Chapter Text
The heavens wept on the day that Sitri died.
Rain streaked the monastery windows as Jeralt waited in the hallway outside the bedchamber that he and Sitri shared. Waiting. Pacing. Then waiting again. Behind closed doors, the birthing dragged on—and so did the silence.
Silence. Heavy and gray, like the skies that loomed high above.
Jeralt didn’t believe in omens—he’d seen too much in his long life to put stock in such things—but he knew when something felt wrong.
It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Lady Rhea. When the archbishop declared that she would be the one to deliver the baby, Sitri turned to Jeralt with a smile that had only grown more radiant over the last nine months. Even when the midwife and the wet nurse were instructed to wait outside the room with him during the birth, he didn’t question the arrangement.
With her frail constitution, Sitri wouldn’t do well with having too many people fussing over her. The birth of her child must be peaceful and calm. And should Lady Rhea need any help, she would simply summon her assistants at a moment’s notice.
But as rain fell like whispers upon the windowpanes, as silence stretched out and filled the hallway, a feeling nagged at Jeralt like a boot pulled on too tight.
A scream jolted the air.
“At last,” the midwife said with a sigh, “the baby is on the way.”
Her reassurance eased the stiffness in the servants’ shoulders and melted the tension in the hallway, but Jeralt remained on edge. Not even the tall bedchamber doors had muffled that scream. His hands clenched the leather straps of his sword belt.
The screams continued. His grip on the belt grew tighter, his pacing more agitated.
Silence fell again. So thick this time, he could hardly breathe.
Finally, the doors opened. Servants in red and silver tunics hurried to swing the chamber doors wide, revealing the regal form of Lady Rhea. Hands and sleeves darkened with red. Stark white skirts soaked with blood, as though a river of crimson had spilled into her lap. Even the pale ends of her hair were stained.
In her arms she carried a bundle. A silent, unmoving lump clutched to her chest, with one end of the swaddling blanket trailing like graveclothes to the ground.
Terror pushed up into Jeralt’s throat. Cold and sick, throttling his breath.
When Lady Rhea spoke, her words were not a declaration to an audience of the faithful, or reassurance for the family of the mother and child. They were words that informed the world of the events that had transpired.
“The baby lives,” she said, “but Sitri…”
Her voice cracked. A fault line splitting placid stone.
“Sitri…is dead.”
A scream ripped through the hallway. And another, and another. It wasn’t until several hands lifted Jeralt by the arms from the ground that he realized the screams were his, roaring from his own throat.
The rain stopped.
Jeralt lay in bed, staring up at the ceiling. The sheets beside him were flat, the blankets undisturbed. Instead of his wife cooing softly as she cradled their newborn child to her breast, there was only the memory of her warmth, the ghost of her smile.
He hadn’t eaten anything. Hadn’t remembered. Hadn’t cared. In the darkness of this room, Sitri was gone. Nothing else mattered.
A soft rustle from the cradle. The wet nurse rose from her rocking chair and lifted the infant into her arms. Then she settled back into the chair and began to nurse.
The wet nurse’s services had been arranged before the birth, in case Sitri was too frail to nurse. The possibility that she would be too frail to survive childbirth had eaten at Jeralt during the final months of her pregnancy, but Lady Rhea had said not to worry. She had assured him that she would do everything in her power to ensure his wife’s safety.
But when Sitri was in danger, Lady Rhea hadn’t saved her. She hadn’t called for assistance even as Sitri’s blood spilled onto the spotless white of her gown. She had merely emerged from that chamber of death and presented the child to the world.
Jeralt had put his faith in Lady Rhea. That faith was clearly misplaced.
He was given this bedchamber as temporary lodging until the one he shared—had shared—with Sitri was cleaned and the floorboards scrubbed. This room was smaller and smelled of musty drapes that hadn’t been aired in weeks, possibly years.
But it didn’t smell of her blood.
The wet nurse had the baby on her shoulder now, patting her small back. After a gurgle or two, the baby was lowered back into the cradle.
The baby lay in her wooden box. Out of sight, without a sound, as if the chill of death had taken root in her tiny body as well.
Lady Rhea claimed that the child didn’t cry at birth. At first, Jeralt hadn’t believed her.
But as he closed his eyes in the silence that covered the room, he could finally trust this one thing to be true.