AllFreeNovel
Share Us
But I couldn’t be specific this time. I made a wish that I might have made in my old life, full of formless longing for something I couldn’t quite define. Like writing it on a piece of paper, I folded it up, filled my little wish-boat with all my hope, with all the love and desire Rogue brought out in me, and set it to sail on the vast ocean of the universe.
Let everything come out okay.
*
I lost trackof time. Even more so than usual. Never again would I turn a deaf ear when women complained about childbirth. The inevitability of the progression of it overwhelmed me. No matter how I might wish to call a halt, my own body dragged me along, unstoppable, grueling, exhausting.
Fortunately I had Darling Hercules to absorb the pain—without the invasion of an epidural, too—and Rogue to press kisses to my sweating forehead, offering me comfort and strength in equal doses.
Like commentators at a baseball game, Athena and Starling narrated the progression of the siege, which had commenced in earnest pretty much the instant I went into labor. Lest anyone doubt that Titania knew exactly what went on with us.
Larch was indeed off leading the Brownies, who had convened at the Castle of the Dark Gods in force, both in front of Titania’s troops and behind. Rogue had to magically shore up the dragon-perch on our tower, as at least a dozen convened to witness the birth, a pair of lantern eyes occasionally peeping up over the edge to check on me.
“It’s not like I’m giving birth to the Christ Child or anything,” I muttered, after one dragon hovered overhead for a better look.
They all ignored me. Or, at least, ignored my words. I likely wasn’t making much sense and really, it didn’t matter. They were all doing their part to take care of me and that meant the most.
After a particularly brutal contraction that, though it didn’t hurt, left me drained, I closed my eyes and rested against Rogue. Though he fed me energy, as did the cat and Mother Earth, it felt like pouring water down a bottomless well. Magic into a mortal body. Some of it simply wouldn’t stick. Coming back to myself, I happened to glimpse through my lashes a concerned expression crossing Nancy’s face.
“What?” I asked her and, though she tried to dissemble, I held her gaze. “Tell me.”
She scrubbed her hands on a towel. Soaked with bright red blood. My blood. “The babe is big and you are not. With the pregnancy advancing so quickly, your hip bones haven’t adjusted. Though it’s tearing you apart, I’m not sure the birth canal will expand enough. In time.”
And me without a cesarean section.
“Get Lady Healer,” Rogue snapped.
Unbidden, the image from Nancy’s story rose in my mind. Fafnir slicing Cecily open. He and Lady Incandescence taking the child. As if on cue, Nasty Tinker Bell poofed into the room. So much for her not being able to do magic.
Under me, Rogue tensed and Darling Hercules growled low in his throat.
“That won’t help the child,” Incandescence told him in her silver-bell voice. “Lady Healer can stand by to repair your sorceress afterward, but the babe must come out first.”
Starling and Athena flanked the bed. For the first time I noticed that Starling had a rapier. She looked proud. “Officer Liam’s been teaching me.” She pointed the weapon convincingly at Nasty Tinker Bell. “It’s silver. You won’t get close to Gwynn.”
Incandescence kept her smile focused on Rogue. “I don’t have to. Lord Rogue will do it. Or they both die. Do I need to explain what that means?”
“No,” Rogue replied in a quiet voice that belied his emotional turmoil. Dread, terror, desperate hope. I listened to his internal debate with a sense of exhausted inevitability. Of course it had come to this. As with it all, every portent, each step of my journey had led to this exact scenario. My energy flagging, for a hallucinogenic moment I imagined I still stood in that aspen grove, the bloodied knife in my hand, tying a lock of my hair to the tree, Devils Tower running with blue-black magic like blood from a wound. Almost as if I existed in both realities at once.
Nancy was right, though she hadn’t said the words. I was dying.
I clutched at Rogue, forcing him to look at me. “You have to do it. Cut the baby out. It’s the only way.”
He stared back at me, agonized. “Mistress Nancy shall do it.”
“No. It’s meant. She can guide you, but it should be you. Just, um—don’t use the sword, okay?”
He didn’t laugh. “Will you place the knife in my hand then, my Gwynn?”
“Don’t be dramatic.” I gathered my tattered magical energy and wished up a surgical scalpel. “Use this. Much more precise.”
“You undo me.” He was tired too, feeding me so much of himself only to have my weakening mortal flesh gobble it up and continue to fail.
“I know.” I wrapped his fingers around the handle of the scalpel. “But I trust you more than anyone. Do this for me.”
He pressed a fervent kiss to my temple and said nothing more. He didn’t have to.
Starling helped me lie back, so I didn’t have to see, while Athena kept a wary eye—and dagger point—on Incandescence. Darling Hercules lay on my chest, his purring thrumming through me with comfort. At least he didn’t have to put me out entirely this time and I stroked his velvety fur, grateful that he saved me from feeling the piece-by-piece destruction of my body.
