Page 36 of Postpartum Spells & Infant Hells

Nina sank onto the grass near the ward line. Clio was on her before Mom finished shouting her name. The healer pressed a cloth beneath her nose and poured healing into her. "Don't panic, Mom. I'm fine," Nina ordered weakly, listing sideways.

"You're about to go over like a drunk flamingo," Nana corrected, kneeling with the potion flask already uncorked. "Drink it before I pour it down your throat and inform every boy you ever date that you drool when you're unconscious."

"That threat assumes I'll have the energy to date after surviving this family," Nina complained, taking the flask in both shaking hands. "At this point, Nana, celibacy is starting to sound restful."

Melaina started screaming from the carrier then. Thaniel and Nyssa joined her with howls that made Mom laugh and cry in the same breath. "There they are," I whispered. My eyes were burning as Aidon scooped me up and started for the kids. "Our tiny alarm system is reporting for duty."

"They’re our tiny tyrants," Aidon corrected, stepping over broken glass while his shadows swept the worst of it from the path. "They survived a primordial horror and are now livid that supper's running late."

Mom lifted Melaina from the carrier and brought her to me. "Feed your daughter, then you let Clio look at you," she instructed.

I tucked Melaina against me and fumbled with my shirt until she latched with a greedy little grunt that nearly finished what the bridge had started. "I need coffee and food," I announced to anyone willing to listen. "Tomorrow, we figure out what Kaltherax walked away knowing."

Aidon crouched beside the chair. "Tomorrow we make the monster sorry it was ever born," he corrected.

CHAPTER 14

"Sit her down before she pours out onto Mythia’s clean floor, Big Guy." Nana had the shotgun in one hand as she shoved a mug into my hands before I'd caught a full breath. The yard behind her was still smoking faintly where forty-seven children had passed through. "You drink that. I don't care that you hate my coffee. You've gone the color of the grout."

“Why couldn’t Mythia have made it?” I groused.

“I think you meant to say thank you, Nana.” Nana rolled her eyes. “You should thank Mythia, too. She's busy sweeping up the glass. Murtagh is on his way to pick up the replacement glass. He and Tseki will make sure they’re replaced by bedtime.”

I hadn’t even considered that we should have walked into a kitchen full of glass. There wasn’t a speck to be seen. “Thank you, Thia!” I shouted to the ceiling before turning to Mom. “Did you cast a shield to keep out the cold?” It should have been freezing in the house, with nothing to insulate us from the cold.

“Nana and I both did,” Mom admitted.

“Thank you all for everything,” Aidon told them. “We couldn’t ask for a better village for our kids.”

Stella herded the others inside, narrating the retreat like a tour guide who'd misplaced her group. I nursed the sludge. Somewhere past midnight, Aidon carried me into bed between the cribs. Someone had moved them from the closet to the bedroom, making the space crowded.

To my surprise, I slept like the dead I'd just carried across. Aidon brought the babies to bed when they needed feeding and helped them latch, so I barely woke each time. He even changed and burped them. Honestly, I wasn’t sure I could have lifted my arms.

When dawn arrived, I sat up with my stomach turning. My mouth watered and bile burned the back of my throat. I made it to the bathroom on a half-crawl. I barely got the lid up before the retching started.

"Don't say it," I rasped against the cold rim when Aidon's shadow spilled over the tile. "Don't tell me you warned me. And don't you dare scoop me up like wreckage. I'll be sick down the back of whatever you're wearing."

“No one warned us that you would be sick this morning,” Aidon replied as he folded those long legs down beside me. He set his back against the cabinet and laid his palm flat between my shoulder blades.

We stayed there while the sun climbed through the window and turned the grout to dull silver. My stomach finished its revolt and finally gave up. He never lifted his hand, and he never once asked how bad it was, which I loved him for. Answering honestly would have made us both reckless with fear.

"It's barely been a night," I told him. "One night, and my magic hates me with a shocking passion."

"It's going to take longer than a night to recover, Queenie." He gathered my hair off my damp neck and twisted it into a loose rope at the back of my skull. "I can help you stand up when you're ready."

Reaching for him, I let him help me. “Thanks. I’m so lucky you love me when I’m an absolute wreck.”

I made it to the sink on legs that argued the whole way. I braced both hands on the porcelain to face what I'd become. The woman in the mirror looked like a trainwreck. My hair was tangled, and the fine lines around my mouth and eyes were more pronounced. The dark circles beneath the latter were darker than four months of broken sleep could account for.

Behind my reflection in the mirror, the air over my left shoulder rippled like heat off summer asphalt. There was a thin seam folding into nothing. Blinking, I gaped and noted it was there, then gone, and there again.

"What’s wrong?" Aidon asked from the doorway as he scanned my face.

I explained what I saw. "This is another part nobody warned me about." I dragged a hand down my cheek, and the seam shimmered over the towel rack instead. "Ava talked about the cost like a bill she never finished paying. She insinuated that it would be physical. There's a tear over your face, Aidon. Did it melt my mind?"

He crossed and turned me by the shoulders until I faced him instead of the glass. "You have not lost your mind. This is temporary. I’ve seen this when gods have expended too much power. Let’s get downstairs. Your mom, Nana, and Nina have already picked up the babies."

“Nina’s okay?” I asked around my toothbrush. I had to scrub the vomit residue out of my mouth.