Chapter 28: Weak
The gates of Eldoria were not the grim, iron-banded things of Nordane. They were pale limestone, sculpted with scenes of harvest and music, and they stood open. Word of the prince’s return, carried ahead by a soldier on their lone remaining fresh horse, had drawn a crowd.
The cheer that went up was a warm, living wave of sound. It washed over the weary party as they approached, a dissonant backdrop to the agony of the ride. People waved scarves from windows, threw early spring blossoms that fell like limp, colorful snow onto the muddy road.
Astrid, tied back-to-chest with Caius, heard it as if from the bottom of a deep well. The noise was muffled, distant. Her world had narrowed to the rhythm of the horse’s gait—each step a small, jarring betrayal—and the persistent, warm seep between her legs. She kept one hand curled over the sling where Lyra slept, a habit already ingrained.
Caius raised a hand, his gesture meant to be regal, reassuring. But his arm trembled with exhaustion. The crowd pressed in, their smiling faces blurring into a single, variegated mass.
“Prince Caius!”
“Praise the skies, you’re safe!”
“Is that her? The Northern princess?”
Then, as their horse drew close enough for the details to pierce the celebratory haze, the noise began to stutter and die.
It wasn’t a single silence. It spread in a ripple, from the front ranks back to the shop doorways. The cheers were replaced by murmurs, then by a thick, watchful quiet. They saw the blood, black and crusted on the surcoat Caius had draped around her. They saw the grayish pallor of Astrid’s skin, the way her head lolled, unsupported. They saw the fierce, scarred northern woman leading the party, her eyes sharp as flint, daring anyone to speak.
A child’s voice, clear and piercing, split the quiet. “Mama, why’s that lady dying?”
The mother hushed the child violently, the sound like a tearing sheet. Astrid heard it. Dying. The word was too blunt, too simple. She was leaking. She was emptying. It was a mechanical problem, not a poetic one. Yet it clung.
Caius’s voice, low and tight, was for her ear alone. “Ignore them. Almost there.”
He kicked the horse into a tired trot. The crowd parted silently, their festival mood evaporating in the face of visceral, unroyal suffering. The blossoms on the road were crushed underhoof.
The Eldorian palace was all light and air, white stone and soaring arches. It felt insubstantial to Astrid, a cage of carved cloud. Servants rushed forward as they entered the main courtyard, their faces shifting from glad welcome to shock and efficient hurry.
“Fetch Physician Golan. Now. To the east sun-room, it’s closest,” Caius snapped, sliding from the saddle and reaching up for Astrid. His hands were firm, but she could feel the tremble in them. He lifted her down, blanket and all, and she bit back a cry as her feet barely touched the ground before he swept her into his arms. The blanket, stained a ominous rust-red at its lower edge, was horribly visible.
Birna dismounted, Lyra secured against her chest. She moved to block the view of the baby from the prying eyes of scurrying courtiers. “The child needs a wet-nurse. Or goat’s milk. Now.”
A flurry of nods, a maid whisking away. The efficiency of the court, redirected from ceremony to crisis.
The east sun-room was a lie of a name. It was a room, yes, flooded with light from great windows. But the sunlight felt accusatory, highlighting the dust motes, the rich tapestries, and the profoundly misplaced figure of Astrid as Caius laid her on a long, silk-upholstered divan. The fabric was the color of buttercream. She bled onto it, dark and immediate.
Physician Golan arrived, an older man with careful hands and a permanently worried expression that now looked carved into his face. He took in the scene: the northern warrior-princess, the blood, the prince’s desperate eyes.
“Clear the room,” Golan said, his voice allowing no argument. “Your Highness, you too.”
“I stay,” Caius said, the words flat.
Golan met his gaze. “You will hinder me. Wait outside.”
Astrid’s hand shot out, gripping Caius’s wrist. Her strength was negligible, but the intent was a vise. Her green eyes, glassy with pain, found his. “Lyra,” she managed, the name a dry scrap of sound.
“I’ll watch her. I swear it,” he said, covering her hand with his. He looked at Golan. “You save her. Whatever it takes.”
