Our relationship began when we were just boys, before either of us knew what it meant to be called ‘master’ and ‘servant’, ‘royal’ and ‘peasant’. And as we grew into men, we took with us the easy banter and unrestrained affection we’d cultivated for each other. Henry had told me, on numerous occasions, that the time we spent together was the only thing that made his stiff, often oppressive princely duties bearable. Serving as the castle’s mage—squandering my talents making beauty potions and sleep tonics for bored monarchs—was not exactly my life’s passion either, but it kept me close to Henry, and that was enough.
But then his father, the king, announced that Henry was to be married to the princess of a neighboring realm, one with grain to fill our empty silos and ships to protect our vulnerable coastlines. It was the best thing for the kingdom, and the worst thing for us.
We were foolish to act like this could last forever. Even more so to actually to believe it.
A week before the wedding, the king came to me in my chambers—not unheard of, but definitely unusual. He requested that I produce a fertility elixir. For his son. To ensure the wedding night was… fruitful.
This was normal, necessary even, to ensure the royal bloodline would continue. I nodded, though my stomach had already begun twisting itself in knots. But Henry loved children, had always wanted them, and it was bittersweet to know that this was the role I’d play in giving them to him.
It still would have been enough just to be near him. To see Henry grow into the role of husband, father, and one day king. And even though I promised his father that I would do whatever he asked, that I would not interfere, that Henry did not even love me in the same way that I loved him, he knew how close the prince and I were and could not risk my presence interfering with his judgment, his duty to his people.
He would be sending me away as soon as they were married.
The room swayed like the flutter of his royal cloak as he left me to prepare, both the potion and for my departure.
It was easy enough to withdraw from Henry in the following weeks—he was busy getting fitted for robes and hunting for the feasts, and I was busy trying to figure out how to live my life without the man that I loved. Several times he pulled me aside to make jokes about how ridiculous and over-the-top this all was, about how archaic these arranged marriages were and how he would probably barely even see her and nothing much was likely to change.
He would look at me then, as if asking me to confirm this to be the truth, but all I could ever manage was a tight smile and the promise that all would happen as it should.
I delivered the potion to the king a week before the wedding, but celebrations were already underway. A caravan was to take me away the morning of the ceremony and I just had to hold on until then. It would be easier once there was some distance between us. It had to be.
All my mental preparation was shattered, though, when Henry came bursting into my quarters the night before his wedding. There was a spark of accusation in his eyes as he waited for me to speak.
“You cannot leave me,” he finally said when I remained silent.
“Is that a request or an order?” Not that it mattered—even Henry could not trump the command of a king.
“Neither, it is simply a statement of fact.” I raised my eyebrows and looked pointedly around at the boxes in the room. “I cannot—“ He paused, cleared his throat, and sat beside me on the bed. “I do not want to do this without you.” He leaned to the side, taking my hand in his and resting his head against my temple. “I love you.”
And that was both why I wanted to stay, and exactly why I needed to leave. “Henry—“ My voice broke on just the utterance of his name, and any elegant, composed goodbye speech I might have intended shattered with it.
He kissed me then, long and slow and deep. He tasted of wine and honey, though sweeter and more intoxicating than either. “Don’t go,” he whispered against my lips, swallowing any refusal I might have given. His hands grabbed for my thigh, my waist, my neck, every desperate movement echoing his words’ entreaty.
I knew he didn’t really want me like this, he just didn’t want me to leave. But at that moment I was too selfish to care.
I took every part of him he offered and gave all of myself in return.
I let him make love to me, and let myself believe that he meant it.
We traveled for weeks before reaching the rocky coastline that was to be my new home. I was almost glad for it, as the constant jostling hour after hour, day after day had started to make me ill.
The small seaside town was nice enough, but something about it clearly did not agree with me. The scents of saltwater and seafood followed me everywhere and caused my stomach to lurch. The sun was brighter here, the air hot and moist and clinging to my skin. These were the excuses I made for myself to indulge my grief by sleeping the days away in my dark empty room.
I was supposed to be running the apothecary alongside the local witch, so it should not have come as a surprise that she came looking for me. Perhaps it was the healer in her, or perhaps I had spent too long in the company of entitled noblemen, but it was not her ire I received, as I’d been expecting, but rather sympathy. Kindness.
I broke down in her arms.
