Chapter 18: Celebrate
The announcement had been a spectacle, exactly as Ronan had planned. It followed the signing of the foundry agreement, a hard-won victory that had the council buzzing with cautious optimism. When Ronan stood, his hand resting briefly on the back of Sloane’s chair, and declared the future heir to both thrones, the room had erupted in a forced, roaring approval that echoed off the marble columns. Sloane had smiled, a perfect, practiced curve of her lips, and placed a hand over the subtle swell of her abdomen beneath the structured emerald gown. The gesture was scripted, a symbol. Inside, she felt like a contested territory finally being mapped.
Months bled together. The sharp lines of Sloane’s armor and riding leathers were exchanged for gowns with clever, flowing silhouettes that suggested regal elegance rather than concession. Her body became a site of silent, relentless change. The nausea had retreated, replaced by a deep, abiding fatigue that she fought with sheer will and countless cups of steeped ginger tea. The curve of her stomach, once a secret known only to them and a back-alley midwife, was now a definite, undeniable fact.
She refused to stop. Council meetings, trade delegations, endless dispatches—she attended them all, her mind a blade sharpened against the whetstone of routine. One afternoon, deep in a debate about tariffs, a sharp, fluttering sensation low in her belly made her words catch. It was a quick, insistent pressure, like a moth batting against a window from the inside. She didn’t outwardly react, just adjusted her stance slightly, one hand drifting to rest below the table’s edge, pressing back. A silent, fierce conversation. Not now. Later.
Ronan noticed. He noticed everything. His protection was no longer a suggestion; it was an architecture. Her security detail was a permanent, grim-faced shadow. Her food was tasted. Her routes were varied. He never mentioned the added precautions directly, but she felt them, a new, invisible cage of safety being constructed around her. It should have suffocated her. Instead, most days, it felt like a fortress wall at her back.
And he started sleeping in her chambers.
It began without discussion. One night, after a late session, he simply followed her from the study instead of turning toward his own rooms. He’d taken the enormous, upholstered chair by the cold fireplace, dismissing her maid with a nod. “I’ll stay,” he’d said, as if commenting on the weather. He’d slept there, fully clothed, his head tilted back against the tapestry, looking in sleep like a battle-weary soldier catching rest where he could.
The next night, he returned. And the next. The chair migrated closer to the bed. Then, one night when a winter gale howled against the casements, shaking the very stones, he’d lain on top of the coverlet beside her, his boots discarded, his sword within reach on the floor. He didn’t touch her. The space between them was a precise, charged inch. But his presence was a solid wall of heat against the chill.
It was his new habit, however, that she found utterly disarming.
She’d be half-asleep, lulled by the rhythm of his breathing, when she’d feel the shift in the mattress. She’d crack an eye open. In the low glow of the banked fire, Ronan would be propped on one elbow, turned toward her. His face, so often carved from stone in daylight, would be softened by shadow. And he would be talking. In a low, steady murmur, directly to the curve of her stomach.
He reported on the day’s events. “The timber yield from the north was better than expected,” he’d confide, his voice a gravelly whisper. “Your mother fought the Master of Coin into a corner today. You’ll learn from her.” He shared worries. “The river levels are worryingly low. We’ll need a solution before summer.” Once, after a particularly tense council, he’d said, “Lord Valerius is a tedious old bastard. You’ll figure that out soon enough. Steer clear.”
Sloane would keep her eyes closed, her breathing even, a bubble of stunned laughter trapped in her chest. The King of Solas, the brooding strategist who wielded silence like a weapon, was holding one-sided briefings with his unborn child.
One night, after a particularly detailed analysis of border patrol rotations, she couldn’t pretend anymore. A small snort escaped her.
The murmuring stopped. She opened her eyes to find his grey ones watching her, unembarrassed.
“You’re giving operational security briefings to someone who currently has the consistency of jam,” she said, her voice sleep-roughened.
He didn’t smile, but something relaxed around his eyes. “They need to be informed. The realm won’t run itself.”
“They’re likely more concerned with the acoustics of the womb. Very echoey in there, I’m told.”
He lowered his head back onto the pillow, staring at the canopy above. “They should know the stakes. And the players.” He turned his head toward her. “You were formidable today. With the Venetian ambassador.”
