Chapter 9: Pregnancy
The chopsticks clattered against the porcelain plate, a sharp, discordant sound in the warm, quiet room. One rolled off the edge of the low table and onto the priceless carpet.
Leila blinked, her vision swimming. The crispy honey-glazed pork she’d just offered Ron seemed to blur and swim on the chopstick still in her hand. A wave of nausea, hot and sour, climbed her throat.
“Hey.” Ron’s voice, usually a low rumble, went still.
He’d been lounging on the daybed, Leila curled comfortably in the cradle of his legs, her back against his chest. He’d been enjoying this—the simple, wordless intimacy of her feeding him bits of food she’d made with her own hands. It was a peace he found nowhere else, not in the stratagems of the court nor the practiced performances of his consorts.
Now his arms tightened around her. “Leila?”
“Dizzy,” she whispered, her head lolling back against his shoulder. Her skin had gone pale, a sheen of sweat glossing her temples.
In one fluid motion, Ron swung his legs off the daybed, cradling her against him as he stood. He was across the chamber in three long strides, laying her down on the vast bed. The silk was cool under her hot skin.
“Yu!” Ron’s shout wasn’t a roar; it was a blade, clean and sharp, cutting through the palace silence.
The door slid open almost before the echo faded. Yu Gonggong stood there, his aged face impassive but his eyes missing nothing—the girl’s pallor, the Emperor’s posture, a protectiveness that went beyond possession. “Your Majesty.”
“Fetch Physician Bao. Now. Run.”
Yu was gone, his soft shoes making no sound on the polished floor.
Ron sat on the edge of the bed, one large hand covering Leila’s forehead. “Where does it hurt?” His thumb stroked her temple.
“My head. And my stomach… it feels strange. Like… butterflies, but angry ones.” Her eyes were wide, confused. “Did I ruin the pork?”
A sound escaped him—not quite a laugh, but something rough and unfamiliar. “The pork was perfect.” He kept his touch gentle, a contrast to the coiled tension in his shoulders. The thought of poison, of a subtle, creeping attack from within his own walls, flashed through his mind. His jaw hardened. If someone had touched her…
Time stretched. Leila’s breathing evened out, the color slowly returning to her cheeks. She looked small and swallowed by the imperial bed, her simple cotton shift stark against the crimson silk. She reached for his hand, her fingers threading through his. It was a childlike gesture, trusting and unthinking.
Physician Bao entered, bowing low, his medical case in hand. He was an old man with eyes like river stones, smooth and unreadable.
“Examine her,” Ron commanded, not moving from his post. “Everything.”
The physician approached, setting his case down. He asked Leila quiet questions about her meals, her sleep. He took her pulse, his fingers resting on her wrist for a long, silent minute. His eyebrows lifted, almost imperceptibly. He asked her to stick out her tongue. He palpated her abdomen with careful, clinical pressure.
Leila flinched. “It feels tender there. Is it a sickness from the kitchen grease? Auntie Lan says sometimes the fumes—”
Physician Bao withdrew his hands. He turned, knelt fully on the floor, and pressed his forehead to the carpet.
“Your Majesty,” he said, his voice clear in the hushed room. “This humble one offers his most joyous congratulations. The young mistress is not ill. She is with child. The pulse is strong and sure. She is perhaps six weeks along.”
The air vanished from the room.
Ron didn’t move. He heard the words, but they seemed to come from a great distance. They were words that belonged to other men, to celebrations in other halls, to a future he had painfully consigned to his nephew. They were not words for him. Not for a warrior whose seed had, for a decade, fallen on barren ground.
Yu Gonggong, standing by the door, let out a sharp, punched-out breath. His hands, usually folded in his sleeves, clenched into fists. A fierce, blazing triumph lit his features before he schooled them back to neutrality.
Leila pushed herself up on her elbows, looking from the kneeling physician to Ron’s frozen face. “With child?” she repeated. “You mean… a baby? Inside me?”
“Yes, mistress,” Physician Bao said, still pressed to the floor.
“But… how?” Her brow furrowed in genuine, profound bewilderment. She looked at Ron, her innocence absolute and shining. “We just… we sleep here. And you… you kiss me and hold me. And sometimes… the other things.” A faint blush colored her cheeks. “Auntie Lan and the others said babies come from the gods’ favor. Did the gods put it there?”
Ron finally moved. He looked at her—really looked at her. At the girl who had asked him why he had no breasts. Who had offered him a steamed bun with soot on her cheek. Who had shown him a world without calculation, without hidden knives in sweet smiles.
A dam broke inside him, a wall of hardened certainty he’d built over years of silent disappointment. It shattered, and what flooded in was so vast it left him lightheaded.
He didn’t answer her question. Instead, he reached out, his calloused hands cupping her face. He leaned forward and rested his forehead against hers, closing his eyes. His breath shuddered out.
“Ron?” she whispered, her hands coming up to wrap around his wrists.
“A son,” he murmured, the word rough and new in his mouth. “Or a daughter.”
Yu Gonggong took a quiet step forward. “Your Majesty. This… changes everything. The succession…”
Ron opened his eyes. The tenderness in them hardened into something else—a relentless, protective ferocity. He pulled back, still holding Leila’s face. “No one is to know. Do you understand? Not a whisper. Physician Bao, you will attend her personally. Every meal, every tonic, every breath she takes is your responsibility. If a hair on her head is harmed, your lineage will be extinguished.”
Physician Bao bowed again, deeper. “It is my sacred duty, Your Majesty.”
Ron turned his gaze to Yu. “The kitchens. The maids she trusts. Triple the guards on this wing—men you’d trust with your own life. She does not leave without you or me beside her.”
“It will be done,” Yu said, his voice steady with purpose.
Leila was still trying to catch up. She looked down at her own flat stomach, placing a hand over it. “A baby,” she said again, and this time, a slow, wondrous smile bloomed on her face. It was like watching the sun rise in a locked room. She looked at Ron, her eyes shining. “Our baby?”
The word ‘our’ did something to him. It carved a space in the world where only the two of them—three of them—existed.
“Ours,” he confirmed, his voice thick.
He stood, the Emperor again, every inch the ruler. The joy was already being subsumed by strategy, by the stark, dangerous reality. A living heir. The two Noble Consorts with their sly smiles and empty wombs. The courtiers with their preferred candidates. The enemies who would see his line ended.
He looked at Leila, sitting in the center of the bed, glowing with a secret she barely understood, and he felt a chill that had nothing to do with the room’s temperature.
The game had just begun. And for the first time, he had something truly precious to lose.