“Oh, heavens! You’re still pregnant, Danika!” Baski declared with renewed joy on her face as she stared up at Danika from between her legs.
Danika’s face was pinched with pain from the tiny thing Baski inserted in her body. “Please, get it out. It hurts my lower belly,” she whispered.
Baski’s face was radiant as she held her thighs in reassurance and extracted the small tube. When she pulled it out, she was still smiling and happy. She gazed at Danika like the sun rose and set on her head. “Your child is healthy and strong and still hanging in there after everything!”
Excitement and dread filled Danika at the same time. “Creator, what do I do!?”
“You’re going to tell the king! That’s what---”
“Never!” Danika stated heatedly. “He can’t find out!”
“What!? But he has to know. Danika, he fathered a child! He should know---”
“No.” Danika shook her head adamantly. “No, please. He’ll have me killed! You know this! He’ll punish me! Why are you so excited about telling him, Madam Baski? Do you want him to order my execution!?”
Baski paused, deep in thought. She understood where Danika was coming from, but Danika didn’t know the condition of the king. She didn’t know that they thought the king sterile, and she couldn’t tell her about it. The king was a very private person, and that was not a secret a person revealed. Even Vetta didn’t k’ow about it.
“Danika, my dear, it might thrill him. You’ll never know unless you try,” she said uncertainly.
“Might?” Danika whispered. “I should walk up to him and risk my life for ‘might’? I can’t do that, Baski. I’m not strong enough.”
“But pregnancy is not something a woman hides, Danika! Eventually, he’ll find out about it. Your pregnancy, especially, shouldn’t be hidden, because a lot of care should be taken. A whole lot of care!” Baski reasoned.
“I can’t. No, he can’t find out!” Danika remembered when she was a child and had heard her father sentence two slaves to death for getting pregnant with his child. No matter how much those slaves pleaded and said they had taken body flushers, he had been adamant in sentencing them to death by beheading.
“No way, I’ll never!” she restated more firmly, her hands going around her belly protectively.
“But---”
“If you tell him, I’ll run straight to the nearest bush and chew on Alka,” she vowed heatedly.
Baski’s mouth hung open in shock. “That’s the most poisonous herb ever!”
“My thoughts exactly.”
Baski bit her lips helplessly. The firm set of Danika’s jaw showed she was very stubborn about it—that infamous stubbornness most brave princesses inherited. She didn’t have what it took to tell the king about something like that, because even Baski didn’t know what his reaction would be.
Even so, keeping him in the dark was very dangerous. “If he doesn’t find out, how would he know he shouldn’t be intimate with you?”
“Huh?” Danika didn’t understand that part.
“Your pregnancy is in a very vulnerable stage, Danika. Coupled with what you’ve already been through, the king shouldn’t be intimate with you for more weeks to come. And even after those weeks, he would have to be extremely gentle with you when you are intimate.” She paused for her to digest that part.
Danika’s cheeks heated, but it didn’t stop her from pointing something out. “The king is not g-gentle when it… um… when he…”
Baski nodded. “The king is not a gentle man; you know this much more than I do. That’s the sole reason he should have this knowledge, or else you’ll be killing that baby and endangering your own life when you go to bed with him.”
“Oh.” A headache began pounding in her head. Danika palmed her head in indecision, shaking her head miserably. “You know I can’t deny him.”
“I know. That’s why I worry for the future when he will summon you to his bed.”
Minutes passed before she called. “Baski?”
Baski came closer and patted her head in a motherly way. “My dear?”
“Do you have one hundred percent certainty that he won’t kill me if he finds out?” she mumbled.
Baski opened her mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. At last, she snapped it closed because she truly didn’t know the answer to that. The king was the most unpredictable man she’d ever known, and chances were he might not believe that the child was his. He might never believe.
Danika put Baski’s thoughts into words. “You, Baski, found it hard to believe that I was pregnant by the king, for reasons I don’t know. And what about the king? Will he just sit there and take the news that I’m pregnant by him at face value? Without disbelieving it or questioning it?” She glanced up at Baski. “You gave me a chance to explain and swear, but the king wouldn’t give me that chance if he doesn’t believe me. I’ll pay a dire price.”
Baski knew she was right, too. There were just too many things at stake there. She wanted nothing more than to let the king know he was not as sterile as everyone thought, but she didn’t want to risk Danika and her baby’s life for it, either.
“I’m so worried, Mama, because I’m still not sure if the prince will stay.” Remeta’s words filled her ears.
The reminder made Baski shiver. “You know what? We’ll take it one step at a time. We’ll keep it a secret for now while still looking for a way to break it to him without putting your life in danger. Pregnancy is not something that can be hidden for long, Danika. Very soon, you’ll rung out of time.”
Danika drew her knees up and hugged them tight to her chest. She rocked herself, unable to stop worrying.
It was very late at night when King Lucien finished the last petition he had been writing and rolled the parchment closed. He closed it with a band and kept it with the other scrolls.
He knew he could no longer put it off. His duty.
It was long overdue.
“Who is there?” he called as calmly as ever when a knock came to the door. He got up from his chair and lifted the scrolls from the desk.
The door opened, and Zariel entered his chambers. “Your Highness!?”
He took the scrolls to the inner bedroom and arranged them in the library where it would be easier for him to extract them in the morning then came back to his bedroom and walked to his desk in those steady regal strides of his, that screamed power and authority.
His eyes found Zariel, and he said, “Tell Princess Kamara I summon her.”
.
.