She had been. She’d dissected his trade proposal with a precision that left the man flustered. “He was trying to slip a price-fixing clause past the third page. Amateur.”
A ghost of a smile touched Ronan’s mouth. “He looked like he’d swallowed a live fish when you cited his own kingdom’s laws back to him.”
They lay in silence for a moment, the only sound the sighing of the wind.
“Does it… trouble you?” he asked, the question so uncharacteristically hesitant it drew her full attention. “My being here.”
She considered it, looking at the strong line of his profile in the dim light. His presence wasn’t suffocating. It was… anchoring. In a world where her own body felt increasingly foreign, his solid, predictable weight beside her was a coordinates fix. “No,” she said finally. “It doesn’t trouble me.”
He gave a single, slow nod, as if filing the information away. Then, he turned back onto his side, toward her again. His hand hovered for a second, then settled, not on her, but on the coverlet over her stomach, a broad, warm weight. “The northern squadron reports all quiet,” he murmured, resuming his update. “For now.”
This time, she didn’t hide her smile.
The morning of the spring equinox dawned clear and cold. Sloane was in the council chamber, a sheaf of supply-line reports in her hand. Her back ached with a deep, persistent thrum, and the child within was active, turning somersaults that made the rich velvet of her gown shiver. She was arguing with the Keeper of the Keys about the distribution of seed grain, her logic a scalpel, when a different sensation bloomed low in her pelvis.
It wasn’t the flutter of movement. It was a sudden, vivid cramp, a tight, clenching fist that stole her breath and turned the room a shade sharper, too bright. She gripped the edge of the table, her knuckles bleaching white.
Ronan, mid-sentence rebutting the Master of Ships, stopped. His eyes cut to her.
The fist clenched again, harder. A wave of heat washed over her, followed by a cold sweat. She locked her knees, forcing her breath to even out. Not here. Not now.
“The figures from the southern granaries are irreconcilable with the planting reports,” she forced out, her voice tight but clear. “We either have a mathematical error or a theft. I propose an audit team departs before the thaw.”
She saw the calculation in Ronan’s eyes. He saw her pallor, the rigid set of her shoulders. He saw her clinging to the debate like a lifeline.
“A sound proposal,” he said, his voice admirably normal. He stood. “The Princess will draft the team’s mandate. Council is adjourned.”
There were murmurs of surprise. They’d barely begun.
Sloane opened her mouth to protest, but another pain, closer and sharper, silenced her. This one was a bright, white spike. She swayed.
Ronan was beside her in two strides, his arm sliding around her back, under her elbows, taking her weight without appearing to. It looked like a gentle escort. It was the only thing holding her up.
“Walk,” he whispered into her hair, his voice a command and a plea all at once.
She walked. Leaning into him, she moved through the gilded doors, down the corridor, past the startled faces of courtiers. The world narrowed to the crush of his arm, the cold stone under her slippers, and the terrifying, rhythmic tide rising inside her.
“Too early,” she managed to gasp as they turned into the private family corridor. “It’s too early.”
“It’s not,” he said, his voice grim. He’d been counting, too. They were a week shy of the midwife’s earliest prediction. Close enough. “The physician is already summoned.”
He shouldered open the door to her chambers. The maids were there, wide-eyed. Ronan issued orders in a clipped, calm torrent that sent them running for linens, hot water, the physician.
He helped her to the bed, easing her down. Her body was no longer her own; it was a vessel caught in a storm. She clutched at his tunic as a new wave seized her. “It hurts,” she snarled, the fear sharpening into anger.
“I know,” he said, not moving, his hand cradling the back of her head. He didn’t offer hollow comfort. He just held her through it, his body a fixed point in the chaos. When it passed, leaving her shaking and drained, he brushed the sweat-damp hair from her forehead. His grey eyes held hers, fierce and unwavering. “You are the strongest person I know. You can do this.”
It wasn’t patronizing. It was a statement of fact, a strategic assessment. And in that moment, with another wave already gathering on the horizon, it was the only thing she could cling to. She gave a sharp, jerky nod, bracing herself as the room’s edges began to blur again, the future rushing toward them with a roar only she could hear.