Chapter 15
Rowenna’s letter arrived at the tail end of summer, when the sun clung to the horizon like a child refusing sleep. Ilys tore into it like a woman starved, for words, for affection, for the kind of company that didn’t measure her by obedience. Gods, how she missed her.
My dearest Ilys,
The sky here is orange more often than not, and the pears bruise if you so much as think at them harshly. Which means, I suppose, it’s nearly time for me to split open like a ripe fig and introduce the world to a very small, very loud person.
Would you like to see a child exit my body?
Directions (for your amusement and mild frustration): take the north road past the weeping alder. Follow the hill until the path becomes indecent. My cottage is tucked behind the blackberry thorns. Knock twice, then once, then shout something rude and possibly blasphemous.
There’s a bed here. And tea. And me, terrified, yes, but oddly calm when I imagine your boots on my doorstep. Come if you will. I won’t pretend it will make things easier, but it would make them lovelier.
Fat and desperate,
Rowenna
Ilys read it twice, then a third time, slower. Her hands trembled as she folded it again, her thumb pressed to the seam like a seal.
Could she leave?
Veil Law did not dictate where she went as long as she fulfilled her duty; though it did forbid the attachment that drew her away.
What was the alternative? Staying, grieving, rotting until Death arrived for the march?
She had lost so much. With her life given to the Bargain, could she not steal away for just a moment? Claim a shred of life as her own?
Baron had begged for her blade. Grim had left her in the hands of a fickle god. Death… Death held her like a vise for his amusement.
But Rowenna? Rowenna asked for only her presence. Even now, belly heavy with a new life and fear curled under her ribs, Rowenna had not summoned the Veilwalker or the executioner. She had called for Ilys. Simply Ilys.
Later, she could not sleep.
The Veilwalker lay curled beneath her thin covers, eyes open to the dark, tracing and retracing each step she would take from the Sanctum to the road, thoughts darting like minnows.
Every sound in the stillness, creaking floorboards, the low sigh of wind through the shutters, seemed louder than it should be.
Still, she waited. When she moved, she dropped low and fluid, like water slipping between cracks.
She dressed in shadow, donning her cloak and lifting the satchel she had packed hours before.
At the stables, the scent of hay and horse sweat greeted her.
Her mare, Spire, lifted her head as Ilys approached, nostrils flaring, hooves shifting with impatience.
Ilys reached out and brushed the forelock from Spire’s eyes, fingers gentle, reverent.
“I will spoil you,” she whispered, “if you do right by me now.”
Spire snorted in cheeky approval.
Ilys led her out past the paddock, beyond the sleeping watchhouse, and into the pale wash of pre-dawn light. Ahead, Annon stretched wide and quiet.
She mounted in one smooth motion, the leather creaking beneath her. Then, with a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding, Ilys pressed her heels to Spire’s sides and began the ride.
Rowenna's cottage looked half-swallowed by the bramble thicket, just as promised, with blackberry canes like reaching arms, their last fruits gone soft with age. Ilys dismounted, her legs stiff, her cloak clinging with mist and travel’s grit. Her heart thudded, eager and foolishly tender.
She knocked twice, then once, then shouted, “You still alive in there, you stubborn cow?”
The door opened at once. Rowenna stood barefoot in the threshold, face flushed, belly enormous beneath her linen dress. Her hair frizzed in a riot of waves, pulled back with a single ribbon that had given up hours ago. She looked tired and radiant and utterly unsurprised.
“You actually came,” Rowenna noted, with unabashed sentiment.
Ilys stared for a beat too long before replying, “Gods, you’re massive.”
Rowenna barked a laugh. “I told you! Mother Inrith and the lot could move in.”
“You’re—” Ilys stepped inside, cloak slipping from her shoulders—"you’re fat, Rowe.”
“I am!” Rowenna grinned, arms open. “Now come say hello properly.”
They embraced in the narrow cottage doorway, laughter muffled in the folds of each other’s shoulders. Ilys held her tight, heart thudding beneath layers of wool and sweat and softness. When they finally pulled apart, Ilys dropped to her knees like a pilgrim and placed both hands on Rowenna’s belly.
“I’m naming it,” Ilys announced, palms warm against the wide curve of her unborn child.