After a few weeks of adjustment and good company, I started to feel like myself again. There were still plenty of tears, but laughter too, and there was so much to learn, so much the witch was willing to teach me.
She was the first to suggest I might be pregnant.
It was a ridiculous assertion, until it wasn’t. The nausea, the exhaustion, the rounding out of my middle. It would have made perfect sense if it weren’t impossible.
“We perform magic for a living—what is impossible to us?” she’d said.
And that’s when I remembered the fertility potion. If the king had given it to Henry at any point before the wedding…
I pressed a hand to my stomach, fingers molding to the soft curve beneath my belly button. Joy and hope swirled with fear and melancholy—this child was supposed to belong to Henry and his princess, to the king and his people. But there would be other children, even without magical intervention, and I could not bring myself to regret taking this piece of him with me.
The first whispers of war started around the first time I felt the babe stirring in my womb. A conscription for soldiers came soon after, followed closely by a call for healers. I was the obvious choice, strong and gifted and young, but the witch would hear none of it.
She’d volunteered herself in order to keep me from the battle, but even she could not keep the battle from coming to me.
Over the next few months my services shifted from delivering babies to delivering funeral rites, from casting enchantments of blessing and bounty to ones of shelter and separation. Boats flying foreign banners gathered in the harbor as the beaches crowded with camps of our own.
I offered sacrifices to the sea to keep her churning and tumultuous, too dangerous to approach her jagged shores. Spells of protection spilled constantly from my lips, and the armies took it as an auspicious sign that no men were lost even as the sky darkened with volley after volley of arrows.
But the continual release of magic took its toll—one that I couldn’t afford to continue paying once the contractions started.
They kept me up most of the night, so I was already awake when a soft knock sounded at the front door in the quiet pre-dawn. The man was obviously a soldier, though he was not currently in uniform, and cocked an amused smile at me.
“And I thought the war was taking its toll on ME.” He shifted slightly under my irritated glare. “Ehm, you’re the town mage, yeah?”
I pressed the heels of my palms into my tired eyes and sighed. “What do you need?” I asked, annoyance suddenly replaced with an anxious weariness. A piece of paper was placed in my hand and I looked back up at him. “What’s this?”
“A note.” Obviously. “From my commander.” He glanced back toward the cliffs overlooking the shore before giving me a quick salute. “Best be getting back now.”
A sense of foreboding washed over me and I sat heavily into a chair as I unfolded the letter. I recognized the handwriting immediately and the baby twisted wildly in response to my racing heart.
“I was supposed to die out here. To sacrifice myself. To perish in dishonor and anonymity and hope it would be enough to appease the disgraced king. And I was ready—it was my fault, after all.
But you saved us. You are still saving us. I know it’s you. I can feel you in the air, the salt, the sea, just as real as the last time I saw you, the last time I held you in my arms. But you cannot forestall destiny forever.
There is so much I wanted to tell you, but it is enough to know you are here with me at the end. Just as you always were. I would not change a thing.
I ran out of the house, stumbling over frantic unbalanced feet, and dropped to my knees at the precipice of the bluffs. He was down there, somewhere among the thousands of armored men arranged in neat, intimidating blocks glinting in the golden light of the rising sun.
Henry was here, and he still loved me, and our child was coming… and the ships were getting closer.
The rocks beneath my hands were warm and hummed with anticipation. I tried to force my magic to travel through them, to seek out the soldiers’ feet and ward them with whatever power I had left to give. But a sharp pain in my lower back broke my concentration and it didn’t even reach the beach.
The ships anchored close enough to the shoreline that the navy’s longer range weapons could easily find their mark, but too far for any man to hope to swim there without being shot down. The invading force didn’t need to strike hard or fast, they just needed to bide their time and pick off Henry and his men one by one until there was no one left.
Righteous fury burned away the weight of fatigue and I began the long trek down to the ocean. My enchanted cloak was better than any shield, the spells on my tongue sharper and more deadly than any sword. I was waist deep in the still water when the only voice that could have pierced through my cloud of anger reached my ears. It was yelling my name with the same intense desperation I felt. I turned, and the world fell away as my eyes landed on Henry—my friend, my prince, my love. With a flick of my wrist he stopped, mid-sprint, but his gaze never wavered.
“I will not let you die here today.” The words were barely more than a whisper, but I sprinkled them in with the wind and knew they had reached him when his face turned desperate and he began struggling against the invisible shackles at his ankles. “I love you too much for that.”
