I met my handmaid’s gaze, eyes wide. No, it couldn’t be.
The urge to flee, to bolt the door, clawed at me. Instead, I seized Edith’s hand and dragged her into the far corner.
“When was my last cycle?” I wanted to scream, but my words barely carried.
Color drained from her face, pupils tightening. “I would need to check.”
“Do not toy with me,” I hissed, fingers biting into her arm as my gaze flicked past her shoulder. “How late am I?”
Dates scattered through my thoughts. Too much had happened. Time bent under all the chaos, drowned by war and ceremony. But Edith would know. She always knew. It was her job to keep track.
“A week.”
My knees buckled.
“Nienna!” She lunged, twisting us toward the door.
“No.” I grabbed her arms, shaking her as I hauled myself upright. “No, Edith. If you breathe a word of this to him, I will banish you.”
Her jaw fell open, and she recoiled, stunned.
“I mean it.” A hand pressed to my chest as I fought to slow the pounding beneath my dress.
“It could be nothing,” she whispered. “Times like these—they’re unsettling. A woman’s body is a fickle thing.”
Disbelief sharpened my stare. “When have I ever been more than two days late?”
“You’ve never saved a kingdom from civil war either, Your Majesty.”
Excitement trembled through my fingers, but I forced them still. Dragons above, I couldn’t let him know. Not yet. Not without certainty. The hope of an heir, dangled and then ripped away, would carve him hollow. He did not deserve that cruelty.
His mind already carried too much. A wedding. War plans. Tallon. He’d be far too preoccupied to worry himself over my cycle.
I shook out my hands and closed my eyes. Slow breaths. Calm. Kallias might not track my days, but he would sense any unease. I had to look composed. Untroubled. Not like a woman who could be carrying Radaan’s heir.
How absurd, how unbelievable would it be to carry his child? After years spent trying for a babe with his previous wife—may her name be forever cursed—and no doubt tracking her fertile cycles, it felt unfathomable that I could be pregnant within the first month.
“Are you well, Your Majesty?” Edith’s careful tone slipped through the haze.
I tore my thoughts away, anchoring myself in the present. Dinner loomed, and nausea might follow. I needed a plan.
“Fetch the mint perfume.” In Draconia, the scent calmed a roiling stomach.
I was a queen entrusted with treaties and nations’ secrets.
Keeping one from my husband should be simple.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Kallias
Nienna poked at a potato, cutting it into neat pieces.
“—and therefore I advise Ronan, Sean, and Orrin to be present at the wedding. Mikal and Erwin can guard the perimeter, and Nakos can oversee the river.”
She pushed the pieces around her plate, murmuring a comment to her brother. He laughed, and she lifted an empty fork to her lips.
Something was wrong.