“Oh?” Rowenna didn’t open her eyes, her head resting against the crook of the doorframe, crown tilted.
“Woolf.”
Now her eyes opened, one brow lifting just enough to register disapproval. “Woolf?”
“Two O’s. Proper menace. Definitely the type to bite.”
Rowenna snorted softly. “You’re not naming a child, you’re naming a mythic monster.”
“Exactly,” Ilys said, satisfied. “It fits. I can feel them plotting already.”
Ilys shed her cloak and began tending to the hearth while Rowenna lowered herself carefully into a worn chair by the window, the kind that had once been stuffed properly but now sighed, thinning and mourning earlier days.
“Sit if you like,” Rowenna said, eyes on the fire. “Or sweep the soot. I’ve no pride left, only dust and a list of things I can no longer reach.”
Ilys took up the broom without a word, brushing the ashes into a waiting pan.
They moved about the cottage in the easy hush of old familiarity, elbows brushing, breath syncing.
They ate simply: stewed carrots, barley, and rough slices of bread.
The kind of food that sticks to your ribs.
Later, with her feet tucked beneath her and one hand resting idly on the rise of her belly, Rowenna spoke without turning her head.
“Leif’s on the southern route again. Trade’s thick this time of year. He’ll miss the birth.”
Ilys glanced up. “Does that trouble you?”
“No.” Rowenna rubbed a reassuring circle against her side, where the child shifted restlessly. “He’s dutiful. Good with coin. Quick with tools. Listens when I speak. That’s more than I ever thought I’d bargain for.”
She paused, then added with a faint glint in her eye, “And when it comes to intimacy, he’s… teachable.”
Ilys arched her brow, chiding frivolously, “Rowe.”
“I’m only saying,” Rowenna said with a faint laugh. “If one must lie with a man, it’s a comfort when he’s willing to be taught what’s worth the trouble.”
She turned her head at last, meeting Ilys’s eyes with a look both wry and soft. “I don’t feel wildly for him. I don’t lie awake aching for his return. But I do not dread him. I admire his steadiness. His willingness to leave me be.”
“That’s love, then?” Ilys asked quietly.
“Perhaps.” Rowenna leaned back, one hand trailing across her own collarbone. “Or it’s the closest thing I’ve had that doesn’t cut.”
Night gathered in the corners of the cottage. The candles burned low, their wax puddling like pale petals across the table. Rain had begun to patter at the windows, plodding and uncertain.
“I don’t know what sort of mold I’m meant to follow,” Rowenna confessed, voice low. “I don’t want to become her by accident. And I don’t want to shape myself to be too brittle, too polished, too good. I just… I want to do this right. But I haven’t the faintest idea what that looks like.”
She spoke then of her mother, an unruly specter. A priestess who had made a mockery of her vows, abandoned Rowenna and then vanished without warning. Her mother’s absence had taught her more than her presence ever had.
Ilys tightened her grip on Rowenna’s hand.
“Then don’t follow any mold,” Ilys offered softly. “Make something new. Make you.”
Rowenna’s gaze didn’t lift. “What if it’s not enough?”
“It will be,” Ilys said. “You’re careful with the things you love, Rowe.
You may not know the shape of this yet, but you’ll hold it gently.
” She smiled, but it caught in her throat, tight and aching.
Because she could see it now, the shape of the world bending.
A child would arrive, loud and warm and needful, and Rowenna would pivot toward it as sunflowers follow the sun.
It was natural. Ilys would not fault her.
But the grief was no less sharp for that reason.
This is how it ends, she thought.
She marveled at her own bitterness, the strange little ache blooming behind her ribs. What a strange, shameful thing, to envy a creature so small and soft and unborn. And yet, there it was.
Just once, she thought, let someone choose me above all else.
When Rowenna dozed at last, curled sideways on her narrow bed with her arm draped protectively over her belly, Ilys laid out her blanket near the hearth. The fire had died down to embers, glowing dim and red in the sooty stone.
She lay on her side, hands tucked to her chest, staring into the dark above. The sound of Rowenna’s breathing, deep and uniform, filled the quiet.
And Ilys tried, as she always had, to untangle herself from her own longing.
Days later, Ilys awoke to Rowenna’s hand on her shoulder. Ilys battled the sleep from her eyes and shifted beneath the heavy quilt.
