Chapter 37: Rebirth in Ruins
The cold in the Hammerfell royal bedchamber wasn’t like home. Ours was a clean, sharp cold. This was a wet, leaching chill that had sunk into the bones of the palace a century ago and never left. The walls were a nightmare of beauty—veins of sapphire frost pulsed in the stone like sluggish blood, casting a sickly blue light over everything. That frozen marble bed, wide enough for six, dominated the room. It smelled faintly of dead flowers and dust.
“Well,” Ellie said, her voice too loud in the hollow space. “It’s atmospheric.”
Mary was already moving, her boots echoing. She ran a hand along the wall, then examined her fingertips. “The frost is alive. A slow capillary action from the bedrock aquifer. Interesting. A potential water source if we can tap it without collapsing the wall.”
Of course. Engineers.
The journey had been four days of jolting wagons, covert stops in copses for nursing, and watching the land grow progressively more scarred. Now, standing in the heart of the enemy’s power, all I felt was a crushing fatigue. My back was a single, solid ache.
Nancy drifted toward the bed, her artist’s eyes wide. She traced a finger over the carved ice-patterns on the headboard. “He slept here,” she whispered. “The King. He dreamed of conquering us in this bed.”
“He lived screaming in a ditch,” I said, my tone flat. “The bed’s just a fancy rock. Let’s get changed. The council of surviving elders is in an hour, and I refuse to address them smelling like a wagon axle.”
Our trunks had been brought up. We opened them like graves, pulling out the familiar weight of our own clothes. Mary and I moved to one side of the chamber, behind a folded tapestry depicting some grim hunt. Ellie and Nancy stayed near the bed.
I shucked off my travel-stained tunic and breeches. The air bit at my skin, raising goosebumps. I pulled on clean, soft breeches and a simple, heavy linen shirt, leaving it unlaced. It was getting harder to find clothes that fit. The swell of my stomach was a taut, firm curve beneath the fabric. My breasts felt heavy, tender.
A soft laugh from near the bed. I peeked around the tapestry.
Ellie was helping Nancy into a dress, a simple woolen thing the color of moss. Nancy’s belly was a perfect, round dome. Ellie’s hands lingered on her sides, her thumbs stroking the curve. “You are so beautiful like this,” Ellie murmured, her voice a private song. “All life and promise. It terrifies me.”
“Why?” Nancy asked, turning to face her.
“Because I want to lock you in a tower covered in roses,” Ellie said, resting her forehead against Nancy’s. “And the world out there is all thorns and shattered stone.”
From my other side, Mary stood in her trousers and a tight-fitting undershirt, staring at a map she’d already unrolled on a frost-veined desk. But she wasn’t reading it. Her posture was rigid. I followed her gaze.
She was watching Ellie and Nancy. Not with jealousy, but with a kind of raw, aching hunger. Her hand rested unconsciously on her own stomach, smaller than Nancy’s but just as definite.
I finished lacing my boots and walked over to her. I didn’t speak. I just put a hand on her lower back, right where the tension was coiled tight. She leaned into the touch, just a fraction.
“They’re like a painting,” Mary said quietly, her voice hoarse. “Something from a story that hasn’t been written yet.”
“We’re all in that story,” I said.
She turned to me then, her practical eyes bright. “Do you ever feel… like you’re borrowing this?This joy? That it wasn’t meant for people like us, who think in angles and load-bearing walls?”
I knew what she meant. The warmth, the easy sensuality that flowed between Ellie and Nancy was a language Mary and I understood, but spoke with a different accent. We loved just as fiercely, but it was carved in stone, not drawn on air.
“It’s ours,” I said, squeezing her shoulder. “We built it. Same as we’ll build this city. No less solid.”
Ellie’s voice called across the room. “Are you two decent? Or are you huddled over more schematics?”
“Decent,” I called back.They came over. Nancy had let her curly hair down. It fell around her shoulders, vibrant against the dull blue light. She looked at Mary, and a slow, knowing smile spread across her face. “You look tense.”
“I’m calculating roof pitch ratios,” Mary deadpanned.
“Liar.” Nancy stepped close, ignoring the map. She took Mary’s face in her hands and kissed her, deep and unhurried. Mary melted into it, her shoulders finally dropping, a small sound escaping her throat. When they parted, Nancy pressed her palm to Mary’s belly. “Hello in there. Your other mother is a terrible liar.”
Ellie watched them, her expression soft. Then she came to me. Her fingers made quick work of the laces on my shirt, tightening them properly. Her knuckles brushed against my oversensitive skin, and I flinched. “Sorry,” she whispered. “Leaking again?”
“A bit.”
She adjusted the fabric with a practicality that belied the intimacy of the act. Her own dress, a deep blue, strained across her full breasts and rounded middle. She caught me looking. “Like what you see, General?”
“Always.” I pulled her to me, carefully, our swollen bodies meeting with a gentle pressure that was profoundly comforting. I buried my face in her hair. She still smelled like home, like cinnamon and warmth, cutting through the tomb-scent of the room.
We stood like that for a long moment, the four of us in a silent huddle in that frozen room. A unit. A nation of four. Soon to be eight.
The moment shattered with a sudden, sharp cramp low in my abdomen. I sucked in a breath. Not the baby kicking—this was different, a tight, insistent band squeezing deep inside.
Ellie felt me stiffen. “Amy?”
“It’s nothing. Just… a long journey.” But it wasn’t nothing. It was a reminder. The babies were coming, and this city was in pieces.
Mary saw it too, the flicker of pain on my face. She rolled up her map with a sharp snap. “Enough. The elders are waiting. They need to see us unbroken. Or at least standing upright.”
We walked to the great arched doors. Nancy took Mary’s hand. I kept my arm around Ellie’s waist, for my support as much as hers.
I paused with my hand on the iron handle, cold enough to burn. Beyond this door was the ruin we’d promised to fix, the people who might hate us, the impossible work.
I looked back at the glacial marble bed, the pulsing blue walls. A tomb for a dead king’s dreams.
“Let’s go build something better,” I said, and pushed the door open.
The corridor outside was dark, lined with the specters of broken statues. At the far end, a slash of dusty daylight cut through the gloom. We walked toward it, our footsteps a single, steady rhythm on the stone. The cramp in my belly faded to a dull echo. For now. Ahead, the light promised nothing but hard work and wary eyes.
We stepped into it together.