The moment the words left her mouth, maids bolted into the corridor like arrows. Marisen and the nanny, who had stood frozen as if paralyzed, hurried to the bedside.
Talia scanned their pale faces in terror, her hand darting out to seize the hem of the Eastern woman's dress as Tiuran propped a pillow beneath her hips.
“W-what is happening? Is something wrong?”
Sympathy flickered across the woman’s bronzed face.
Enclosing Talia’s icy palm in both of hers, she spoke with deliberate calm.
“Do not worry too much. For now… we must see how this progresses.”
It was an answer crafted to avoid giving details.
Gasping as though a hand were clamped around her throat, Talia tugged harder at the woman’s sleeve.
“The child… Has something happened to the child?”
The woman did not answer.
Talia wrenched the fabric again.
“I am asking if my child is safe!”
“You must not move like that!”
The woman pressed down firmly on her shoulders. Her dark brown eyes held Talia’s frantic, terror-stricken gaze with steady resolve.
“Breathe deeply. You must stay strong—if only for the baby.”
Looking up at that unyielding face through a haze of tears, Talia finally drew a ragged breath.
Will everything really be all right if I do? she wanted to ask, but the woman had already turned away, busy gathering an armful of clean linen cloths across the room.
As Talia followed her with bloodshot eyes, Marisen caught her pale hand in a tight grasp.
“I… I will weave healing magic for you.”
The healer’s face was just as drained of color.
Talia gripped her hand as though clinging to a lifeline, and a faint warmth soon began to trickle through her flesh.
Yet no miraculous reprieve followed. The stabbing prickle in her lower abdomen gave way to a violent, wringing contraction.
With a sharp gasp of pain, Talia curled inward. Tiuran rushed back and pushed her flat against the mattress.
“No more fluid must leak out! Please, you must endure it, no matter how much it hurts.”
Talia tried desperately to obey. But the agony was so fierce that lying still was sheer torment.
She tore at the bedding, her breath coming in ragged gasps.
The door flew open, and a middle-aged woman in a black habit swept into the room.
“Out of the way.”
The priestess brushed past Marisen to the bedside and, without hesitation, pushed Talia’s skirts up to her thighs.
Damp undergarments and the loosely bandaged leg lay exposed to the room, but there was no room for shame. Talia could only bite her lip against the tearing pain that sharpened by the second.
The priestess peeled the wet cloth away, parted her knees, and probed within with her fingers.
Before Talia could even recoil from the shock of the intrusion, the priestess looked over her shoulder and called out.
“The cervix is already beginning to open. The child is coming.”
“It is far too soon!”
The nanny’s shriek pierced Talia’s ears like a needle.
Even half out of her senses, Talia wrapped both arms around her belly, guarding it.
She was right. It was far too early. There were still three whole months before her time.
Talia shook her head frantically.
“No. Stop it! Do something to stop it!”
“Once the water breaks, there is no stopping it. We have to bring the child out quickly.”
The priestess spoke curtly, nodding toward the maids lingering near the doorway.
“Set the screens around the bed. And you—bring the kit from my quarters. It is sitting on the shelf.”
At her command, the maids moved in brisk accord.
Talia watched the commotion unfold as if trapped in a waking nightmare, then screwed her eyes shut as another blinding wave of pain crashed over her.
The pressure bearing down on her lower abdomen was mounting steadily. Now even she could feel it unmistakably.
The child was trying to push its way out.
The sheer dread of that reality eclipsed even the agony that felt as though her spine were being cleaved in two. Only one thought echoed through her mind.
Can a baby born this early survive?
Even with how little she knew of carrying and bearing children, Talia knew premature births rarely ended well.
How much had the little thing even grown?
Her trembling hands groped blindly, coming to rest against an abdomen that had tightened as hard as stone.
Only half a day ago, she had worried the baby was growing too large. She had felt a twinge of regret for eating with such reckless abandon.
Now, she regretted not feeding it more. She should have eaten until she burst. She should have made the child strong enough to survive anything.
“Stay with us! Your Grace, you must hold on.”
A damp cloth pressed coolly against her forehead.
Starting awake at the touch, Talia realized she had squeezed her eyes shut.
Blinking bloodshot eyes, she stared up at the dark ceiling flicked with candlelight, then let her gaze fall to the circle of faces hovering over her.
The priestess, Tiuran, Marisen, the nanny, Aretha, and several other servants had taken their places. Talia’s eyes darted frantically among them, though she did not know what she was searching for.
The moment she parted her lips to speak, another horrific convulsion struck. It was an agony that stripped away the ability to think.
All semblance of control shattered; Talia thrashed wildly on the bed as a piercing scream tore from her throat.
Above the noise, a low growl shook the walls like a beast.
“Get out of my way.”
“Your Grace, Her Grace is in labor! Men are forbidden from—”
A sharp cry cut through the frantic attempt to bar him, and the door slammed open. A man in black uniform strode past the dividing screens.
Talia reached out toward him like a drowning woman grasping at a branch.
“Varkas…”
Varkas crossed the room in long strides and bent over the bed.
Talia clung to his hot, sweat-soaked neck with everything she had. Through her blurred vision, his distraught face hovered in broken pieces.
“Help me, Varkas… Please… It hurts so much.”
At her sobbing plea, the arms around her tightened until they crushed.
Holding her so close she could scarcely draw breath, Varkas snapped at the priestess.
“How does it stand?”
“The passage is opening well enough. But the child will not descend…”
Her abdomen seized in another violent spasm, and the voices faded into a dull, distant roar.
A thin whimper broke from Talia as her fingers clawed into the thick cloth over his shoulders. It felt as if her entire lower half were being ground to pieces.
“Your Grace, you must bear down now. You have to push the child out!”
Talia shook her head frantically.
No. I cannot. I am frightened. It hurts too much. I said it hurts.
She looked up at Varkas, pleading. She held his gaze as if clinging to him could somehow fix the unfixable.
Through the wash of tears, his face appeared paler than she had ever seen it—a mask of white stone hovering just above hers.
“It is all right, Talia. It will be all right, so do not weep.”
He wiped the wet tracks from her cheeks with freezing hands, his voice dropping to a low, trembling murmur.
Talia’s face twisted in anguish.
It was not all right. Nothing was. Yet because he said it, she wanted so desperately to believe.
END