In Which Elarys Reflects on the Moment

July 16, 1189

It had happened shortly before midnight.

Elarys had been waiting for that moment for years now, and not for the first time. Her mother had waited. Her grandmother had waited. Before she died, she'd have to patch things up for Ellona so she'd know to wait too, and Ella or Eliana or Rahileine after her. It would be easier for them. They were so near the source.

The line had not been stable in generations. Rarely had a link in the chain produced more than one child, and children almost never came without difficulty. The last Heiress had been born only because Elarys had called in some favors from the other side, to the last of her line before her, a dying woman wasting away in the care of a nunnery.

With this Heiress, that moment had come once before. It hadn't lasted.

This one, Elarys thought as she stabbed at the logs in her hearth, would. It had to. The Heiress still had fertile years ahead of her, but with her family history, the universe damn well owed her--owed all of them--at least one living Heirling. If it were more than one, the better.

As of shortly before midnight, if the next nine months progressed as they should, there was at least one on the way.

Perhaps the future was more secure than the past had led her to believe. The line had gone to Naroni, after all. The land would offer some protection there, she hoped--and according to Neilor, the husband was a member of a prominent noble family. Given the Dovian tendency for not marrying within their own environs, any relocation was unlikely to be far.

Nevertheless...

It may have been time to make things clear. She'd have to visit Naroni, and sooner rather than later. Once the child had survived its delicate first years, maybe.

A lucky thing her contacts had produced that boy Searle.

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