Chapter 66: The Midwife's Verdict
The silence in the healing chamber was a living thing, thick with the smell of beeswax, dried lavender, and the sharper, metallic scent of fear. It had been a month. A month of grueling routine, of watching the storehouse levels drop despite the hunting parties’ best efforts, of listening for the trumpet call of an imperial patrol that never came. The relief of that quiet was gone now, replaced by a newer, tighter dread.
Seraphina lay on the narrow cot, a wool blanket scratchy against her skin. Her dress was pushed up to her ribs. The swell of her belly was a hard, pronounced dome in the flickering candlelight. It was wrong. At three months, even with her history, it shouldn’t look like this. It felt less like a child and more like a growth, a foreign entity sucking the life from her bones. She was still faintly dizzy most days, the world tilting if she stood too fast. The rich broths Vincent practically force-fed her seemed to vanish into a void.
Magda’s hands were warm, her fingers calloused and sure as they moved over the taut skin. She pressed, palpated, her head cocked in concentration. She hummed an old mountain prayer under her breath, a tune meant to coax life into being.
Then her hands stilled.
The humming stopped.
Magda’s face, usually a mask of pragmatic calm, went slack. Her fingers pressed deeper, in a different spot, then shifted. Her breath hitched. In the quiet, the sound was as loud as a shout.
Seraphina’s heart hammered against her ribs. “What? What is it?”
Magda didn’t answer immediately. She moved her hands again, her brow furrowed in fierce concentration. She closed her eyes, her entire being focused on the feel beneath her palms. When she opened them, she looked not at Seraphina’s belly, but at her face. The color had drained from the midwife’s cheeks, leaving her looking ancient and grim.
“The heartbeat is strong,” Magda whispered, her voice strangely formal. “Very strong.”
“That’s good,” Seraphina said, the words automatic. But Magda’s tone was all wrong. It was the voice you used to deliver news of a death.
“It’s… oddly placed. And there’s a… a flutter underneath it. A rhythm just out of sync.” Magda swallowed, her throat clicking. She placed Seraphina’s own hand on her belly, guiding her fingers to two distinct points, a hand’s width apart. “Feel here. Now here.”
At first, Seraphina felt only the familiar pressure, the dull internal ache. Then she focused past the noise of her own pulse. There. A firm, rhythmic thump-thump-thump. And then, just slightly lower and to the left, a softer, quicker tap-tap-tap-tap. They overlapped, a clumsy, frantic drumbeat inside her.
Her brain refused to connect the dots. It was a trick of the room, of her own exhaustion.
Magda’s next words fell into the silence like stones into a deep well. “There are two. Two heartbeats. Twins.”
The world didn’t spin. It crystallized. Every detail in the room became unbearably sharp: the grain in the wooden stool leg, the single droplet of wax poised to fall from a candle, the frayed edge of the blanket. The two heartbeats thrummed against her palm, undeniable, a cruel biological joke.
“No,” she breathed. It wasn’t a denial. It was a plea.
“It explains the size. The sickness. Your body is working twice as hard.” Magda’s voice was steady now, laced with a terrible pity. “This changes the calculation, girl. Everything I said last month… the risk is doubled. For you, and for them.”
Twins. Two more children. Two more lives growing in a womb that was more scar tissue than muscle. A hysterical sound bubbled in Seraphina’s throat, part laugh, part sob. She thought of the last one, the one after Nessa, that Kya had whispered about. The blood that had come too soon and too fast, the lonely, septic fever that followed, the hollow emptiness that had felt like a release. That had been one. One had nearly killed her.
“You have to tell them,” Magda said quietly, nodding toward the door where Callum and Vincent would be pacing a trench into the floor.
“I know.” Seraphina pulled her dress down, the fabric catching on the swell. The movement felt robotic. She sat up, the room holding steady for a merciful moment. “Don’t… don’t say anything yet. Let me.”
Magda just nodded, packing her herbs away with slow, deliberate movements. The weight in the room was now solid, suffocating.
They were in the old strategy room, now a chaotic mess of maps, inventory lists, and half-cleaned weapons. Callum was honing a dagger, the shink-shink of steel on whetstone a grating rhythm. Vincent was frowning at a report from Gavrel about the Redrock Pass convoy. The fire in the hearth spat and crackled, doing little to dispel the permanent chill.
The door opened. Seraphina walked in, Kya a silent shadow behind her. She had washed her face, but her eyes were dark hollows.
The sharpening stopped. Vincent set the report down.
