Page 80 of Omega’s Fealty

He closes the folder.

The contraction lets go of me. Roan has his arm around my back and he has not said anything since the car, but I can smell him, coffee and the sharp edge that comes into it when he is afraid. His hand on my hip is not quite steady.

“The pool is ready, Your Majesty,” says the older doctor. She is a small woman with gray hair cut very short and she has been to see me every week since I came home. Her name is Dr. Pesch. “Many find the water helps with the early stages.”

I look at the pool. The steam is coming off it in the cold light from the windows. The tiles are very blue. Everyone in the room is watching me look at it.

“No,” I say.

Dr. Pesch nods. “As you like.”

“I don’t want it.” I have said no. I don’t need to explain it. I find that I want to, though, so that it is clear, so that it is mine. “I would like the bed. I would like the lights lower than this. And I would like everyone to leave.”

The room goes quiet.

“Everyone,” I say, “except my husband, and Dr. Pesch.”

The Chamberlain opens his mouth.

“The midwives will be next door,” Dr. Pesch says, before he can get anything out. “In the anteroom. If I need them, I will call for them. If I need anyone else, I will call for them too.” She looks at the Chamberlain over her glasses. “I will call.”

They go.

It’s been months now and I still can’t believe it when people do what I ask. It’s wonderful.

Havel stops beside me on his way to the door.

“I will be outside,” he says. “The whole time.”

“I know.”

Gerhard shuts the door behind him. I hear the lock turn on the outside and then the murmur of them all in the anteroom, and then not even that.

“Come on, sweetheart,” Roan says. It is the first thing he has said. “Let’s get you out of that suit.”

The baby takes a long time coming.

Roan is on the bed behind me for the first part with my back against his chest. Then he is beside it, on his knees on the floor, holding both my hands while I make a noise into the mattress that I would not have believed I had in me. Then he is behind me again.

The light goes from the windows. Dr. Pesch turns on a lamp in the corner and leaves the rest dark. She comes and goes, checking in.

“You are doing well,” she says. “It is your first. First ones take their time.”

“How much time?”

“As much as it needs.”

That is incredibly unhelpful, even as I know she is right. No one can predict these things.

Roan brings me ice. Somebody has left a bowl of it on the side table and it has half melted and he goes into the enormous bathroom and comes back with a cup of it from somewhere, and he sits on the edge of the bed and feeds it to me a chip at a time between his fingers.

“You don’t have to do that.”

“I know.”

He does it anyway. His fingers are cold and wet and he is watching my mouth. I take another chip and hold it on my tongue and the next contraction comes and I bite down on it.

It cracks between my teeth. He takes my hand and lets me crush his knuckles.