"Heavy flow? Clots?"
"No. Just light. Pink."
She presses on my stomach with fingers that know their work, palpating gently, searching for signs I can't feel. I wonder if she can sense the difference in me—the contamination threading through my blood, the transformation slowly remaking my body into something not quite omega. If she notices, she doesn't say.
"Any pain when I press here?"
"No."
She sits back, studying me with eyes that have watched forty-seven girls leave for the dragon king's castle and never return. Eyes that watched me leave expecting the same fate.
"Could be stress," she says finally. "Could be strain from... physical activity." A diplomatic way of not sayingrough sex in the forest while you were both crying. "Early pregnancy is delicate. Body's still adjusting, deciding whether to commit."
"Will I lose it?"
The silence stretches too long before she answers.
"I don't know. If the bleeding gets heavier, if cramping starts, if you pass tissue—then we'll know. But if it stays light like this, if it stops in the next few days, then you might be fine."
Might.
The word lodges in my chest like a splinter.
"What should I do?"
"Rest. Complete bed rest—no getting up except to use the chamber pot. No activity. No stress." She pushes herself to her feet, joints popping in protest. "Let your body do what it needs to do without interference. And pray, if you're the praying type."
I'm not.
But maybe I should learn.
That night, the bleeding is lighter.
Not gone—still there when I check, a faint pink trace on the white cloth—but less than before. Noticeably less.
Hope is a dangerous thing. I learned that with Rhystan, learned that opening yourself to possibility just means giving the universe a bigger target. But I can't help the way my heart lifts when I see the nearly-clean cloth, can't stop the desperate wanting that floods through me.
I want this baby.
Didn't know how much until I might lose it. Never thought of myself as maternal, never imagined tiny hands reaching for me or small feet learning to walk. But now the thought of my body empty again, of losing this small fierce life before it even had a chance to begin—the thought is unbearable.
"It's lighter," I tell Yaern when she comes to check.
"Good." She actually smiles, the expression transforming her tired face. "That's very good, Kess."
"Does that mean?—"
"It means your body is settling. Calming down. Deciding to keep fighting." She adjusts the blankets around me, tucking them close. "Rest more. Give it time. Let your body do what it knows how to do."
I rest.
Lie in her narrow bed and stare at the ceiling and try not to think about him.
Fail utterly.
I can't stop my mind from circling back no matter how hard I try. The look on his face when I told him to leave—devastated, accepting, like he'd been waiting his whole life for me to confirm that he was exactly the monster he'd always believed himself to be. His voice breaking when he apologized, ragged and raw with grief. The way he held me in the forest while we were still locked together, his tears hot against my temple, his body shaking with sobs he couldn't control.
The way he destroyed everything we were building, and I still love him anyway.