“The ‘whatever’ is my business, Your Highness. Out.”
Birna, still holding Lyra, brushed past Caius as he was ushered out. She stopped at the divan, looking down at Astrid. No pretty words passed between them. Birna simply gave a single, sharp nod. A soldier’s acknowledgment. Fight. Then she followed Caius out.
The doors closed, leaving Astrid with the physician and two tight-lipped, experienced nurse-maids who had seen worse, but perhaps not in the buttercream sun-room.
Golan’s hands were gentle as they peeled away the soiled blankets and the makeshift bindings. The smell that rose was metallic and raw. He let out a slow hiss. “The afterbirth?”
“Came. In pieces,” Astrid whispered, the memory jumbled with wood-smoke and fear.
He set to work. It was not magic. It was pressure, and pungent salves, and the insertion of a painful, linen-packed device to stem the flow. It was humiliating, clinical, and utterly necessary. Astrid stared at the ceiling, at a painted fresco of flute-playing shepherds, and detached her mind from what was happening below. She thought of the sound ice makes when it cracks. Not a loud sound. Like a knuckle popping.
Outside, in the vaulted hallway, Caius paced. His boots, caked with Blackwood mud, left dark prints on the immaculate marble. Birna stood like a statue, Lyra now quiet in her arms. A maid approached cautiously with a cup of warmed goat’s milk and a tiny, elegant horn cup.
“I’ll do it,” Caius said, taking them. He plunged the horn into the cup, fumbling with the unfamiliar task. He sat heavily on a stone bench, and Birna placed the baby in the crook of his arm. He looked monstrous next to her—a giant, blood-stained, and grimy. He coaxed a few drops onto Lyra’s lips. She sputtered, then latched onto the horn with a surprising ferocity.
“See?” he said, his voice cracking. “She knows what to do.”
“She’s a survivor,” Birna said, her eyes on the closed doors. “Like her mother.”
“Is she?” Caius asked, the question escaping before he could cage it. The silence from the sun-room was absolute.
Birna didn’t answer. There was no answer to give.
Down the hall, a different kind of storm approached. The clipped, furious tap of authoritative heels on marble. King Florian, Caius’s father, rounded the corner, his courtiers fluttering behind him like anxious starlings.
“Caius! By all the gods, what happened? The reports said you were attacked, but this…” The King’s eyes took in his son’s condition, the lethal northern woman standing guard, and most pointedly, the infant in his arms. His voice dropped, losing its public fervor, becoming cold and private. “What is that?”
“This,” Caius said, not looking up from Lyra’s face, “is your granddaughter. Her name is Lyra.”
King Florian went very still. The courtiers behind him held their breath. The political calculations, the alliance with Nordane—all of it had just been blown apart by the tiny, suckling fact in Caius’s arms.
“And the princess?”
“Dying, perhaps. On the other side of that door.” Caius finally lifted his head. He looked older. There was no charm in his face, no amused lightness. Just a stark, unvarnished defiance. “The agreement was a marriage. The product of that marriage is here. The alliance holds.”
“It holds on a knife’s edge if she dies, you fool,” Florian hissed, stepping closer. “You think her father, that northern bear, will care for a piece of paper if we return his daughter’s corpse? He’ll see it as betrayal. An assassination by incompetence.”
“I didn’t ask for your political appraisal,” Caius said, the words quiet and dangerous.
“You never do! You ride off on romantic excursions, you get ambushed by… by shadows and stories, and you drag a dying woman and a bastard child back to my doorstep—”
“She is not a bastard.” Caius stood, still cradling Lyra with improbable care. “She is Lyra of Eldoria and Nordane. Heir to two thrones. And Astrid is not dying. She is fighting. Which is more than you’ve ever done from behind a desk.”
The insult hung in the air, lethal and stunning. King Florian’s face flushed. Birna’s hand, resting near her knife, twitched. A courtier coughed.
The door to the sun-room opened.
Physician Golan emerged, wiping his hands on a clean, blood-spotted cloth. Every eye in the hallway swung to him. He looked weary to his bones.
