"My choice," I say firmly, pressing my forehead to hers. "My mate, my decision. I would rather have decades with you than millennia without you."
I place my hands on her swollen belly and begin the sharing ritual I learned centuries ago but hoped never to use. My fertility magic—eight hundred years of accumulated power, the heartof my divine nature—flows into Maya's failing body like liquid starlight.
The effect is immediate and devastating. I feel my core strength draining away, centuries of divine essence disappearing as if it had never existed. The loss is more than physical—it's like losing fundamental pieces of my soul, watching my very nature flow into someone else.
But Maya stabilizes instantly. Her power surges calm, her breathing eases, and our daughter's distress fades as the divine environment becomes sustainable. The enhancement that was killing her transforms into something that sustains rather than consumes.
"Better?" I gasp, feeling hollow in ways I've never experienced.
"Yes." Wonder and horror war in her voice. "Thorian, what have you done?"
"What needed to be done."
Through our bond, I feel her testing her new stability, marveling at how my transferred power has created perfect harmony between her human biology and divine enhancement. The birth can proceed naturally now, without the storms that threatened to tear her apart.
"How long before..." She can't finish the question.
"The sterility spreads through the court within hours," I reply honestly. "By tomorrow, every Fae under my protection will be incapable of reproduction. We'll have perhaps fifty years before the court's population declines below sustainable levels."
"I'm sorry," she whispers, tears streaming down her face. "I'm so sorry."
"Don't be." I stroke her hair with infinite gentleness. "Love isn't about the easy choice. It's about choosing what matters most, even when the cost is everything else."
Oberon watches our exchange with something that might be approval. "Fascinating," he murmurs. "True love conquering political necessity. The other courts will find this most... instructive."
As Maya settles into the rhythm of natural labor, I feel the magnitude of my choice settling into my bones. I've doomed my people to extinction for one woman's survival. Future historians will judge me as either the greatest romantic or the most selfish fool in Fae history.
But watching Maya's face as she prepares to give birth—seeing the fierce joy that replaces her earlier terror—I know I would make the same choice again.
Some love is worth any price, especially when that love was earned rather than given.
And as our daughter prepares to take her first breath, I can only hope that what we've created together will prove worthy of the sacrifice required to bring her into existence.
CHAPTER 29
MAYA
Our daughter arriveswith the dawn.
After hours of labor that should have killed me, after divine power that nearly tore me apart from within, she slips into the world as naturally as breathing. Small and perfect and blazing with inherited magic that makes the very air shimmer around her tiny form.
"She's beautiful," Lady Elvinia whispers, wrapping our daughter in silk that immediately begins sprouting tiny flowers at her touch. "My lord, she's extraordinary."
Thorian takes her with hands that shake despite eight centuries of royal composure, and I watch his ancient face transform with wonder. When she opens her eyes—golden-green like his, but shot through with veins of pure silver—he makes a sound that might be a sob.
"Hello, little star," he murmurs, and at the sound of his voice, roses begin blooming spontaneously along the chamber walls.
I should be exhausted. Should be barely conscious after the ordeal we've just survived. Instead, I feel... perfect. Complete in ways that have nothing to do with no longer being pregnant. The divine power flowing through my system has stabilized intosomething sustainable, no longer the destructive force that was consuming me alive.
"How do you feel?" he asks, settling beside me on the bed with our daughter cradled carefully in his arms.
"Strong." The word surprises me even as I say it. "Clearer than I've felt in months. Like everything is finally working the way it was meant to."
He smiles, but there's something hollow in his eyes. Something that speaks of costs I haven't yet understood.
It takes three hours for the full truth to reach me.
Captain Sage arrives first, requesting private audience with Lord Thorian about "urgent court matters." Her weathered face is carefully neutral, but I catch the way her gaze lingers on our daughter with something that might be grief.