“Magda finished,” Seraphina said. Her voice was flat, devoid of its usual undercurrent of will. She walked to the hearth and held her hands out to the flames, though she didn’t seem to feel them.
“And?” Callum prompted, setting the dagger aside. “The baby’s all right?”
“Babies,” she corrected, still not looking at them. The word hung in the air, strange and plural. “There are two of them. Twins.”
The silence that followed was absolute. The fire seemed to mute its crackle. Vincent slowly stood up from the table. Callum just stared, his mind visibly racing, processing the tactical disaster this represented.
“Twins,” Vincent repeated, as if testing the word for lies.
“That’s… that’s good, isn’t it?” Callum’s attempt at optimism was painfully thin. “Two heirs for the South. Strong.”
“My body is a ruin,” Seraphina said, turning now, her green eyes finally meeting theirs. They were stark with a truth too brutal to soften. “One was pushing its luck. Two is a death sentence. Magda says it doubles everything. The risk of rupture. The bleeding. The chance they’ll come too small, too early.” She wrapped her arms around herself. “The chance I won’t survive the labor.”
Kya moved then, stepping forward to lean against her mother’s side, a small pillar of support. She was watching Callum and Vincent, her young face grave. “The last time Mama bled a lot, the nurses said her womb was tired. They said it was like trying to grow a garden in salted earth.”
The blunt, agricultural horror of it, coming from a child’s mouth, stole the air from the room.
Vincent walked to the window, staring out at the twilight-shrouded courtyard. His back was rigid. “There must be something. A different strategy.”
“The strategy is the same,” Seraphina said, a sliver of her old steel returning. “Food. Rest. Hope. It just has a lower chance of success.” She took a deep, shuddering breath. “I need you both to understand. If it comes to a choice… at the end… you save them. Not me. That’s an order. From your Archduchess.”
“No.” Callum’s refusal was instant, violent. He stood, the chair scraping harshly against stone. “We didn’t pull you out of Blackwood to make some noble sacrifice on a childbed. We are not having this conversation.”
“We are,” she fired back, her composure cracking. “Because I have walked out of that room and left a piece of myself behind a dozen times. I have heard them cry once and then never again. This is different. These are mine. In my keep. And if all I can do is give them a chance to live, then that is what I will do. You don’t get to veto it.”
“He’s right, Sera.” Vincent turned from the window. His expression wasn’t angry; it was calmly, terrifyingly resolved. “It’s not a choice. It’s a problem to be solved. We need better intelligence. We need more supplies, specifically for you. Gavrel’s convoy is in three days. The supplies on it could last us the winter. Including medicine, proper cloth, maybe even a trained physician if we’re lucky.”
“You’re not going,” Callum said, turning his agitation on Vincent. “We agreed. It’s too risky for either of us to leave.”
“I’m not going to lead the raid,” Vincent said, his mind already moving three steps ahead. “But I am going to ride to the edge of the pass. I’m going to observe. Gavrel and Liana can handle the strike, but if anything goes wrong, if the intelligence is flawed, someone needs to be there to call the retreat or adjust the plan. My being a half-mile back changes nothing for the keep’s morale, but it could change everything for the mission’s success. We need that convoy, Callum. For her. For them.”
The logic was irrefutable. Callum hated it, but he could see the grim necessity. He looked from Vincent’s determined face to Seraphina’s pale one. They were boxed in by biology and brute economics.
“Fine,” he gritted out. “But you take Arlo and his best two scouts. You stay in the trees. You see an imperial banner you don’t expect, you turn around and you run. You are not a frontline asset. You’re a brain. Remember that.”
Vincent gave a single, sharp nod. “Agreed.”
Seraphina watched the exchange, the feeling of being a strategic liability burning in her chest. She hated it. “And what am I to do? Sit and knit?”
“Yes,” both men said in unison.
A faint, desperate laugh escaped her. Kya squeezed her hand.
“You will rest,” Callum said, his voice softening a fraction. “You will eat. You will let Magda pester you. And you will plan for what comes after. Names for the registry. Plans for the spring planting. How to integrate the Southern lords when they answer your summons. That,” he said, pointing a finger at her, “is your front line now. So command it.”
Later, when the plans were set and Vincent had gone to prepare, Callum found Seraphina alone in the healing chamber, staring at the obsidian dagger on the bedside table. The pearl panels gleamed in the low light.
“You don’t have to be brave for us,” he said quietly, leaning against the doorframe.