“The bleeding has slowed,” he said. “For now. But she has lost a tremendous amount of blood. The next few hours are critical. She needs absolute quiet. And she needs a reason to wake up.”
He looked pointedly at the baby in Caius’s arms.
Caius didn’t wait for his father’s permission. He brushed past the King, past Golan, and back into the room. The nurses were clearing away the dark, stained linen. Astrid lay clean and still on a fresh sheet, her face almost the same color as the fabric. The buttercream divan was gone, replaced with a functional cot.
He knelt beside her, adjusting Lyra in the crook of one arm. With his free hand, he took Astrid’s limp, cool fingers. He placed them carefully over the baby’s sleeping form, pressing her palm to the tiny, rising and falling chest.
“Here,” he whispered, his lips close to her ear. “You feel that? That’s your reason. Her name is Lyra. You have to get up and teach her how to be stubborn.”
There was no flicker in Astrid’s eyelids. No pressure in her hand. Only the weak, steady pulse at her throat and the tiny, vibrant heartbeat under her palm testified that either of them was alive at all.
The silence in the sun-room was a physical weight, broken only by the wet, ragged sound of Caius breathing through unshed tears and the soft smack of Lyra’s lips. He kept Astrid’s hand pressed to the baby, his own covering them both, as if he could will life from one to the other through sheer contact.
“Come on,” he murmured, his forehead nearly touching her temple. “You dragged us through the Blackwood. This is just a fancy room.”
Birna entered, her boots silent on the polished floor. She observed the scene for a long moment, her face unreadable. She walked to the windows and began drawing the heavy linen drapes, plunging the room into a soft, gray dimness. “The light’s no good for resting,” she stated, as if explaining a basic fact of nature.
“She needs a surgeon,” Caius said, not looking up.
“She needs blood,” Birna corrected bluntly. “You can’t stitch an empty wineskin.” She came to stand at the foot of the cot. “Your physician is brewing tonic. That’s for weak spirits. Her spirit isn’t the problem.”
A weak cough, a flutter. Astrid’s eyelids trembled. Her fingers, under his, spasmed weakly against Lyra’s blanket.
Caius’s breath caught. “Astrid?”
Her lips, cracked and pale, moved. The sound was a dry exhale. “Stop… shouting.”
A wild, painful laugh escaped him. He squeezed her hand. “I’m whispering.”
“Inside your head. It’s loud.” Her green eyes slitted open, glazed with pain and a profound, weary confusion. They scanned the unfamiliar ceiling, the drapes, then found his face. “Where?”
“Eldoria. Safe.”
Her gaze drifted down, focusing on the bundle his hands were wrapped around. Recognition, slow and dawning. “Lyra.”
“Yeah.” He helped her fingers curl more securely around the wool. “She likes the goat’s milk. No appreciation for fine vintage.”
Astrid’s throat worked. “Blood?”
“Slowed,” he said, avoiding the physician’s worried eyes now watching from the doorway. “You’re… you’re here.”
She seemed to digest this, her energy already spent. Her eyes closed again, but her hand remained, a conscious weight on her daughter. “Good.”
Outside, King Florian hadn’t moved. He stood in the hallway like a man calculating a sudden, disastrous shift in the wind. The courtiers maintained a respectful, terrified distance.
When Birna emerged an hour later, her expression gave nothing away. The king intercepted her.
“You. Northern woman. A word.”
Birna stopped, her posture making it clear this was a concession, not obedience. “My name is Birna.”
“How bad is it?”
“She’s awake. She knows her name. That’s more than some can say after a battle.” Birna met his gaze. “The prince said ‘heir to two thrones.’ Is that truth here, or just pretty words for a dying woman?”
Florian’s jaw tightened. “The marriage was consummated. The child is legitimate. The alliance stands, provided the princess stands with it.”
“Then you better hope your physicians are better than your politicians,” Birna said, turning to leave.
“You think this is a game of scrolls and signatures?” His voice lowered, sharpening. “That child is now the most vulnerable point in two kingdoms. If her mother dies, she becomes a pawn. My son’s soft heart won’t protect her from the wolves who’d use her claim to spark a war with Nordane.”
