"Then we'll deal with that." She squeezes my fingers. "But right now, your body needs rest. Give it space to settle."
I nod because I can't speak.
The bleeding continues through the night—light, pink, but there. Present. A reminder of how close I came.
I don't sleep.
Just lie in Yaern's bed with one hand pressed to my stomach, feeling my body hover on the edge of disaster.
And I think about Rhystan.
Alone in his castle. Not knowing if his child is alive or dead. Not knowing if I'll ever come back.
Part of me wants him to suffer.
Part of me wants to go back, let him hold me, pretend none of this happened.
I do neither.
Just lie here in the dark, waiting.
24
Kess
The bleeding doesn't stop.
Three days I've been lying in Yaern's narrow bed, watching dawn light creep across the thatched ceiling and fade again into dusk, and the spotting continues—light pink staining the cloths she changes for me, never heavy, never accompanied by the cramping that would signal true loss, but there. Constant. A reminder written in my own blood that something might be wrong.
That I might be losing the only thing I have left.
Yaern's cottage is small in a way the castle never was—one room that serves as kitchen and bedroom and everything else, walls of rough-hewn timber gone silver with age, a fireplace where her kettle steams with herbs meant to settle my stomach and calm my nerves. The bed beneath me is soft with quilts her grandmother stitched decades ago, the patterns faded now but still beautiful in their way. Everything here is worn, patched, making do with what little the village can provide.
So different from stone walls thick enough to withstand dragon fire. From tapestries and servants and endless corridors I never had time to explore.
From him.
"Still light," Yaern says when she checks the cloth for the third time today. Her hands are gentle, efficient, but I can hear what she's not saying in the careful neutrality of her voice. "That's good. Heavy bleeding would be worse."
"But it's not stopping."
"No." She won't lie to me. Never has, not even when the truth was something I didn't want to hear. "It's not stopping yet."
I turn my face toward the wall and count the knots in the wooden beams. Seventeen on this side. I counted them yesterday too. And the day before.
"Tell me again," she says quietly, settling onto the edge of the bed. "What happened. All of it."
I've told her twice already—once when I arrived bleeding and sobbing, barely coherent with fear and rage, and once yesterday when the shock wore off enough for proper sentences. But she keeps asking, and maybe that's what friends do. Maybe hearing it again will help something click into place.
It won't. But I tell her anyway.
"He knew I was pregnant." The words come out flat, drained of the fury that fueled them days ago. I've said them so many times they've lost their sharp edges, worn smooth like river stones. "For weeks. He had the mystic examine me, confirm it. Told her not to tell me."
Yaern makes a sound—not quite agreement, not quite surprise. Just acknowledgment that she's listening.
"And the tea." My throat tightens around the words. "Bond-weakening herbs. He's been dosing me since before I even—" I stop, swallow hard. "Before I fell in love with him. Before I trusted him. He was already poisoning the bond while I was still falling. And now I don't know if any of it was real. If I would have loved him anyway, or if the weakened bond made it easier somehow. Safer. Made him feel less like a threat."
The uncertainty is almost worse than the betrayal itself. Not knowing if my own heart can be trusted.