“I’m not being brave. I’m being practical.” She picked up the dagger, feeling the familiar, shielding coolness of it. It quieted the hum of the stone around her, the desperate whisper of the water in the well below. “I’m scared, Callum. More than I’ve ever been. Even in the dark at Blackwood, it was just me. Now… it’s so many people. It’s Kya, Leo, Mia, Liana, Finn, Nessa. It’s these two… these two strangers inside me, who I already love more than anything. The cost of failure got a lot higher. I’m so afraid of losing the babies of the men I fell in love with on my own free will. Who I made love to because I wanted to, not because I had to. I knew… it would be risky to keep them… but how could I possibly even think of getting rid of the only child I had out of love?” Her tears were heavy now, flowing down her cheeks without abandon. It was the first she’d ever mentioned loving Callum and Vincent, a very true confession spilled in fear of losing the creation their love made.
Callum didn’t move from the doorway. The words hung between them, fragile and monumental as blown glass. He heard the truth in them, and the terror beneath. He pushed off the frame and crossed the room, the stone floor cold even through his boots. He didn’t reach for her. He just sat on the stool beside the cot, the worn wood creaking under his weight.
“You don’t get to make that bargain either,” he said, his voice low. “Trading your life for theirs isn’t love. It’s a different kind of sacrifice, and we’ve all had enough of those.” He ran a hand through his hair, frustrated. “Vincent and I didn’t pull you from that pit to watch you leap into another one you’ve built yourself. However noble it feels.”
“It’s not about feeling noble.” She turned the dagger over, watching the candlelight swim in the obsidian. “It’s about being realistic. My body remembers every loss. It’s keeping score. This feels like the final tally.”
“Then we cheat.” A ghost of his old grin touched his lips, but his eyes remained serious. “We lie, we steal, we intercept convoys. We fight the tally. Together.”
From the hall, they heard the clatter of gear and Vincent’s curt orders. Time was already moving, pulling them toward the next crisis. Seraphina slid the dagger into its sheath and stood, a hand going to the small of her back. “You should see him off.”
“He’d rather see you.”
They found Vincent in the main courtyard, checking the girth on a sturdy bay mare. Arlo and two other scouts were already mounted, their breath pluming in the pre-dawn chill. The sky was a washed-out grey, the stars fading. Vincent looked up as they approached, his gaze going immediately to Seraphina. He took in her swollen eyes, her determined set of her jaw.
“No dramatic farewells,” he said, his tone aiming for lightness and missing by a mile. “We’ll be back before you’ve finished complaining about the broth.”
“The broth is terrible,” she said, stepping close. She didn’t embrace him. She placed a hand on his chest, over the layers of wool and leather. “But you will come back. That’s an order from your Archduchess.”
He covered her hand with his own, his touch warm. “Understood.” His eyes flicked to Callum. “Keep the walls high and the tempers low.”
“Just bring home the groceries,” Callum replied, clasping his forearm in a tight grip. The unspoken words passed between them: Keep your head down. Come back to us.
With a final nod, Vincent swung into the saddle. The small party turned and clattered under the portcullis, their forms swallowed by the thick mist clinging to the mountain pass. Seraphina watched until even the sound of hoofbeats vanished. The silence they left behind felt heavier.
“Right,” Callum said, clapping his hands together. The sound was too loud. “You’re supposed to be resting. And I’ve got a keep to annoy. Let’s both get to work.”
The day unspooled with a strange, suspended quality. Seraphina tried to follow orders. She sat in the solar with ledgers, reviewing inventory lists that were just columns of slow disaster. The numbers blurred. The two heartbeats within her seemed to echo in her skull, a constant, ticking reminder. She gave up and walked to the nursery hall, where Magda had set up a space for the youngest children.
Liana was there, showing a frowning Finn how to wrap a linen strip around a wooden block. “It’s a bandage, you wee idiot. You practice on this before you try it on a person.”
“I’m not an idiot,” Finn grumbled, but his fingers were careful.
Seraphina leaned in the doorway. “He’s got a gentle touch.”
Liana glanced up, her sharp features softening a fraction. “He does. Unlike some.” She eyed Seraphina. “You look like death walked over your grave. Should you be up?”
“Probably not.” She came in and sank onto a low bench, watching the children. Her other three were in a corner. Mia was chewing thoughtfully on a rag doll’s arm. Leo was stacking smooth stones. Kya was just watching her mother, her green eyes seeing too much.
“The twins are a bastard of a thing,” Liana said quietly, not looking up from Finn’s clumsy knot. “I knew a woman in the labs. She carried twins. They didn’t make it. She didn’t either.”
