Page 58 of Beds and Blades

She touched the vial.

“It does not prevent conception entirely. It significantly reduces the probability. Think of it as persuading the conditions rather than eliminating them.”

“How significantly?”

“Enough that you need not spend your claiming night conducting anxious arithmetic.”

I looked at the vial.

“And the theology?” I asked. “If fertility is Yravel’s second principle, and the act that can create life is the most sacred act available to a living person, then where does prevention fit? Does deliberately reducing the chance of conception undermine the sacredness of the act?”

“It does not violate the teaching,” Caen said, with absolute authority.

“The teaching holds that the act itself is sacred. The penetration. The completion. The full physical claiming of a man and a woman who have bonded.”

She touched her pendant briefly.

“Yravel does not mandate that every act produce a child. She mandates that the act be honored—that nothing interrupt it, that nothing diminish it, that the bodies involved meet each other without reservation. Veilshade does not interrupt anything. It adjusts the odds of what follows. The sacred thing has already happened by the time veilshade becomes relevant.”

I sat with this.

“There is also,” Caen added, “the question of what Yravel actually wants for the women in her world. A child conceived before a woman is ready is not a flame burning fully.”

She looked at me steadily.

“The teaching does not ask that of anyone.”

I looked at the vial.

“I want children,” I said.

It came out with more certainty than I had expected, which told me it had been true for longer than I had been admitting to myself.

“Eventually.” I looked at the candle. “Just not right now.”

I paused.

“But I do want him to finish inside me. Very much.”

My face warmed, but I kept going, because apparently this was the kind of conversation I was having with a mage.

“The idea of it affects me. Strongly.”

“Good,” Caen said. “Then you understand more of the theology than you think.”

She leaned back slightly, studying me.

“The wanting is not separate from the sacredness. It is part of it. Yravel does not ask a woman to endure the act as duty. She asks her to want, to choose, to reach for life with her whole self.”

Her eyes met mine.

“The more you want him, the more fully you honor the principle.”

She picked up her cup.

“What you are feeling right now,” she said, “is theology.”

“I find this theology,” I said, “makes a compelling case for immediate practical application.”