The Vampire & Her Witch Chapter 2072: Weeks Too Soon

The candles had burned down to stubs twice since midnight, and Heila had stopped counting the hours.

She stood on the wooden step Emmie had dragged to the side of the bed so that she could reach while her small hands rested on the great curve of Olwyna’s belly, and she listened. Not with her ears. She listened with the faint silver-green glow that spilled from her palms, sinking down through skin and muscle to the two small lives beneath.

Two heartbeats. Quick and fluttering, like birds in a cage.

Still beating strong.

"Breathe, Lady Olwyna," Heila murmured. "Slowly. Let it pass."

Olwyna’s fingers tightened on the sheets until her knuckles went white. Her chestnut hair was plastered to her brow with sweat, and her face had gone the color of old linen. She breathed, the way Heila had taught her, long and slow through the worst of it, and when the pain finally ebbed, she sagged back against the pillows with a sound halfway between a sob and a laugh.

"You keep saying that," Olwyna whispered. "Let it pass. As though it’s a carriage on the road."

"It is a bit like a carriage," Heila said in the most reassuring tone she could manage. "It comes, and it’s very loud and very unpleasant, and then it goes."

"And then another one comes," Olwyna countered. "But never on schedule."

"And then another one comes," Heila agreed with a slight smile. "But sooner than the last one, so you don’t have to wait as long."

Olwyna laughed weakly, and Heila felt a little of the tightness in her own chest ease.

Across the room, Morwen knelt beside the hearth, stirring a small copper pot of willow bark tea with the careful concentration of a girl who was terrified of doing anything wrong. Emmie stood at the washstand, folding fresh linens into neat squares and stacking them beside a basin of steaming water. Neither of them had slept, and neither of them had complained.

On the chest at the foot of the bed lay two small, soft blankets of undyed wool that had been spun in one of the Horned Clan’s villages. Madame Zedya had brought them three nights ago, with a kiss for Olwyna’s cheek and a promise that Olwyna’s children would be wrapped in wool from the mountain villages, but she had to swear not to tell a soul where the blankets had come from.

Once the children were born, Zedya had offered to dye the blankets whichever colors Olwyna wanted since there hadn’t been time to finish them before they were needed. Everyone had thought they’d have more time, but Olwyna’s children were done with waiting.

They were weeks early. The words had been circling in Heila’s mind since the first pains came, a little before midnight. Weeks too soon.

She’d known it might happen. Every healer worth the name knew that twins came early more often than not. Since the banquet at Lothian Manor, she’d brewed potion after potion to slow the babes and hold them in the womb a little longer, to give them time to grow. Bitter draughts of cramp bark and black haw, steeped with willow and blessed with every drop of patience her witchcraft could lend them.

They had worked. For a while.

Then, a little before midnight, they’d simply stopped working. It was a risk that Heila had accepted and it was the reason she’d insisted that Olwyna stay close to her instead of returning to her husband’s village. Each potion delayed the birth less than the last one, and they’d finally reached the limit of what her witchcraft could postpone.

So, Heila had changed her plans. No more potions to slow them. Instead, she’d brewed the strongest draught she knew, a thick green tonic of nettle and red clover and raspberry leaf, steeped with a thread of her own power, to strengthen the babes against the frailty that so often followed a child born too soon. Olwyna had choked down two cups of it already.

It would have been better to give her a dose every day for a week before the birth, but it would have to be enough.

"Lady Heila?" Morwen asked quietly. "The tea’s ready."

"Good," Heila said. "A little for her now. Not too much. You can set her cup in a bowl of iced water to cool it down so she can drink it all. And then wet a cloth for her brow, nice and cool."

Morwen nodded and hurried to obey. Of the two young ladies that Ashlynn had taken in, Heila found Morwen’s presence far more to her liking. Whether she was destined for a future as a healer or not, she was attentive and threw herself into her tasks without questioning them.

For a lady whose father had raided the outlying villages within the past few years, it was the best approach, at least with Heila. Lady Eira was just as diligent, and she was eager to learn anything Heila had to teach, but she asked far too many questions and her presence grated on some of the oldest hurts in Heila’s heart. Hurts that belonged to every man and woman of the Vale.

