I sent a mental note of apology to all the women I’d thought had been exaggerating with their labor war stories.
“This is why you can’t walk,” Rogue informed me and I realized I’d rather convulsively grabbed on to him, my face buried in his chest.
“We would have stopped walking and waited it out.” I had to measure the words around my breaths, since the contraction had left me panting. No Lamaze classes for me. Was I supposed to pant or not? Seemed like the movies showed people breathing deep during contractions and panting between. Or vice versa—I hadn’t really paid attention.
“I suspect that, as long as you continue to breathe, that will suffice,” Rogue said, beginning the circular ascent up our stairs. I’d be happy when this was over and I could stay weakness-free long enough to climb the steps myself. If I lived through this.
I gazed up at Rogue, his perfectly carved face set in sharp lines like porcelain. A long lock of his still-loose hair was wound around my hand, where I’d reflexively grabbed hold of him. This was it. The moment of destiny. What I’d been rocketing toward all along, knowingly or not.
“I’ve really loved you, you know,” I told him.
“Don’t talk that way.” He sounded harsh, almost mean.
“I just want you to know that I didn’t have to. The rest of this might be fated or manipulated or whatever, but that part is real for me.”
“I know why you’re telling me that now, my Gwynn. Because you think this is the end of our story. I refuse to accept that.”
My megalomaniac.
The birthing team had assembled in the bedroom already, with Starling finishing up preparing the bed as Nancy provided instructions. I’d successfully won the argument for having at least this human in my tower. Rogue set me on the bed with infinite gentleness, leaning me against the piled-up pillows. I kept my grip on his hair as he started to pull away.
“Don’t go,” I told him.
He searched my face, for once deeply uncertain. “It might not be a good idea for me to be in the room.”
“If you’re somewhere else and...take it in your head to come here, does anyone have the power to stop you?”
His mouth twisted in a self-deprecating smile. “You, if anyone.”
And Titania, of course, but that went without saying, since we knew where she fell out on this.
“Then you might as well stay, since this is where I’ll be. I need you to stay.”
He caressed my left cheek, tracing the twining path of silver. “I really have loved you, too, my Gwynn. I never expected to feel anything for you. It’s made everything different.”
“Maybe true love will win the day after all,” I quipped, amused at myself and yet also, for the first time, maybe kind of believing that.
“If you’re staying then, milord Rogue,” Nancy inserted, her tone making it clear she didn’t approve in the least—and who could blame her?—”then you must needs stay out of the way. You can sit over there.”
“No. I need to be in physical contact with him.” I wasn’t sure why I decided that, but this was my party now. I could be unreasonable if I wanted to. “Rogue can sit behind me.”
“Boots off then, milord.” Nancy huffed about it, but didn’t argue further. Rogue settled himself behind me and I leaned gratefully against him, drawing on his strength as another contraction grabbed me in its merciless fist. Nancy held my hands and my gaze, supporting me though it. “I hope you know what you’re doing,” she said to me, as if Rogue weren’t right there. To his credit, he didn’t snarl at her.
“Nope,” I replied cheerfully. “Winging it, as usual.”
“Gwynn’s best guess is more reliable than certainty from anyone else I’ve met,” Athena added, coming back from her station by the glass wall, spinning her dagger thoughtfully. A new one. Pure silver, by the looks of it. She gave me a little nod and smiled sweetly at Rogue, her pansy face radiantly lovely, her sharp gaze full of menace. “And I’ll stop you, if I have to.”
“And I.” Starling set down a stack of towels. “Do you recall, Lord Rogue, that you owe me a boon?”
“Owes the both of us,” Athena corrected.
Darling Hercules came bounding into the room, leaping onto the bed, offering chagrin for being late, as he’d found a lovely spot in the sun to sleep in that he’d been loath to leave. He settled against me—my many muscle aches subsiding immediately—and fixed Rogue with a green gimlet stare, adding his demand.
“How could I forget?” Rogue answered them all in a dry tone, sliding his hands down my arms in a soothing caress. “Do you all intend to redeem them now?”
They exchanged looks and turned back to him. “Yes,” Starling said, in her firmest tone. “The same for both—oh, yes, Darling Hercules—all of us, to triple the power.”
“We want you to promise you’ll do nothing to harm Gwynn.” Athena spun her dagger meaningfully. Darling Hercules set a paw on Rogue’s bare foot and flexed his claws.
“He can’t promise that—” I started to say.
“Agreed,” Rogue said at the same time.
Dammit. He knew as well as I did that his promise wouldn’t hinder Titania if she took control of him and then he’d be forsworn as well, doubly in her power. Or sextupled, if the promise to all of them counted three times.
“Don’t fret, my lady Gwynn.” Rogue cupped my jaw, turning my head so I looked up at him. He kissed me, long and with great care. “Perhaps it will help.”
I made a wish then. One that Marquise and Scourge would have punished me for, with its vagueness. The kind that all the tales warned against—bargains with the devil that turned back to bite you, the monkey’s paw that fulfilled the letter of the wish, but in the most dreadful way possible.
I knew better. Be careful what you wish for.
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 track of 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.
Dimly I listened to Nancy instruct Rogue on where to cut while I watched a red-tailed hawk circle lazily over the tower. No—it was a dragon, high above Rogue’s castle.
Something gave in my body, a kind of snapping that seemed ominous. Then a baby cried. Rogue stood, the infant kicking in his large hands, her face screwed up in indignant rage.
“A girl,” I breathed and reached for her.
But, his face remote, his mind withdrawing from mine, he turned away to show Incandescence.
“You know what you have to do,” she told him.
