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As winter deepened, her belly swelled noticeably.
The change, once wondrous and a quiet source of pride, soon turned into torment. As the baby grew, so did the toll on her body.
Groaning from an ache that felt as though her spine were splitting in two, Talia tried carefully to shift. Yet no matter how she lay, the pain offered no respite.
“Would you like to turn toward this side? I can knead your lower back for you.”
Watching her suffer, Marisen offered the gentle suggestion.
Talia nodded at once. Normally she hated being touched, but she was in no state to be particular.
“Could you lift your legs just a little? It might bring some relief if I slide a cushion between them.”
“Like this…?”
As she raised her knees slightly, the healer slipped a pillow between them.
Talia let out a long breath. It did little for her aching back, but at least the dull numbness dragging at her legs began to ease.
“Tell me if it hurts.”
Leaning over the bed, Marisen began working her thumbs into her lower back with measured, practiced pressure.
Talia groaned softly and let her stiffened legs unbend.
Moving her hands lower, the healer checked the tight muscles and asked,
“How are your legs feeling?”
“Why bother asking? They hurt terribly, of course.”
“If it is truly unbearable, shall I burn a little dream-grass for you?”
Talia frowned, studying Marisen’s face. That calm countenance held nothing but concern.
“Will that… harm the baby?”
“Now that you have reached the stable period, it shouldn’t pose any grave risk.”
Talia looked down at her stomach, torn.
She longed desperately to escape the pain even for an hour, but the slightest danger to the child terrified her.
As she hesitated, Tiuran, who had been stoking the hearth, cut in.
“It is better to avoid medicine if you can. The effects of dream-grass on an unborn child have never been properly established.”
Marisen glared back, visibly offended.
“Do you think I would prescribe anything harmful to Her Grace? I have given pain relief to expectant mothers before, and there has never been an issue.”
“Yet unforeseen things happen—”
“Enough.”
Talia cut through their bickering. She lacked the patience to sit through this quiet battle between them.
“Even if I take something, the ache will only return the moment I wake. I will bear it.”
“Still, you can barely sleep through the agony. If you collapse from exhaustion—”
“I said that is enough. If you mean to nag, leave.”
Pushing Marisen’s hands away with a sharp shove, Talia pulled the blanket over her head. She had no energy left for senseless squabbles.
As her swollen womb pressed on the nerves of her twisted hips, her aching legs throbbed incessantly, and spasms seized her calves with increasing frequency.
The sharp ache in her back worsened day by day. The thought that she had to endure this until summer threatened to crush her.
Talia laid both hands over the swell of her belly.
A faint flutter shifted beneath the taut skin, and in an instant, the resentment she had begun to harbor toward the child melted away.
Even so, she meant to settle accounts once the babe was born.
‘I suffered so much because of you. But I endured it all. So you have to listen to me. And you have to love me most in the entire world. Because I will do the same for you.’
Lost in these vacant thoughts, she must have drifted off.
Feeling a hand brush across her forehead, Talia opened her eyes to see Varkas’s shadowed face looking down at her. She sat up groggily.
“When did you arrive?”
“I returned only just now, after concluding my duties. Please, lie back down.”
“No. My back aches from lying down all day.”
Brushing aside his hands as he tried to ease her down, she leaned against the headboard’s bolster and took in his formal dress.
In a reddish-brown doublet embroidered in the intricate style of the East and polished black boots, he carried all the dignity and poise of high nobility.
“Was there some formal occasion?”
Talia eyed him with suspicion, struck by how grandly he was dressed.
Varkas answered evenly, unfastening the buttons of his doublet.
“I merely attended the assembly of the Noble Alliance.”
“Meetings have been frequent of late. Has some trouble arisen?”
“Nothing of the sort. More importantly, why did you change chambers?”
Varkas turned the subject abruptly, dissatisfaction coloring his tone.
Talia curled her hands over her knees, lowering her eyes.
“I keep you awake. I thought it better that we sleep apart until the child comes.”
“Set aside such useless considerations.”
His reply was sharp as he leaned across the bed.
Sensing he meant to lift her, Talia shrank back against the far corner.
“It is easier for me this way.”
His eyes narrowed.
Looking down at her, Varkas sat on the edge of the mattress and spoke in a cool, measured tone.
“Did you not once say you were uneasy unless I remained near to care for you?”
“That was before… Things are different now.”
“What is different?”
Talia took in his silhouette, strong and striking against the light, then cast her gaze down at herself through the thin nightgown. Breasts heavy as a milk cow’s, a belly swollen like a toad’s.
She had despised her gaunt frame before, but this body, stretched to bursting, disgusted her even more. Wholly apart from the miracle of carrying a life, she felt utterly wretched that she was neither elegant like Ayla nor alluring like Senevier.
She pulled the quilt up to her shoulders and spoke with an edge of irritation.
“It did not hurt like this before.”
“That is all the more reason for me to stay by your side and tend to you.”
Frowning, Varkas reached for her again.
Talia flinched and pulled away, but before she could slip free, his long arm came around her back.
Drawn onto his lap in an instant, Talia frantically yanked the hem of her gown down toward her feet.
Yet Varkas’s focus remained entirely on her waist.
Tracing the tight muscles beside her spine with firm palms, he saw her tearful expression and his brow furrowed.
“Does it hurt that badly?”
Talia glared up at him through wet eyes.
He would never begin to comprehend this desperate urge to conceal her ruined body.
She knew it was foolish. Yet ever since she was nine years old, she had longed to be the most beautiful woman in the world in his eyes. The realization that she could not be felt like despair itself.
“Yes, it hurts enough to kill me.”
Unable to confess the truth, Talia lashed out in temper instead.
“It is unfair. Why must I be the only one to suffer like this? I wish you hurt even half as much as I do.”
“…Then you should keep me close and torment me. Why insist on separate rooms?”
Varkas murmured coaxingly, his hand gently stroking her back.
Her guard began to crumble at his gentle voice, but only for a heartbeat. As his fingers drifted toward her swollen belly, she abruptly drew her knees to her chest, curling in on herself.
“No. Do not touch it.”
“Why?”
The patience that had gentled his features finally snapped, leaving his expression sharp.
Varkas drew a slow breath, his voice dropping low.
“It is my child. Why do you refuse to let me even touch you lately?”
“It is not your child.”
His face hardened to ice at the petulant declaration.
Her heart gave a frightful lurch, yet Talia pressed on, feigning composure.
“Until it enters this world, it belongs entirely to me. Since I am the one suffering to bear it, having sole claim is only fair.”
At this display of sheer stubbornness, the furrow between Varkas’s brows carved deeper still.
END