When Ollie came asking to borrow one of the young ladies as a squire for Jocelynn, Heila had all but leaped at the opportunity to be rid of her, at least for a few days until Ashlynn could take charge of her new handmaidens again.

Heila closed her eyes, just for a moment, and took a deep, slow breath.

There it was again. The thing she’d been trying not to think about all night.

Ashlynn.

Six days. It had been six days since Jocelynn’s trial began and Mother Ashlynn had sat beside her sister on the frozen ground in the Enchanted Grove every long winter night of them. Six nights of frost and mist and fear. Heila had left her there before nightfall with a promise to return by morning, and Ashlynn had only nodded, without lifting her eyes from Jocelynn’s face.

Much of Jocelynn’s body was already covered by the growing Olive Tree. The trunk was thick enough that Heila’s hands couldn’t wrap all the way around it, and the mass of twisted roots covered much of her torso. Her hands were still exposed to the cold, along with her face and her lower legs and feet, but the rest...

It was far too much and much too fast.

Ashlynn hadn’t slept outside of a few hours at Nyrielle’s side. Heila knew she hadn’t, and that she wouldn’t have gotten that much rest without Nyrielle to drag her into dreams. She’d barely eaten, even when Ollie pressed bowls of stew into her hands. And every hour that passed brought the end of the ninth day closer.

Heila should be there. A witch’s place was beside her coven.

But a healer’s place was here.

The next wave of pain came before either woman was ready for it.

Olwyna cried out, and Heila pressed her palms flat against her belly. The silver-green glow flared beneath her hands. She reached for the agony the way she’d reached for so many others, in plazas full of wounded soldiers, in the High Pass, on the frozen field in Lothian. She drew it out of Olwyna’s body and into her own.

It hit her like a fist to the gut.

Heila gasped. Her knees buckled on the step, and for one dizzying instant, she was sure she would fall. Fire tore through her belly and her back, an ache so deep it seemed to reach her bones, and her hooves scraped against the wood as she fought to stay upright.

"Lady Heila!" Emmie cried, dropping the linens.

"I’m fine," Heila gasped. "I’m fine, I’m... Stay where you are."

The pain passed. Slowly. Like a carriage on the road with nothing but a stubborn mule to pull it.

When she could breathe again, she found Olwyna staring at her, wide-eyed.

"You’re taking it," Olwyna whispered. "The pain. Aren’t you?"

"Some of it," Heila admitted.

"You shouldn’t," Olwyna said. "Not for me. You’ll need your strength for Princess Jocelynn..."

"Mother Ashlynn has the whole coven with her at Jocelynn’s side," Heila said firmly. "We’re all taking our turns. You have me. And I have no intention of letting either of you down."

From beyond the heavy oak door to the adjoining room came the sound of pacing. Heavy boots, back and forth, back and forth. And underneath it, the soft, restless slither of scales across stone.

"Olwyna?" Sir Carwyn’s voice called through the door, cracked and hoarse. "Olwyna, are you...?"

"Tell him I’m fine," Olwyna gasped as she struggled to control her breathing.

"She’s fine, Sir Carwyn," Heila called. "Keep pacing. It’s good for you."

There was a pause, and then, unbelievably, she heard a low, rumbling sound through the door. Barsali was laughing.

The pains came faster after that. The grey light of morning was just beginning to creep around the edges of the shutters when Heila finally felt the change beneath her hands, the shift and settling she’d been waiting for all night.

"It’s time," Heila said. "Morwen, take her hand. Emmie, ready the linens. Lady Olwyna..."

Olwyna looked up at her with frightened, exhausted eyes.

"When the next pain comes," Heila said gently, "I need you to push."

The first child came into the world just as the sun touched the shutters. A tiny, furious, slippery thing, red-faced and wailing, with a damp shock of chestnut hair plastered to her head.

"A girl," Heila breathed, and something hot and bright swelled in her chest. "Lady Olwyna, it’s a girl..."

Olwyna burst into tears.

Heila cleared the babe’s mouth with a gentle finger, tied and cut the cord, and passed her into Emmie’s waiting arms to be wiped clean and wrapped in warm linen. The little girl’s cries filled the room, loud and indignant and wonderfully, wonderfully alive.

Then Heila laid her glowing hands on Olwyna’s belly once more, reaching for the second heartbeat.

She found it.

And her own heart went cold.

The second child had turned...