Consciousness returned like water seeping through cracked stone—slowly, reluctantly, carrying with it the weight of everything she had tried to forget.

  The ceiling was unfamiliar. Pale stone arches met in shadows that danced with candlelight, and for a moment Fran couldn’t place where she was. Not the west tower—that had timber beams dark with age. Not the solar where she sometimes worked—that had windows facing east. This was somewhere else entirely, somewhere that smelled of herbs and melted wax and something underneath it all that might have been blood.

  Her mouth tasted of metal and bitter herbs, as though someone had made her drink something foul while she slept. When she tried to swallow, her throat was raw, and moving her head sent spikes of pain through her skull that made her immediately regret the attempt.

  The pain came in layers. First the dull, pervasive ache that seemed to pulse through every part of her body, as if she had been trampled by horses and left in a ditch. Beneath that, sharper and more immediate, was the burning sensation in her side—a fire that flared with each breath, each small shift of position. And deeper still, something that felt hollow and wrong, as though part of her had been carved away and the empty space filled with lead.

  Memory came in fragments. Bells ringing, urgent and discordant. The warmth of the feast hall dissolving into chaos. Soldiers running, their boots striking stone like hammers. The chapel—yes, the chapel. She remembered the smell of blood and the weight of wounded bodies crowding every available space.

  Marcus. The boy’s face swam before her, young and earnest, his eyes wide with shock as the raider’s blade found its mark. She had knelt beside him as he died, had watched the light fade from his gaze.

  The dagger. That came back too, sharp and clear—not the blade itself, which had moved too quickly for her to see clearly, but the explosion of pain that followed. The sensation of something vital tearing inside her, of warmth spreading where it shouldn’t be.

  After that, the memories became scattered and strange. Voices speaking in urgent whispers just beyond her understanding. Hands moving over her body, gentle but insistent. The bitter taste of poppy and mandrake on her tongue.

  How long had it been? The quality of light filtering through the narrow windows suggested late afternoon, but whether that meant hours or days had passed, she couldn’t say. Her mouth was dry as parchment, and when she tried to lift her head, the room tilted sickeningly around her.

  The door opened with a soft creak of hinges, and Mother Elna stepped inside. The priestess looked older than Fran remembered, her grey hair disheveled and dark circles beneath her eyes. Her habit was clean but showed the telltale wrinkles that came from sleeping in one’s clothes, and when she saw Fran’s open eyes, the relief that crossed her face was so profound it was almost painful to witness.

  “Your Grace,” Elna said quietly, moving to the bedside with the careful step of someone who had been on her feet too long. “Thank the saints. We weren’t certain you would...” She let the sentence hang unfinished, but its meaning was clear enough.

  Fran tried to speak and managed only a croak. Elna was already reaching for a cup of water, lifting it to Fran’s lips with practiced care. The water was warm and tasted of mint, and though swallowing sent fresh waves of pain through her throat, it helped clear some of the fog from her mind.

  “How long?” Fran managed, her voice barely above a whisper.

  “Four days,” Elna replied, settling onto the wooden stool beside the bed. “Master Andrieu, the cerusician from the lower town, said you might sleep longer; the sleep sponge was very strong, and your body needed time to begin healing. But we were starting to worry.”

  Four days. In four days, anything could have happened. Word might not have even reached Vartis yet, much less traveled the hundreds of miles to wherever Gale was conducting his investigation in Kentar.

  “The attack,” she said, struggling to focus through the lingering effects of whatever drugs they had given her. “The raiders. Did we—”

  “They escaped,” Elna said, her voice carefully neutral. “Lord Daskar and Captain Serwin are coordinating the search efforts, but the men scattered like smoke when reinforcements arrived. There have been patrols sent to the surrounding countryside, and messages dispatched to the neighboring lords warning them to watch for armed bands.”

  Fran closed her eyes, trying to piece together the tactical situation. Professional raiders who struck specific targets and vanished into the night suggested more than opportunistic banditry. The comment about the Golden Banner—that hadn’t been random. Someone had wanted to send a message, and they had been willing to risk significant resources to deliver it personally.

  “Casualties?” she asked.

  Elna’s expression grew graver. “Fifteen confirmed dead, though two more have died since from their wounds. Perhaps thirty wounded, most of them recovering. No children among the dead. The granary lost three wagons of grain, and several houses in the outer district were burned, but the damage could have been much worse.”

  Seventeen dead. Seventeen people who had been alive four days ago, who had been going about their evening routines when the bells started ringing. Marcus among them, barely old enough to be called a man, cut down because he had tried to do his duty.