I didn’t wait to see how he responded to that before turning back to the reason I’d come. I began chanting and the water receded around me in a circle. The ocean held its own kind of magical power, and all wizards knew it was a fool’s errand to try and control a force of nature.
But I had always been a fool when it came to Henry.
The connection I’d established was intense and threatened to consume and overwhelm. Drown. But the twinges of pain and flutter of kicks moored me to my body, my mission. Shafts of arrows sprouted from the sand around me, but stopped suddenly when a wall of water rose up and blocked their path. It felt as though I bore the whole weight of it on my shoulders and I shouted my own battle cry even as I was brought to my knees. My body twisted and trembled, but did not break. When it towered as tall as the surrounding cliffs I threw out my hands and fell forward, the giant wave falling with me. A thunderous crack echoed off the rocks, the mighty roar of the water mingling with the cries of broken men and splintering ships.
The sun was high, but to me the world was dark and cold and heavy. Arms were pulling me from the foamy aftermath, but I didn’t even have the strength to dispel the water flooding my lungs. My whole body ached and I recoiled from the fist pounding into my back. I tried to scream in pain, but all that came out was a violent spray that tore at my throat and caused my chest to spasm and seize. The air that replaced it was like breathing fire, but then Henry’s mouth was on mine and there was nothing more I wanted to do than keep breathing him in.
I gasped and pulled away when the insistent pressure between my hips peaked, unable to answer Henry’s frantic, worried questions.
“Get the healer!” he commanded, and I saw a shadow retreat from my curled up position in the sand. Then, leaning in close to nuzzle at the spot just below my ear, “You cannot leave me.”
“Is that—“ I coughed and winced, holding tightly to the hand he offered, “a request or an order?”
There was some shuffling and grumbling and then I heard a familiar voice that almost brought tears to my eyes. “What were you thinking taking on Mother Nature like that? Have I taught you nothing!” The witch’s warm, motherly face tutted affectionately as she knelt down and took in the state of me. Her assessing gaze paused on the hand I had wrapped around my stomach, which was still pretty well concealed beneath the folds of my robe. “How far along are we then?”
“I’m… not sure,” I admitted, but the next contraction told her all she needed to know—I was close.
“Far along with what?” Henry asked, looking between the two of us. “What don’t I know?”
“This the guy?” the witch asked in a stage whisper. I nodded and she hummed in approval. “Cute. Can you make it back to the shop?” My inability to answer was answer enough and she turned to Henry. “I don’t suppose the prince’s quarters are equipped with a bed?”
I would have been difficult to carry all the way to Henry’s tent in the sand amidst the wreckage even if I weren’t weighed down by the drenched fabric, so I was maneuvered onto a shield and dragged. It was undignified, but at least it was quick.
I tugged at the stifling garment as soon as the flaps closed behind us, but my muscles were spent and I whined when it clung stubbornly to my body. Henry took over the task and his breath hitched as the changes in my body became apparent, now only thinly veiled beneath a light dressing gown.
“What’s wrong with him?” He was looking at me but the question was directed toward the witch.
She ignored him, instead running her hands lightly over my prone form, checking for injuries. She lingered at my feet, my wrists, my chest, my head, and the cool tingle of a healing spell soothed cracks and tears I hadn’t even realized were there. “You’re lucky, kid,” she huffed when she was satisfied, settling her hands on her hips.
I wanted to ease Henry’s concerns, to wrap my arms around him and kiss away the worry lines between his brows, but my arms buckled as soon as I tried to push myself up to reach him. I gave the witch an accusatory look, but she just shrugged unapologetically.
“Can’t do much about the energy drain,” she explained. “That’s the magic’s doing—you picked a hell of a time to bring your body to its limit.”
“What does she mean?” I groaned and Henry tucked me into his side, holding me as I crumpled and shook under the force of a pain he did not understand. When I stilled a minute or so later, he stroked my hair and brushed his thumb across my cheek. “You know you can tell me anything.”
I took his hand, stroked my fingers across the place where his wedding band would be if he weren’t on the battlefield. He shook his head, didn’t understand. My throat was ragged and raw but I managed, “Your w-wife…” the word burning worse than the saltwater.
