Chapter 16: The Birth

Wynne's POV

The first pain came at supper, on the night of the full moon.

I put down my spoon and held the edge of the table in Edda's kitchen, and I did not say anything.

Edda looked at me over the stew pot.

"How long?"

"Just now."

"Liar. Your face has been that color since noon."

She wiped her hands on her apron and shouted for Ronan in a voice that rattled the pans.

He came down the back stairs three at a time.

I had never seen him run before.

"Is it the child?"

"No, Majesty, she's decided to bake bread," Edda said. "Carry her up."

"I can walk."

"You can walk between pains."

The second one came on the landing, and I stopped and bent over the rail.

Ronan said nothing at all.

He lifted me into his arms and carried me up the tower stairs without once looking at his feet.

The hours after that ran together.

Edda had laid out clean linen and a bowl of hot water by the bed, and a knife in boiled cloth that I tried not to look at.

The room smelled of lavender and woodsmoke.

Moonlight lay across the floor in a long white square, and I watched it creep a hand's width toward the wall between each pain.

Ronan would not leave.

Edda told him twice to wait on the landing like every other father in the history of the world, and he looked at her until she threw up her hands.

He sat behind me on the bed with my back against his chest, and I held his forearms.

I left marks in his skin.

He said nothing about that either.

"Breathe," Edda said. "Not like that. Like you're blowing out a candle."

"I hate you."

"Everyone does at this stage. Again."

I do not know how long it was.

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