Birna paused, her back to him. The truth of it settled in the room, colder than the marble. She didn’t turn around. “Then it’s lucky she has a sharp-nosed aunt who knows wolves,” she said, and walked away.
For two days, the sun-room became the axis of the palace. Caius refused to leave. He slept in a chair, woke to the sound of Lyra’s fussing, and helped the nurses prop Astrid up to feed her. The process was clumsy, silent, and intensely private.
Astrid floated in a haze of tonics and bone-deep fatigue. The bleeding had stopped, but the void it left behind was immense. She felt hollowed out, a shell that might crumple under a strong breath.
“You need to eat,” Caius said on the second evening, holding a spoon of broth.
“You need to shave,” she countered, her voice a thread. The dark stubble on his jaw was a shock against his usual polished look.
He managed a smile, offering the spoon. “Truce. You eat, I’ll consider it.”
She swallowed the broth, her eyes on Lyra asleep in a carved cradle beside the cot. “Your father?”
“Being political elsewhere.”
“He’s angry.”
“He’s terrified,” Caius corrected, wiping her chin with a cloth. “They’re the same thing to him. It’s easier to be angry at me than afraid of a future he can’t control.”
Astrid considered this. Her own father’s fear would look like rage, too. Like swinging an axe at a problem. “Birna?”
“Patrolling the corridors. She scowled at a portrait yesterday. It’s now hanging crooked.”
A faint, almost-smile touched her mouth. It vanished. “I can’t feel my legs.”
The spoon stilled. “What?”
“Not… numb. Just gone. Like they’re not mine.” She looked at him, real fear cutting through the fog. “Caius. I can’t stand up.”
He set the bowl down carefully. The clinical part of his mind, the part that read treatises on anatomy, knew extreme blood loss could weaken the body to the point of temporary paralysis. The other part, the part that had seen her drag a knife across a bandit’s throat, felt a deep, chilling dread.
“Okay,” he said, his voice deliberately even. He pulled back the light cover. “Let’s try.”
He put his hands under her calves. They were cool, the powerful muscles lax. “Just try to bend your knee. A little.”
Her face tightened with concentration. A tremor ran through her thigh, but the limb lay heavy and unresponsive in his hands. A single tear leaked from the corner of her eye, tracking into her hairline. She didn’t make a sound.
“Alright,” he said, covering her again. “That’s enough for today.”
“Don’t.” The word was sharp. “Don’t do that. Don’t make it small.”
He looked at her. “I’m not. I’m saying the fight today is over. You won. You’re alive. Lyra’s fed. The leg fight is for tomorrow.”
“What if tomorrow it’s the same?”
“Then we fight it tomorrow.” He took her hand, kissed her gritted knuckles. “You taught me that. In the Blackwood. You don’t fight the whole forest. You fight the root in front of you. Then the next one.”
She stared at their joined hands, then at the cradle. The fight went out of her, replaced by a crushing, weary acceptance. “I need to hold her. Properly.”
He brought Lyra to her, arranging pillows to support the baby’s weight on Astrid’s chest. Astrid’s arms, weak but functional, curled around the tiny form. She breathed in the scent of milk and clean wool.
“She has your frown,” Caius observed softly.
“She’s dreaming of your architecture lectures,” Astrid murmured, her eyes closing. For the first time, her body seemed to settle into true rest, anchored by the weight of her child.
An hour later, a hesitant knock came. A young page, wide-eyed, crept in. “Your Highness? A… a delegation has arrived. From Nordane.”
Caius’s blood ran cold. He’d sent no word. It was impossible.
“Who leads them?” he asked, rising slowly.
“It’s King Valgard himself, sire. And… about thirty of his housecarls. They’re at the main gate.”
Astrid’s eyes flew open, meeting Caius’s. The message hadn’t come from Eldoria. It had come from the Blackwood, carried not by a rider, but by the silence where six men should have been.
Her father was here. And he hadn’t come for a celebration.
“Get Birna,” Astrid said, the old steel flashing back into her voice. “And bring me my knife.”