The bluntness was somehow a relief. “I know the odds.”
“Odds are for gamblers. You’re a fighter.” Liana finished the knot and patted Finn’s shoulder. “There. Now you’re a surgeon.” She stood, brushing off her trousers. “Fighters use what they have. You’ve got that witchy magic. So does my sister. Use it. I didn’t get the magic.” She pursed her lips, a blessedly normal eleven-year-old thing to do.
“It doesn’t work like that. It’s… water and roots. It’s whispers. Not healing.”
Liana shrugged. “You ever tried?” She took Finn’s hand and led him out, leaving Seraphina with her thoughts and the quiet murmur of children.
Kya drifted over and put her head in Seraphina’s lap. “The well water is happy,” she murmured. “It sings to the stones. It wants to help.”
Seraphina stroked her daughter’s hair, the dark strands fine as silk. “How does water help a baby grow, little heart?”
“I don’t know.” Kya’s voice was muffled. “But the green things under the floor, the old roots, they’re listening too. They remember you.”
A strange, weary curiosity tugged at her. That night, after a supper of thin venison stew she had to force down, she found herself in the commander’s quarters with the obsidian dagger. She usually held it to quiet the world. Tonight, she set it aside on the bed.
She sat on the floor, her back against the cold stone wall. She placed her palms flat on the flagstones. She closed her eyes and let herself listen, dropping the shields she’d maintained for so long.
The hum was immediate. It wasn’t sound, but vibration—a deep, slow pulse of water through hidden arteries in the rock. The groan of ancient timber. The minute crackle of frost forming on the outer walls. And beneath it, fainter, the dry, patient whisper of roots from long-dead trees, cradling the foundation. It was a song of stone and slow time.
She pushed her awareness, tentatively, inward. Past the drum of her own heart, the rush of her blood. Deeper. To the frantic, dual rhythm of the twins. To the tired, fibrous muscle of her womb. To the tangled knots of scar tissue that felt like dry, dead wood.
An idea, wild and unformed, flickered. She didn’t try to command. She asked. A silent, desperate plea sent into the hum of the stone and the whisper of the roots.
Help them grow strong.
She didn’t expect an answer. But a sensation bloomed, soft and cool as a shadow on a hot day. It was the deep, mineral damp of the well water far below, seeping up through the stone, a gentle rising tide that didn’t wet the floor but seemed to swirl in the air around her. The ancient roots in the foundation sighed, and a feeling of steadfastness, of deep-ground holding, settled into her bones.
It wasn’t healing. It was reinforcement. Like buttresses against a heavy wall.
She opened her eyes, gasping softly. The room was the same. But the deep, grinding ache in her back and pelvis had eased to a dull murmur. The nausea had receded. For the first time in weeks, her body didn’t feel like it was tearing itself apart.
Kya was asleep on the bed, one hand curled near the obsidian dagger. Seraphina picked up the blade. The shielding silence it offered felt like a cage now. She sheathed it and left it on the table.
Three days later, the tension was a wire stretched to singing tightness. No word from Vincent’s scouting party. Seraphina walked the walls with Callum, a daily ritual that defied Magda but felt necessary. The autumn wind cut through her cloak. Below, the repaired smokehouse had a thin, promising trickle of grey rising from its chimney.
“He’s fine,” Callum said, for the tenth time that hour. “He’s probably lying in a fern, counting wagon wheels and being bored out of his skull.”
“You’re a terrible liar,” she said, her eyes scanning the tree line.
A shout came from the western tower. “Rider! Single rider, coming hard!”
They both moved, peering into the distance. A horse and rider burst from the treeline, pounding up the rough road toward the keep. It wasn’t Vincent. It was one of Arlo’s scouts, hatless, his face a pale blotch of panic.
The portcullis was raised just enough to let the horse stumble through. The scout slid from the saddle, his chest heaving. “Ambush!” he choked out. “The convoy… it was a trap. Double the guards. Hidden pikemen in the rocks.”
Callum grabbed the man’s shoulder. “Vincent? Gavrel?”
“The attack was already engaged when we saw the reinforcements. Lord Vincent… he ordered the retreat, then drew his sword. He and Arlo charged the flank to create a opening. They’re still in there. They’re overrun.”
The world snapped into a cold, hyper-clarity. Seraphina felt the hum of the stone beneath her feet surge, a sympathetic roar of alarm. Callum’s face went bone-white, then hardened into something terrifying.
“Sound the alarm,” he said, his voice quiet and utterly dead. “Muster every fighter we have. Now.”