  “And the one who...” She gestured weakly toward her side, where she could feel the bulk of bandages beneath her shift.

  “Gone with the rest,” Elna said flatly. “They planned their escape routes well. In and out before our forces could properly respond.”

  Her left hand moved instinctively to the ring on her finger—the simple silver band with its deep blue sapphire that caught what little light filtered through the narrow windows. Gale’s ring. He was hundreds of miles away, probably deep in some merchant’s warehouse or following leads through shadowed taverns, completely unaware that she had nearly died.

  Elna was checking her forehead with the back of one weathered hand, feeling for fever. The touch was gentle but clinical, the assessment of someone who had tended many patients through long illnesses.

  “The fever is breaking,” she murmured, more to herself than to Fran. “That’s a good sign. And the wound seems to be healing cleanly—no signs of corruption or excessive bleeding.”

  She moved to lift the corner of Fran’s shift, checking the dressings underneath. The motion sent fresh pain shooting through Fran’s side, sharp enough to make her gasp.

  “I need to change these,” Elna said apologetically. “Master Andrieu insists on fresh bandages twice daily until we’re certain there’s no infection.”

  The process of cleaning and redressing the wound was a special kind of torment. Even with Elna’s gentle hands, even knowing that the pain was necessary for healing, each touch of cloth against torn flesh felt like being stabbed anew.

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  It was strange, Fran thought through the haze of discomfort, how different it felt to be the patient rather than the healer. A year ago—before she inherited the duchy, when she still spent her days in Candlekeep’s clinic rather than the council chamber—she had performed this same ritual countless times, her own hands cleaning and binding wounds while offering quiet reassurance about healing and time. She had thought she understood what her patients endured. She had been wrong.

  The helplessness was the worst part. Lying still while someone else’s hands decided what was necessary, unable to assess the wound herself or judge the progress of healing. She had to trust Elna’s expertise, had to accept treatment rather than provide it, and the reversal felt more disorienting than the opium.

  By the time it was finished, Fran was shaking with exhaustion and had bitten her lip hard enough to taste blood.

  “Here,” Elna said, offering another cup—this one containing what looked like weak broth. “You need to get some nourishment into you. You’ve taken nothing but water and medicines for four days.”

  The broth was warm and savory, flavored with herbs that made it easier to swallow despite her raw throat. She managed perhaps half the cup before her stomach began to rebel, but even that small amount seemed to help clear some of the remaining fog from her thoughts.

  “Lord Daskar sends his regards,” Elna said as she took the cup away. “He wanted to be informed the moment you woke, but I told him you would need time to recover your strength before receiving visitors. Captain Serwin has been by twice daily to check on your condition, and Lieutenant Verren has barely left the building since the attack.”

  At the mention of Alven’s name, Fran felt her jaw tighten involuntarily. The memory came back with unwelcome clarity— Alven’s wine-flushed confidence at the feast, his possessive hands and presumptuous words. The sharp crack of her palm against his cheek.

  The anger felt good, in a way—cleaner and simpler than the grief that threatened to overwhelm her. But even that small surge of emotion left her feeling drained, too weak to sustain any feeling for long.

  The silence stretched between them, comfortable in the way that often existed between people who had shared difficult circumstances. Outside, she could hear the distant sounds of Durnhal continuing its daily business—voices calling in the streets, the clatter of cart wheels on cobblestones, the occasional bark of orders from the guards. Life going on, as it always did, regardless of who lived or died in the process.

  It was Elna who finally broke the quiet, her voice softer than before, weighted with the kind of gravity that preceded unwelcome news.

  “Your Grace,” she said carefully, “there is something else you need to know. Something that was lost that night, along with the blood.”

  Fran felt something cold settle in her chest, a premonition that made her want to turn away, to close her eyes and pretend she hadn’t heard. But she was a duchess, and duchesses did not have the luxury of willful ignorance, no matter how much they might desire it.

  “The life you were carrying,” Elna continued, each word chosen with deliberate precision, “too early, too frail to survive what happened. I’m sorry, Your Grace. I’m so very sorry.”

  The words seemed to hang in the air between them, taking on weight and substance until they felt like physical things pressing down on her chest. For a moment, Fran couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, couldn’t do anything but stare at the priestess with a kind of blank incomprehension.

  Pregnant. She had been pregnant.

  The knowledge settled into her mind like a stone dropping into still water, sending ripples of recognition spreading outward.

  The exhaustion that had been plaguing her for weeks. The nausea she had attributed to stress and poor meals taken on the road. The tenderness in her breasts that she had ignored in favor of more pressing concerns. The way her monthly courses had become irregular, then stopped altogether—a development she had been too busy to investigate properly.

