Chapter 603: Seams

Eris was still looking at the grey light on the window, but the glass seemed small, like she was looking through the wrong end of a spyglass. The pain was moving through her ribs in long, steady waves, and with every wave that went out, it took a piece of her breath with it, leaving her smaller and emptier than she had been a second before.

Not yet, she thought, her fingers curling into the wool of Mira’s sleeve. Not yet. Please.

Whether she was talking to the god or the three lives moving beneath her ribs, she couldn’t tell.

The dark came in from the edges of the corridor, and the frost on the glass was the last thing she saw before the floor disappeared.

The stone chambers of the northern palace were quiet when the fit finally passed. Eris lay propped against the linen pillows, her skin the color of snow, her breath rattling like dry leaves in her throat.

The sharp, tearing pain had drawn back for the moment, leaving behind a dull, heavy ache that sat right behind her ribs, regular as a heartbeat and twice as heavy.

Aldwin sat on the edge of the mattress, his old face lined by the grey morning light. He had three fingers pressed against the inside of her wrist, his thumb resting over the quick pulse at her temple.

It was the old way of checking the blood, a slow business that needed a completely silent room and a long time to listen to what the veins were saying.

Under his fingers, the blood didn’t run smooth. It jumped and stumbled, thick with a heat that didn’t belong to a living body.

Aldwin didn’t look up, but the skin around his jaw turned white as he clenched his teeth.

He kept his head perfectly still, his eyes fixed on the blanket, hiding the truth under years of court manners. It took everything he had to keep his hands from shaking while he held her.

In the frame of the doorway, Ryse stood with his bulky arms crossed over his chest. He wasn’t looking at Eris; his dark eyes were drilled straight into the side of Aldwin’s face, watching every tiny twitch of the old healer’s mouth.

Next to him, Aldric stood with his hands dangling empty at his sides.

Aldwin let go of her wrist and let his hand drop onto his knee. He leaned back, his old bones creaking under his wool coat.

"You need to rest," he said, his voice low and deliberate, like he was trying to keep the words from breaking. "For the remainder of the day. And tomorrow as well. No councils. No talk of the border."

Eris didn’t move her head from the pillows, but her amber eyes found his face. They were too large for her thin cheeks now. "How much time, Aldwin?"

The old healer looked down at his own knuckles. "Eris—"

"Aldwin," she said again. She didn’t raise her voice. She just said his name the exact way she had when she was ten years old and had fallen from the stable loft, a short, flat sound that meant please don’t lie to me.

The old man stayed quiet for five long breaths. He was a man trapped between a soft lie that would let her sleep and the hard truth she had earned through every year she had spent carrying the god’s weight.

"Less than we thought," he said.

The room went so still that the scrape of a pine branch against the window glass sounded like an iron rake.

Eris gave one short nod. Her face didn’t change, and her mouth didn’t tremble.

She didn’t cry or scream or reach for the maid’s hand. She simply reached down with her left hand, pulled the wool blanket an inch higher over her shoulders, and then let her right palm slide over her winter skirts until it rested flat against her belly. Her fingers spread wide over the small mound beneath the cloth.

"The children," she said.

"They are strong," Aldwin said, and for the first time his voice came fast and sure, without any hesitation.

"Whatever happens to the seal, they are separate from it. The heat doesn’t touch harm them. They will be fine, Eris. I give you my word on that."

"Good," she said. It was one short word, but it carried every single thing she wasn’t allowed to say out loud... the fear for the small things inside her, the long nights in the dark, and the knowledge that she was running out of mornings.

The mages moved out of the room, their boots clicking soft on the stones until the door clicked shut behind them.

Aldwin stayed by the bed, alone with her in the grey light. He looked at the white hair damp against her temples, then turned his eyes toward the south window, where the mountains hid the road to Solmire.

Soren, he thought, his old fingers curling into his sleeves. Whatever you found in those stones, come back with it quickly.

But as he looked at the shallow rise and fall of her chest, he kept his mouth shut. He didn’t tell her that he wasn’t sure quickly would be enough anymore.

Soren came out of the dark hole into the great chamber, passed the high pillars of the nave, and walked under the broken archway into the afternoon air.

His boots were covered in the grey dust of the mages’ bones, and his hand was still curled tight around the cold silver chain in his pocket.

The courtyard didn’t look the way he had left it.

The light had gone bad. The afternoon sky over the red-wood forest wasn’t blue or grey or even the amber of a Solmiran winter; it had turned a strange, muddy purple at the very edge of the earth, like ink spreading through a cup of milk.

The sun was still up, but it didn’t cast sharp shadows anymore. The whole world looked like it was being seen through greasy glass.

Before he could lift his face to look at the clouds, the stones moved under his feet.

It wasn’t the sudden, violent jerk of a mountain earthquake. It was a low, heavy wobble, the specific vibration of a great iron weight shifting miles below the dirt. The ground didn’t shake so much as it slid.