Rowenna spoke through strain, her voice scraped clean of tenderness, “I waited as long as I could. It’s time.”
Ilys sat up, breath catching in her throat.
Her eyes adjusted quickly to the dim light.
Rowenna stood hunched beside the bed, one hand clamped around the bedpost, the other cradling the swell of her belly.
Her nightdress clung to her thighs, soaked through at the hem.
Her face, normally so composed, was drawn tight, jaw clenched, sweat already collecting at her brow.
Ilys didn’t waste words. She threw on her cloak, bound her hair in a quick twist beneath the veil, and slipped out into the cold. Rowenna had told her what to do. Days ago, calmly, as they shelled peas or hung linens to dry, as though discussing anything else.
“When it starts,” she’d began, “go to the edge of the village. Knock on the door with the cracked lintel. Rutha is her name.”
The frost had crept in overnight, painting the earth silver. Ilys pulled her hood low and kept her head down. The village still slept, though a few lamps burned behind thick curtains. She found the door by memory, skewed on its hinges, swollen from rain.
She knocked three times, hard.
A rustling. A creak. Then Rutha stood there, wrapped in a shawl, braid already tight down her back.
“She’s started?” the midwife asked, voice low and rough from sleep.
Ilys nodded. “She’s upright. But close.”
Rutha ducked inside, came back with her satchel. “Good. Better early than late.”
Ilys was glad the rest of the world had yet to wake.
She did not long for any eyes to peruse the strange sight: a Veilwalker and the midwife carrying on in familiar companionship.
The black sky had begun to thin at the edges, a blade of pale light pressing against the horizon.
By the time they returned, Rowenna had stripped the bed and lit two lamps.
She sat in the armchair by the hearth, knees wide, hands braced on her thighs, rocking with each wave.
The moment Rutha entered, she took command.
Bag on the floor. Palms on Rowenna’s belly. Fingers to her pulse.
“We’ve got time,” Rutha said. “But not much.”
She issued orders in short, clipped phrases.
“Boil water.”
“Blankets, clean if you have them.”
“Lay a cloth beneath her.”
“Keep her upright as long as she can stand it.”
Ilys moved quickly. She fed the fire until it roared, set the kettle on, soaked and wrung out cloths, and rolled up her sleeves. Her hands stayed rooted, even as the room filled with the scent of blood and iron, primal and vinous.
The labor dragged on. Hours. The light outside shifted from silver to gray, then gray to pale.
The frost melted off the windows. The floor darkened with splashes of water.
There were groans and cries, then guttural things torn from Rowenna’s throat.
Her face slickened with sweat, her hair plastered to her temples. Her thighs trembled, her grip bruising.
At one point she vomited into a bucket, breath heaving like a bellows, and groaned, “I can’t,” over and over again.
“You can,” Rutha said flatly. “And you will.”
Ilys knelt by the bed, wiping sweat from her forehead, offering her hand when asked, withdrawing when it was struck aside. She fetched, poured, cleaned. She stayed.
When the baby crowned, Rowenna’s scream tore free. The cry of a woman breaking herself open, bone and skin and spirit. Her thighs shook. Her fingernails split. And then, one final, wrenching push, guided by a sound like tearing.
Ever punctual, Rutha caught the child in her hands, slick and red and loud. A wail rang out, peart yet overtired.
“It’s a boy,” she announced, voice softened. “Full head of hair on him.”
Rowenna collapsed back against the pillows, mouth open, chest heaving. She looked spent, hollowed out. But when Rutha placed the child against her chest, Rowenna curled around him instinctively, arms trembling.
She didn’t cry. She didn’t smile. She just looked, really looked, at her son, as though already memorizing the shape of him. His tiny fists. His wet curls. His furious little face.
Ilys sat on the edge of the bed, reaching for a clean cloth to swaddle him.
Her fingers brushed Rowenna’s as she helped.
The kettle hissed, boiling over and Rutha moved to tend it, wordless, already cleaning tools and bloody linens with practiced ease.
Ilys stayed, knees stained, arms sore, hair sticking to her neck.
She watched the two of them in this new shape they’d become.
No celebration arrived. No sweeping music or miracle.
Just breath. Sweat. Blood. The work of birth.
And Ilys, who had ushered so many into the dark, now bore witness to something else: a beginning.