exactly did either of you expect childbirth to involve?"
I did not answer.
Elias looked offended. "I understand the mechanics."
"That is not what I asked."
"I have read extensively."
"You read war surgery manuals."
"Birth contains blood and urgency."
"So does being stabbed. They are not interchangeable."
I looked back at Ophelia.
She remained asleep.
That should have reassured me.
Instead, I imagined her waking in agony. I imagined blood. Too much blood. Physicians shouting. The child not breathing. Her hating me. Her dying. The cradle remaining empty. The nursery door closing forever.
Veronica studied my face for several long seconds before releasing a slow, weary sigh.
There was not a trace of panic in her expression.
If anything, she looked like a woman who had witnessed this exact scene unfold dozens of times and had already decided that arguing with frightened men required more energy than either of us deserved.
Her wineglass rested loosely between her fingers, untouched for once, while her gaze moved from me to Elias and then back again with the quiet disappointment of someone realizing she was surrounded by idiots and would now be expected to keep them alive.
"You need to calm down," she said at last.
"I am calm."
The answer came too quickly.Veronica's eyebrows rose. She did not look convinced. "No, dear," she replied dryly. "You look like you are deciding which part of the palace to burn down first."
"The eastern wing."
Elias, who had been halfway through another bite of pie, slowly lowered his fork. He turned toward me with the careful attention of a man who could not decide whether I was joking and had known me long enough to fear that I was not.
"Why the eastern wing?" he asked.
"It is closest to the physicians' quarters."
His brow furrowed.
I could almost see him trying to follow the logic and becoming increasingly disappointed in where it led.
"And burning it helps how?"
"It encourages them to move faster."
Veronica closed her eyes.
Her fingers rose to pinch the bridge of her nose so firmly that I wondered whether listening to me had begun producing a physical headache. Elias lean forward, genuinely curious.
"I do not believe that is how motivation works."
"It would if the building were on fire."
He opened his mouth.
I turned away before the conversation could become more ridiculous than the situation already was. Elias could debate anything if given enough time, including whether arson qualified as administrative urgency. I had no interest in hearing his argument.
My attention returned to Veronica.
"How do we know whether she is actually in labor?"
"We wait."
The answer was immediate.
I stared at her.
"I dislike that answer."
"I know."
"How long do we wait?"
Veronica lifted one shoulder.
My eye twitched.
"Veronica."
She shrugged again.
I could feel patience beginning to pull apart inside me, thread by thread.
"How long?"
Perhaps deciding I had suffered enough, or perhaps realizing the eastern wing remained in genuine danger, she placed her wineglass carefully on the table. Her expression remained composed as she rested both hands against her knees and finally answered properly.
"It could be a few minutes," she said. "Or several hours." That was unacceptable enough. "In some cases," she continued, with the same infuriating calm, "days."
Days.
The word entered my mind and found no place where it could make sense.
She expected me to stand beside my wife while she suffered for days.
Not minutes.
Not one terrible hour.
Days.
There were no circumstances under which that could be allowed. There had to be another method. Medicine. Surgery. Threats. Better physicians. A way to order the body to behave more efficiently.
Beside me, Elias broke the silence first.
"But she told us she still had several weeks," he murmured.
His voice had lost most of its humor.
Veronica turned toward him and nodded once. "Women carrying one child usually do."
Something in the phrasing stopped me.
"What does that mean?"
She picked up her wineglass. Nothing changed in her expression. That frightened me more than panic would have. "What," I repeated carefully, "does that mean?"
Veronica took an unhurried sip, as if she had not just introduced a sentence capable of destroying what remained of my composure. Then she lowered the glass.
"Twins generally arrive earlier."
The room fell completely silent.
Twins.
I knew the word.
I understood the concept.
What I did not understand was why she had spoken it inside my bedchamber while looking toward my sleeping wife.
Elias stared at her.
Then at me.
Then back at her.
After several seconds, he laughed.
Not because anything was funny.
Because impossible things sometimes forced sound out of people before thought could catch up.
"There is one baby," he said.
Veronica's gaze moved between us.
"Is there?"
"Yes," I answered.
She rested one elbow against the arm of her chair. "Who confirmed that?"
"The palace physicians."
"And how did they determine it?"
"They listened to the heartbeat."
"One heartbeat?"
"Yes."
Her gaze sharpened.
"Clearly?"
I opened my mouth.
Then stopped.
Veronica noticed immediately.
"They heard one heartbeat," I said, more reluctantly now. "Most of the time."
"Most of the time," she repeated.
"There were difficulties distinguishing it."
"Overlapping sounds?"
I did not answer.
Her small smile answered for me.
"Overlapping heartbeats can be difficult to separate," she said.
Beside me, Elias slowly placed his pie on the table.
That alone was alarming.
His face had adopted the thoughtful expression that nearly always preceded him saying something deeply irritating. He looked toward the couch, studying Ophelia's sleeping form with an intensity that made me dislike him before he even spoke.
"Her stomach is rather large."
I turned toward him immediately.
"Do not call my wife large."
"I meant medically."
"You are not a physician."
"Neither are you."
"I know my wife."
Elias folded his arms over his chest. "Apparently not internally."