And he handed her the baby.
Part V
Final Thesis
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Death Comes to the Arch-Sorceress
With magic the guiding force of Faerie, “fate” is not theoretical, but becomes binding law.
~Big Book of Fairyland, “Rules of Magic”
Pain exploded as Darling Hercules leaped off me onto Rogue’s back, clawing him as he’d attacked Titania for me. This time I wasn’t bound to the bed, but I might as well have been, the agony of the incision and my broken body sapping my strength, dragging me into a black well of unconsciousness.
I managed to stay conscious by drawing powerfully on Mother Earth, the cat rising up with her, offering to take my shredded flesh and put it to better purpose. I held her off for the moment, reaching out to Rogue with all my might. Incandescence held my daughter in an uncaring arm, idly backhanding Nancy who, with a scream of rage tried to grab the child.
As if in slow motion, Rogue turned his head to look at me, befuddled. The black oily whip of Titania’s control throttled his thoughts. Athena plunged the silver dagger into Nasty Tinker Bell’s slim thigh, pulling it out, neatly pirouetting out of the way and stabbing her in the kidney. As if they’d rehearsed it—maybe they had—Starling stepped up, driving the rapier through the noble fae’s throat and catching the infant up to her chest.
Outside, the dragons roared and the scorching heat of Titania’s imminent arrival seared the room.
I drew hard on every resource available, focusing it through the dome and on to the bond I shared with Rogue. The one we’d forged together through love and persistence. Weaving my magic through his, I burned away Titania’s grip.
“Save our daughter,” I commanded him. “You must. You know what to do. Leave me. Leave me to save us.”
Understanding rattled through him, saturated with regret. Sending me a burst of love that I wrapped up and tucked into my heart, his image flickered. Darling Hercules went flying as Rogue transformed into the Black Dog.
My internal cat leaped to follow, and how I held her back I didn’t know.
Except that she accepted my promise. Soon. Very soon.
Starling shrieked as the Black Dog knocked her over, seizing my daughter, still squalling, in his massive jaws.
And disappeared.
I wished with all my heart I’d done the right thing. Anything was better than giving her to Titania, wasn’t it?
As if called by my thought, Titania flashed into the room like flame catching on lighter fluid, sucking out the oxygen and replacing it with raging heat. Athena, her dagger still trapped under Incandescence’s thrashing body, scrambled away as Titania stomped her dainty foot through the other woman’s face.
“You had one job!” Titania shrieked. “And you let these insects distract you.”
She advanced on me, and Starling, her rapier shaking alarmingly, thrust herself between us. Titania sneered at her. I took the moment to call Darling Hercules to me, praying Starling would survive the blow Titania dealt her with a candy-pink twist of her pretty mouth.
Darling Hercules gave me surcease long enough to focus my thoughts. I had my wish for him ready and, for the first time, I reached voluntarily into the morass of Titania’s mind. She seethed, a cauldron of insanity, the magma of power having burned away anything that made her more than pure hunger. I rifled through her thoughts, finding the thing she didn’t expect me to look for.
And I broke the spell she’d laid on Darling.
Abruptly, my feline Familiar became the young man he’d so often imagined, with the lithe limbs of the noble fae, an expression of astonished and transported joy on his face as he examined his hands. It really sucked not to have thumbs, I knew.
“Get ‘er, Goliath,” I whispered. Because I had nothing left.
Tall and strong, Goliath faced Titania down, blasting her with the cool numbing of his magic. She withered under it, her fiery power quenching under the vast reserve he’d accumulated from all those years of powerlessness.
She collapsed, but she wasn’t out, no. Instead her mind wormed away, darting off to burrow through the tunnels she’d made through the Veil, to find the changelings she’d seeded.
To pull the trigger.
She had to be stopped.
And
I was dying anyway.
The cat inside me welled up and I fed her everything I had. My screams rang in my changing ears as she took shape from my failing flesh. Once and for all, I became the cat, leaping onto Titania, slicing her with lethal claws and piercing fangs. Crunching her bones with my powerful jaws as Goliath drained away her ability to heal.
Between us, we dragged her down the stairs, to the doorway to the dragon perch. My particular dragon friend waited there, as if we’d planned this. And maybe, on some deep unspoken level, we had.
The dragon took the screaming Titania from me like a sweetmeat offered on my palm. And ate her, swallowing her and her dreadful magic into her nullness.
Destroying her forever.
* * *
I paced the room, sniffing the towels soaked with blood I recognized vaguely as my own. It felt good and right to be in my meant body. The ready response of quicksilver muscles, the flex of claws and my long tail adding balance. Gone were the pains the woman had suffered.
We were clean and whole. Strong. Invincible.
The noble fae conferred, watching me warily, uncertain if I understood their conversation. Afraid that I might attack.
I might, at that. Their fear pleased me.
Mostly I heard their words, but it bothered me most that the kitten seemed to be missing. I prowled, looking for it, while a human-smelling woman wept.
“Can’t you all combine magic to turn her back?” A human man wearing the stink of silver was arguing. “I can do it but I need the damn scepter, whatever she did with it.”
“We have more pressing problems. With Rogue gone, his lady incapacitated and Queen Titania destroyed, the magic grows unstable. The lesser fae and the humans are revolting. Someone needs to take control. Reestablish order.”
“The lesser fae and humans have always been revolting.” They laughed.
“Without Sorceress Gwynn, none of us can reach our children. Nothing else matters. You’re fools to worry about anything else.” The fae who spoke stepped into my path. He smelled of snake and something else familiar. Had he taken the kitten? I growled at him and he edged back in a satisfying way.
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