  Somewhere, in the deepest part of her mind, she had known. Or if not known, then suspected, felt the changes in her body even as she refused to acknowledge them. She had pushed through council meetings and diplomatic correspondence and all the grinding daily work of governance, telling herself that her discomfort was merely the price of leadership, that her body’s complaints were less important than her duty to her people.

  And now it was gone. Torn away by a stranger’s blade, bled out onto the chapel stones along with everything else she had lost that night.

  “How long?” she asked, though she wasn’t sure she wanted to know the answer.

  “Perhaps two months,” Elna said gently. “Maybe a little more. It would have been... it would have been very small still. Very fragile.”

  Two months. Since before Gale had left for Kentar. Long enough for the changes to have begun, for her body to have started the slow work of creating new life. Not long enough for quickening, not long enough for the child to have been anything more than potential and hope, but long enough for its absence to leave a void that felt impossibly vast.

  She thought of all the times over the past weeks when she had felt tired, when she had wanted nothing more than to lie down and rest, and had instead forced herself to continue working. All the meals she had skipped, all the stress she had allowed herself to bear without considering what it might cost. If she had known, if she had paid attention to what her body was trying to tell her, would it have made a difference? Could she have protected what she was carrying, kept it safe until it was strong enough to survive?

  The questions circled in her mind like carrion birds, feeding on guilt and regret until she felt sick with them.

  “Did...” She had to stop, clear her throat, try again. “Did anyone else know?”

  “No,” Elna said firmly. “Master Andrieu and I have told no one else, and we will not unless you give us leave to do so. The circumstances of your injury, the blood loss—it would have been impossible for such a pregnancy to continue regardless. No one could have saved it.”

  The words were meant to comfort, she knew, but they felt hollow in the face of her grief. No one else knew. No one else would mourn this loss, this life that had barely begun before it was ended. The child—her child—would pass from existence without ceremony, without acknowledgment, without anyone even knowing it had ever been.

  She became aware that Elna was watching her with the careful attention of someone prepared to offer comfort or simply bear witness to pain, whatever was needed. But Fran couldn’t find words for what she was feeling. The loss felt too large, too raw, to be contained by language.

  “I should let you rest,” Elna said after a moment, beginning to gather up the cups and bandages she had brought. “Master Andrieu will want to examine you later, and Lord Daskar will be eager to speak with you when you feel ready for visitors. But there’s no rush. Recovery takes time.”

  She paused at the door, looking back with something that might have been maternal concern.

  “Your Grace, what happened—none of it was your fault. Neither the attack, nor the injury, nor... nor what was lost. Sometimes terrible things happen regardless of what we do to prevent them. Sometimes we can only bear witness to the pain and try to continue.”

  Then she was gone, leaving Fran alone with the unfamiliar ceiling and the weight of knowledge she had never wanted to possess.

  For a long time, she simply lay there, staring upward at the stone arches. She thought about getting up, about calling for servants to help her dress and return to her duties. She thought about the letters that would need to be written, the reports that would need to be reviewed, the decisions that would need to be made about hunting down the men who had attacked the city.

  But for the first time in months, none of it seemed urgent enough to matter. The duchy would survive a few more hours without her input. The world would keep turning regardless of what she did in this small room with its unfamiliar ceiling.

  Instead, she let herself feel the full weight of what she had lost. Not just the pregnancy, though that was grief enough, but everything it represented. The possibility of an heir, of continuity, of something beyond the endless grind of political necessity. The dream she hadn’t even allowed herself to acknowledge of holding a child that was hers and Gale’s, of watching it grow and learn and become its own person. The future that had been growing in secret while she worried about diamond smugglers and grain supplies and the loneliness of ruling without her partner beside her.

  The tears came quietly, without drama or ceremony. They slipped down her cheeks and soaked into the pillow beneath her head, carrying with them weeks of accumulated exhaustion and fear and now this new, raw grief.

  Her shoulders shook with the force of emotions she had been holding back, but she made no sound, as though even in her private mourning she was conscious of the need to maintain some semblance of control.

  She wept for the child that would never be, for the guard who had died trying to protect her, for the seventeen people who had lost their lives because someone wanted to send her a message.

  She wept for the fear she had seen in the eyes of her people, and for the weight of responsibility that never seemed to get any lighter, no matter how long she carried it.

  And she wept for the letter she would never send to Kentar, for the words that lodged in her chest, unspoken: Come home. I need you.

  In the quiet, there was only the ache of absence, and she bore it alone.