Chapter 15: Unexpected Beginnings
The first frost had come, silvering the petals of the late-blooming roses and crisping the air in the palace gardens. Anora walked with a hand pressed to the small of her back, her other linked through Kerr’s arm. They were discussing the latest report from the Frostback Marches—dull, logistical, a welcome normalcy—when her steps faltered.
Not a dramatic halt, but a sudden, profound stillness. Her fingers tightened on his forearm like a vise.
Kerr stopped, his joke about garrison rotations dying on his lips. “Anora?”
Her face, lit by the violet twilight, had drained of color. She stared straight ahead, at the obsidian spires of Orzammar cutting the horizon, but her eyes were focused inward. A single, sharp breath hissed between her teeth. “Oh,” she said, the word flat and final.
Then another wave hit. She doubled over, a low groan wrenching from her throat. Her nails dug into his arm through the leather of his vambrace.
Time fractured. The reports, the frost, the distant towers—all of it shattered into a single, blinding point of purpose. He moved before thought, his arms sliding under her knees and behind her back. He lifted her as if she weighed nothing, her pregnant body a fierce, warm weight against his chest.
“Hold on,” he murmured into her hair, his voice startlingly calm even as his heart hammered against his ribs. He turned on his heel and began moving, not running—a run would jostle her—but with a ground-eating stride that ate up the gravel path.
“Kerr—” she gasped as another contraction seized her, her body stiffening in his arms.
“I know,” he said, adjusting his grip, his eyes fixed on the glowing archway that led back into the palace keep. “I know. Breathe, my love. Just breathe.”
He hit the main corridor bellowing. “MIDWIVES! NOW!” The command, honed on battlefields, echoed off the stone, scattering a cluster of startled侍女 like quail. Servants froze, then sprang into motion. He didn’t stop. He took the stairs to their chambers two at a time, his muscles burning with the careful, controlled effort of not jostling her.
Anora’s face was buried in his neck, her breaths hot and ragged against his skin. Between waves, she managed, “You’re… going to… wake the entire… bloody Bannorn.”
“Let them be woken,” he gritted out, shouldering their chamber door open. The room was too quiet, too orderly. He laid her gently on the bed they had shared for months, her sanctuary, now suddenly a front line. Kneeling beside her, he brushed the sweat-damp hair from her forehead. Her eyes were wide, not with fear, but with a terrifying, focused intensity. “They’re coming. Everyone is coming.”
She gripped his hand, her strength unbelievable, the bones in his fingers creaking. “You stay,” she commanded, the Queen in every syllable.
“Nowhere else,” he vowed.
The room filled with a controlled frenzy. Senior Midwife Greta, a woman with hands like seasoned oak and eyes that missed nothing, swept in, dismissing the younger girls with a glance. She took in Anora’s state, Kerr’s position, and gave a single, curt nod. “Good. You’re useful. Hold her hand. Talk to her. Don’t faint.”
Kerr almost laughed. Fainting was for other men.
What followed was not a gentle process. It was raw, elemental work. Anora’s strength was a humbling, terrifying force. She did not scream; she roared. She cursed in three different languages, her grip on his hand shifting from crushing to near-deadly as the hours stretched. She dug her heels into the mattress and pushed with the fury of a siege engine, her body arching, every muscle defined and straining.
Kerr was steadfast. He mopped her brow with a cool cloth. He braced her shoulders. He whispered nonsense and encouragement against her temple, his voice a constant, grounding rumble beneath Greta’s firm instructions. “You are a force of nature,” he breathed to her during a momentary lull, her head lolling against his arm, exhaustion etched into every line of her face. “You are carving our future with your own will. I see you.”
She turned her head, her eyes glazed with effort, and focused on him. A ghost of her old smirk touched her lips. “Less… poetry… more… water.”
He held the cup for her, his other hand cradling the back of her head.
The tide turned with the deepest night. Anora, with a sound that was part battle cry and part triumph, pushed their son into the world. The first cry was a furious, indignant wail that filled the chamber. Kerr watched, tears he didn’t feel falling cutting tracks through the grime on his face, as Greta placed the squalling, red-faced boy on Anora’s chest.
“Bryce,” Anora whispered, her voice shot through with wonder and pure exhaustion. She touched a shaking finger to his cheek.
Before the awe could settle, Greta’s hands were on Anora’s belly. “There’s another, Your Majesty. You’re not done.”
Anora’s eyes met Kerr’s. The sheer, defiant will he saw there stole his breath. She was spent, she was ravaged, but she was far from beaten. With a grim, determined nod, she handed Bryce to a waiting assistant and turned her energy inward once more.
This time was faster, fiercer. Anora gathered the dregs of her unimaginable strength and summoned a final, monumental effort. Her hand in Kerr’s was the only anchor. And then she was pushing their daughter into Greta’s waiting hands.
This cry was different—a softer, insistent mewl. Greta placed the tiny girl, swaddled and clean, into Anora’s waiting arms. Anora looked from her daughter’s face to Kerr’s, her own transformed by a light that had nothing to do with the dawn now graying the windows.
“Eleanor,” Kerr said, the name a prayer.
They were cleaned, swaddled, and finally placed together in the crook of Anora’s arm. Bryce, with a shock of dark hair and his father’s stubborn set to his jaw even now. Eleanor, fairer, with a delicate, pointed chin and her mother’s penetrating gaze, already blinking slowly at the world.
The midwives withdrew to the corner, giving them a moment that felt suspended outside of time. The room smelled of blood, sweat, and lavender.
Anora leaned back against the piled pillows, her strength finally spent, but her eyes were victorious. She looked at the two small lives she had forged, then up at Kerr, who still knelt beside the bed, his forehead resting gently against her temple.
“Well,” she breathed, her voice hoarse but laced with a dark, happy amusement. “There you are. Your heirs.”
Kerr laughed, a wet, choked sound. He looked at Bryce, then Eleanor, then back at Anora. He saw the ledger of lies they had confronted, the roads they would build, the cold justice they would mete out. He saw the future, pink and squalling and utterly defenseless, resting in the arms of the most formidable woman he had ever known.
He touched his son’s head, then his daughter’s. “Our legacy,” he corrected softly.
Anora’s eyes drifted closed, a smile touching her lips. “Fair enough.” She was asleep almost instantly, the twins slumbering peacefully against her.
Kerr stayed on his knees, watching them, as the first true light of dawn gilded the edges of the tapestry, painting his family in gold.