Chapter 16: Steel and Silk
The stew was good, thick with barley and turnip, but my attention was elsewhere. Ellie was watching me over the rim of her cup, a knowing glint in her eye that had nothing to do with statecraft.
“So,” she said, setting the cup down. “A coup.”
I tore a piece of bread. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“In the throne room. The two of you, standing there like sworn sentinels, whispering.” She smiled, slow and warm. “It sounded very subversive.”
Nancy leaned into Mary’s space, her voice a conspiratorial murmur. “You were plotting. We could feel it. All that intense, practical energy directed right at our backs.”
Mary didn’t blush; she never did. But a muscle in her jaw ticked, a tell. “Observation isn’t subversion.”
“It is when it’s that focused,” Nancy countered, her foot brushing against Mary’s under the table. “What was the subject of this… tactical assessment?”
I met Ellie’s gaze and held it. The fearlessness I felt in the armory, with cold steel in my hands, flickered in my chest. “You. The two of you.”
The admission hung there. The fire cracked in the hearth.
Ellie’s smile softened, turned private. “And what was the verdict?”
“The pregnancy suits you,” I said, the words coming out rougher than I intended. “It doesn’t just suit you. It’s like you were carved for this. You look… formidable. Regal isn’t the right word. It’s more than that.”
Mary cleared her throat, picking at the table’s edge. “What she’s failing to articulate is that you’re both exceptionally attractive. And it’s… pronounced now. All of it.” She gestured vaguely, a rare loss for her precise engineering vocabulary. “The curves.The glow. The whole… presentation. Meanwhile, Amy and I just look like we’re secretly storing nuts for winter. Or like brooding teenage boys who discovered ale.”
A laugh burst out of Nancy, bright and sudden. “You do not.”
“We do,” I grumbled, but I was smiling now. “You two are fertility goddesses. We’re… tactical pillars. Awkwardly swollen ones. All angles and tension.”
Ellie reached across the table, her fingers covering my hand. Her touch was always a shock of warmth. “You’re my tactical pillar. And you are breathtaking to me. Every new line of you.” Her thumb traced my knuckles. “But I will not pretend it isn’t… intense. This body thing.”
Nancy sighed, a sound of profound, comic relief. “Oh, thank god. Can we talk about the leaks? Because it is a constant, humiliating issue. I am a human spring. I stained three undershirts before noon.” She looked at Ellie, a sister-in-arms. “You too?”
Ellie nodded, a wry twist to her mouth. “It’s the let-down. A cool breeze, someone laughing, Mary walking into the room looking all stern and competent… and then I’m just… damp. It’s biologically rude.”
I felt a strange pang, sharp and hollow. Mary and I exchanged a glance. It was a shared, silent understanding.
“We don’t have that,” Mary said, her voice flat.
“What do you mean?” Nancy asked.
“The copious leakage. The… abundance.” Mary looked down at her own chest, then at mine, with a clinical detachment that couldn’t mask the flicker of something else. “Our breasts aren’t that big. They’re… different. They ache.They’re tender. But they’re not these… life-giving fountains you two are working with. Sometimes I wonder if we have breasts at all, or just… proactive pectorals.”
The honesty of it, the sheer physical reality, stripped the last of the courtly pretense from the room. This was us. Four women, two pregnant by design, two by a twist of fate and love, navigating the alien terrain of our changed bodies.
“Proactive pectorals,” Ellie repeated, her eyes shining with unshed tears of laughter. “Oh, my love.” She looked at me, then at Mary, her expression shifting into something unbearably tender. “Come here. Both of you.”
We rose, the movement clumsy. Ellie and Nancy moved their chairs back, making space. We didn’t go to our own partners. I went to Ellie, sinking to my knees beside her chair, my head level with her belly. Mary went to Nancy, folding herself carefully beside her. It was a reconfiguration, a re-wiring of our usual connections.
Ellie’s hands came to my face. She guided my head gently against her, not to her swollen middle, but to the soft, full curve of her breast. The fine wool of her gown was warm. Through it, I could smell her, milk and lavender and Ellie. “You feel that?” she whispered, her voice a vibration against my ear.
I nodded, my cheek pressed to her. There was a firmness, a palpable, alive fullness.
“That’s real. That’s you. That’s us.” Her fingers carded through my short hair. “It isn’t a volume measurement, Amy. It’s a map. Of everything that’s happened to us. To our family.”
On the other side, Nancy had guided Mary’s hand beneath the loose neckline of her own dress. I couldn’t see, but I heard Mary’s sharp, indrawn breath. “See?” Nancy murmured. “Tight.Aching. Different than before. But here.For you. For us. Not for anyone else.”
My own chest tightened. The hollow pang filled with a heat that was grief and desire and a fierce, protective love all fused together. Mary’s eyes found mine over the swell of Nancy’s body. In them, I saw the same dismantled look, the same surrender to this complex truth.
We stayed like that for a long moment, a silent circuit of acknowledgement. The fears, the envy, the sheer, bizarre biology of it all was just another part of the machine we were building together. Not as clean as a bolt-action, not as predictable as steel tolerances, but infinitely more vital.
Finally, Ellie kissed my forehead. “My beautiful, practical stick. You are my favorite geometry.”
I laughed, a wet, choked sound.
Nancy rested her head on top of Mary’s. “We should go upstairs,” she said, her voice drowsy with contentment and something else, a low current of intention. “It’s warm there.And private. And I’m tired of talking about my leaking breasts. I’d rather show you what else they can do.”
Mary’s gaze snapped to hers, the clinical look gone, replaced by a dark, hungry focus. The same one she had in the armory. But this blueprint was written in skin and breath.
Ellie stood, pulling me up with her. Her hand slid down my arm, her fingers threading through mine. “The armory can wait until tomorrow,” she said, answering my unspoken thought. “The howitzers aren’t going anywhere.”
The walk to our chambers was a quiet procession. Not the formal march from the throne room, but something slower, more deliberate. We were leaving one kind of work for another. The cold of the corridor seeped in, but the memory of the dining room’s warmth, of shared confessions, clung to us like a shield.
As we reached the heavy oak door, Ellie turned the iron handle. The room beyond was shadowed, the fire banked to embers. She looked back at the three of us, her family, her loves, her conspirators.
“Come inside,” she said, her voice no louder than the sigh of the coals. “Let’s be unwieldy together.”