Veronica laughed into her wineglass.
She attempted to disguise it as a cough.
She failed.
Elias continued staring thoughtfully toward Ophelia. "Twins," he murmured. "That would explain several things."
Veronica lifted one shoulder. "Possibly."
Then she shrugged again.
"But I could still be wrong."
I pointed directly at her.
"You need to stop doing that."
"Doing what?"
"Shrugging."
"I refuse to pretend certainty when there is none."
"Ohh Gods I only have one cradle ready." The words escaped before I could stop them.
Silence answered. My gaze moved toward the nursery door.
One cradle waited beyond it. One blanket had been folded neatly inside.
One rabbit sat near the pillow because Veronica had refused to remove it.
One wardrobe had been organized for one child.
One set of everything. I had prepared for one child.
Only one.
Elias followed my gaze before looking back at me.
"There is room for another cradle," he said.
"That is not the point."
"What is the point?"
"I'm not ready God Dan it ."
Veronica looked between us with increasing disgust.
Before she could interrupt, another sound came from the couch.
A soft groan.
Every head turned.
Ophelia shifted beneath the blankets, curling instinctively around the pillow supporting her stomach. One knee drew upward while one hand slipped protectively beneath the curve of her body. Her breathing changed almost immediately, becoming shallow and uneven as tension gathered across her face.
I was already standing before I realized I had moved.
Beside me, Elias rose just as quickly.
Only Veronica remained seated.
I looked at her in disbelief.
"Do something."
She glanced toward Ophelia, studied her for a moment, and then looked back at me.
"I am."
"You are sitting."
"I am observing."
"She is in pain."
"Yes."
"And you are doing nothing."
"If she can still relax enough to drift back to sleep between contractions," Veronica said, "then she is managing."
I stared at her.
"That is the least reassuring sentence anyone has ever spoken."
"It was not intended to reassure you." A faint smile touched her mouth.
Ophelia pushed herself halfway upright.
The movement was sudden enough to send several pillows sliding around her.
Her jaw clenched so tightly I saw the muscle jump beneath her cheek.
Tears had already escaped from the corners of her eyes before she seemed fully awake, one hand gripping the pillow while the other pressed beneath her stomach as though trying to hold herself together through force alone.
Everything inside me stopped.
Beside me, Elias muttered a curse.
Then he looked quickly toward me.
"Do not panic." He shouted
I rounded on him.
"I am not panicking."I responded back
"You are shouting."
"You shouted first."
"I was calmly instructing you."
"You screamed."
"I raised my voice."
"You looked terrified."
"You looked unstable."
"I am perfectly stable."
"You threatened arson."
"For efficiency."
Elias stared at me as though that proved his argument.
"It does not sound more reasonable the second time."
"It does if the physicians move faster."
Veronica closed her eyes.
For a moment, she remained perfectly still. Then she set her wineglass aside, rose from the couch, and walked between us with the patience of a woman approaching two particularly difficult children.
"You are both complete idiots," she said without slowing.
Neither Elias nor I argued.
Mostly because she was right.
She knelt beside Ophelia.
My wife had awakened fully now, though pain kept her eyes half-closed. Her breathing came through clenched teeth. Tears slid down her cheeks in quiet lines she seemed too distracted to wipe away.
Veronica reached toward her.
Ophelia flinched.
"Easy," Veronica said.
Her voice changed.
It became warm.
Not the false sweetness people used around frightened children. Not pity. Something steady enough to lean against. She brushed the tears from Ophelia's face with the side of her thumb.
"You are alright."
Ophelia shook her head faintly.
"It hurts."
"I know."
Veronica placed one hand along the side of Ophelia's face and began massaging carefully near the hinge of her jaw. "You are clenching. Let it go."
Ophelia tried.
Failed.
Veronica kept her voice soft. "Do not fight your whole body at once. Start here."
Her thumb moved in slow circles.
"Open your mouth."
Ophelia drew a shaking breath.
Her jaw unlocked slightly.
"That is it," Veronica murmured. "Again."
I stood several feet away.
Useless.
That realization arrived like humiliation.
I knew how to lead armies. I knew how to stop bleeding from battlefield wounds, how to hold pressure against torn flesh, how to carry men through fire. I knew which tendons disabled hands, which arteries killed fastest, which poisons left no scent, which formations broke cavalry charges.
None of it told me what to do while my wife cried into a pillow.
I moved one step closer.
Ophelia's eyes found mine.
Pain clouded them.
Fear beneath it.
That nearly destroyed me.
I lowered myself beside the couch, opposite Veronica, and took Ophelia's hand.
Her fingers closed around mine hard enough to hurt.
"Achille," she whispered.
"I am here."
The words came too quickly.
Too desperately.
I forced my voice lower.
"I am here, my love."
Another tear slipped free.
Veronica continued massaging her jaw and cheek. "You are doing well."
Ophelia made a small, disbelieving sound.
"You are," Veronica said. "Your body is doing something unfamiliar. That does not mean it is doing something wrong."
Ophelia's grip tightened around my hand I watched every breath, every tremor, every small movement and found no logic in any of it. How could something necessary look so much like harm? How could the body distinguish between creation and destruction when both demanded blood, pain, and surrender?