In Which Taimyra Takes a Cue

February 15, 1183

"Mother! Father!" Taimyra heaved herself out of her father-in-law's desk chair and greeted her parents with successive embraces. In her haste to send off that reply to Jeda, she'd almost forgotten that they would be visiting. "How nice to see you! How is everything back home?"

"Not bad. Celina's due in less than a month--and that's not the only new grandchild we can expect within the year, I see." Her mother winked as she pressed one hand to Taimyra's firming stomach. She was barely showing yet, but there was no hiding a pregnancy from Viridis of Luperia. "You and Farilon sure didn't waste any time."

"Yes, well... we love the girls, but we do still need an heir." But unlike a certain other royal, from what she could figure from Jeda's letters--they'd only briefly met in person, but once Taimyra had married, she'd struck up a correspondence, crown princess to crown princess--Farilon did not pressure her for sex, nor did he disregard the possibility of his brothers inheriting should he die sonless.

And he certainly never faulted her for any perceived infertility! Yes, they had been married for ten years now. Yes, they only had two children, ages six years and eight-and-a-half months, to show for it. The people could think what they thought, but Farilon knew full well that it was hardly Taimyra's fault if he preferred his stepmother's brother to her.

"Well, either way, we'll all be delighted." Her mother drew back her hand with a smile. Her father's mouth didn't move--for once--but a twinkle in his eye told her that he agreed. Taimyra's mother only had three children, two of which were twins who were decades younger than their older brother, so her father had not been a man of King Ietrin's variety either--not that he'd had any right to be, what with her numerous half-siblings. Regardless.

Her father gestured to the couch by the wall. "Why don't you ladies sit down?"

"I can stand if you prefer, Father."

"Now, now. I must consider the comfort of my future grandchild--and while I may be old, I'm hardly dead." He stepped between Taimyra and her mother and offered them each an arm, then led them to the couch. Her mother sat, then after a nod of insistence from her father, Taimyra did the same. "So, your brother Severin tells me that your friend Jeda has given birth."

"Yes, to a little boy. Prince Holden."

"Holden." Her father smirked. "I would have guessed Roderick--or Searle, based on sheer statistics. Where the hell did Jeda get an original name like Holden from?"

"Her stepmother, maybe--Holladrin. They were very close. If she'd had a daughter, I bet you anything her name would have been Holladrin."

"She may yet have another daughter," her mother mused. "Now that the stress of providing an heir has been lifted, it may be easier for them to conceive again."

Taimyra nodded, though she couldn't be sure. From the sounds of it, Ietrin had a curiously low number of suspected bastards for a man of his age and reputation, but had never realized this himself. The midwife in Naroni had also examined Jeda multiple times and found nothing abnormal. Did stress affect male fertility as it did female? No one ever spoke of male fertility. As far as most saw it, it was a given that a man could make sons, never mind that every other aspect of health varied from person to person and that it took two to make a baby.

"But you know..." Her father grinned, and she couldn't help but respond. Her father may have been a notorious cad, and while she might have wished otherwise, there was no denying the love there. "Call me an old fool, but your pregnancies seem to take cues from Jeda's. She has a girl, then you have a girl. She has another girl, then you have another girl. Maybe you'll have your boy too."

"Maybe." Somewhere inside her, a tiny limb tickled. "But we'd love another little girl too."

NEXT CHAPTER:

In Which Viridis Discovers a Cruel Irony

November 14, 1161

It had been three months, Viridis found as she counted off the days in her head. Three whole months. She hadn't been stressed, nor had she been ill, nor had she slept with her husband within that period of time.

Three months. At this point, it was unlikely that it would ever return--not at her age. She was forty-nine years old, and she knew for a fact that there was no way she could be pregnant; now, she knew she never would be again.

Perhaps her son would see fit to give her another grandchild soon, she mused as gently bounced Camaline up and down. She loved the little girl like she would have loved a thousand of Rudolphus's children, of course, but she did hope that her son would, at the very least, stop abstaining from his wife at some point; she did not want Rudolphus to imitate his mother's mistake.

In the mean time, however, the twins were only four, only a year older than her granddaughter. It wasn't as if she no longer had the privilege of being a mother, she knew full well having believed for twenty-five years that Rudolphus would be her only child--she simply no longer had the chance of ever becoming a new mother again.

The twins, she assured herself, would be enough for her--and if they proved otherwise, then there was always Lonriad's year-old daughter. Viridis was already her mother in practice, as the girl's own had fled shortly after recovering from the birth, and she had to admit, she had become quite attached to the little girl. She had already raised and come to love one of Lonriad's bastards; why not do the same for another?

But in spite of it all, she did have her regrets. Maybe she should have eased up on the man, for her own sake; she had been young at the time, and had not known exactly what it was she wanted. It was cruelly ironic that now that she did, she was too old to aspire to it.

Ah, but such was life, Viridis supposed--just a collection of cruel ironies.

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