“My—“ He pulled away just far enough to give me an incredulous look. “I’m not married. I couldn’t go through with the wedding after…” he glanced toward the witch and a light blush swept across his skin. “Well, after. Her father was not happy, obviously.” He nodded toward the entrance to the tent, toward the tattered fleet just on the other side, and yeah, that was an understatement. “I thought you knew, I thought—fuck, you did this thinking I belonged to another?”
“I didn’t know,” I rasped, “you loved me like that… too.”
He took the hand I still had on his and intertwined our fingers. I squeezed him back tightly as a cramp wound its way around my stomach, my hips, my back.
His other hand fluttered around me uselessly as he begged us both, “Please, what can I do? What’s wrong?”
“From what I understand,” the witch explained to Henry, as I was otherwise occupied, “your father slipped you a fertility potion right before your wedding and you knocked up the wrong person. That about right?”
I cringed at the crass explanation, but nodded.
“I don’t—what does that mean? What do you mean?”
I positioned his large hand across the firm expanse of my belly. “It means I’m having a baby, Henry.” The next contraction was starting, bringing with it an urge almost as powerful as the ocean. “Mm, right now,” I warned, my knees shifting restlessly in a fruitless attempt to open my hips.
“What? You can’t!” Henry protested.
“I wouldn’t argue that with him right now,” the witch said, putting a comforting hand on my knee. “Whaddaya say, kid? How do you wanna do this?”
With considerable assistance, I made my way to the small cot and it was heaven against my aching joints. Following my body’s instincts—for whatever they were worth in a situation like this—I rolled onto my side, drawing one knee up to pull against as I bore down with the immense pressure building inside me. Henry quickly took over holding the position when it was apparent that my strength should be focused elsewhere.
“You’re doing so well, my love,” he whispered, though there was no way either of us could know that was true. “I’m right here. You can do this.”
My hips were much more narrow than a woman’s and progress was torturously slow. My already meager strength waned and I had no way to replenish it—I couldn’t eat or drink anything without it coming back up. The sky had just begun to darken when a hellish burn started to accompany my efforts and I could not stop myself from wailing with each push.
“I can’t,” I sobbed for the thousandth time as my body stubbornly refused to release the life trapped inside it.
“No one else gonna do it for ya,” the witch reminded me, quite unhelpfully.
“I’m going to tear in two.”
“Yep, yep. That’s the head tryin to come through—this is the hardest bit, lad, but it’s right there, I can see it even now!”
“Wait, really?” Henry’s eyes went from anxious to alight as they flicked to the gap between my legs. “That’s a baby,” he said, as if it was the first time he actually believed it. Maybe it was. A tear eked out from the corner of his eye and followed the strong line of his jaw as he kissed my raised knee with a disbelieving and semi-hysterical laugh. “That’s our baby.” My stomach tightened before I was ready and I whined. “Push now, keep pushing.”
I would give Henry anything he asked of me, but in this case there was nothing left to give. As soon as I held my breath, my head went fuzzy and my grip slackened. I tried again, sucking in a quick breath only to release it on an anguished cry.
“I can’t,” I said again, shivering despite the heat radiating from my body. “You need to save the baby. Please, I can’t—just save the baby.”
Henry studied me seriously for a moment before releasing his hold on my leg. Whatever he saw must have been enough to convince him that I meant it, and he took my face in his hands, forcing me to look into his eyes and see the determination there as he echoed my own words back to me. “I will not let you die here today.”
Henry pulled me gently but firmly to a seated position at the end of the bed, then settled himself at my back. At the start of the next contraction he inched forward, forcing me off the edge and into a deep squat. His strong grip kept me from collapsing to the floor but I howled as gravity added to the unbearable weight in my core.
“That’s it, just let it come now,” the witch soothed as the head suddenly came to a full crown in her palm.
“Henry, I—“ I gasped and shuddered, slumping in relief as the rest of the head slipped out.
“I know, it’s almost over.”
“No.” I craned my neck so that I could look up into his eyes. “It’s only just beginning.” His returning smile was radiant, fighting back the dark pull of unconsciousness long enough for me to give one last strained, desperate push.
“Born in the caul,” the witch remarked as she cleaned off the baby, rubbing it down until it began to wriggle and cry and then placing it—him, I realized, my heart skipping a beat—in my arms. “Supposed to be good luck, and seems to me you all are gonna need it.”
Maybe we did, but for now we had each other.
