POV Selene
I grabbed clean cloths, tilting Ari’s head forward the way we had practiced through years of managing bleeds. The blood was minor, just a thread toward his lip, but my hands still shook. Every bleed could be the one that would not stop.
“Breathe through your mouth, my love.”
Ari obeyed, his small fingers gripping my arm. Within minutes the bleeding stopped—false alarm, another crisis averted. I cleaned him, checked for other signs: nothing. I tucked him in and smoothed the blankets.
“How do you feel?”
“Fine. Tired.”
“Then sleep. I’ll stay right here.”
I sat in the bedside chair counting his breaths like prayers until dawn. Anya arrived, took one look at my face, and knew. I told her. She examined him and opened our log.
“His counts have been lower,” she said. “Not dangerously so, but trending down. I’ll watch him every six hours.”
Casimir appeared an hour later, still in sleeping clothes, hair uncombed. “What happened?”
I told him. He looked at Ari and asked, “Should we worry?”
“Not yet,” Anya said. “If there’s another bleed within twenty-four hours, we move to transfusion.”
The day passed in rigid vigilance. Every cough froze me. That evening we were teaching Ari chess when he gasped and grabbed his stomach.
“Mama, I don’t feel good.”
Anya crossed from the next room and pressed his belly, her face going blank. “Possible internal bleeding. We need Doctor Saren.”
Saren arrived within minutes, running tests with efficient speed. Pressure dropping; heart rate up; abdomen tender and swelling. She met my eyes. “Internal bleed. Start clotting factors and prepare for transfusion.”
Ari’s room became a ward: IV stands, monitors, the equipment I had prayed we would never need. “Mama, what’s happening?” he whispered.
“You’re having a bleed, my love. Doctor Saren is going to fix it.” I held his hand, keeping my voice steady while terror clawed my throat.
“What can I do?” Casimir asked.
“Hold his other hand,” Saren said, sliding the needle true. “Keep him calm.”
Clotting factors went in. We watched numbers lurch. Ari whimpered, pressing his free hand to his belly. We murmured comfort neither of us believed. An hour passed. Then two. The bleeding did not stop. Numbers fell; alarms quickened.
“We need transfusion,” Saren said. “If this doesn’t stabilize within the hour, we move to surgery.”
Surgery. The word hollowed me. “Do it,” Casimir said. “Whatever it takes.”
They prepped. Ari cried, scared and hurting in ways no story could ease. I climbed into bed to cradle him despite protests. “I’m here. You’re going to be all right.”
“I don’t want to die,” he sobbed.
“You won’t,” I said—and heard the lie. Casimir pressed a hand to his leg, his face ashen.
Blood began to flow into our child: someone else’s life. Minutes stretched into lead. His pressure fell anyway. Alarms screamed. Saren’s voice cut the panic. “He’s going into shock. We stabilize now or we lose him.”
Time fractured—orders, gloved hands, the sting of antiseptic. Ari went gray. His hand slackened in mine.
“No,” I said from far away. “No, no—”
Casimir pulled me back as the team swarmed. Medication plunged through the line. Compressions on his small chest; Saren’s blade-sharp voice: “Come on, prince. Stay with us.”
A steady beep. Rhythm returned. Color crept back like dawn. His breathing evened.
“He’s back,” Saren said, sagging. “Stable. Pressure climbing.”
I folded, and Casimir caught me. We shook in each other’s arms while Ari slept—true sleep now, not the gray edge. They adjusted meds and watched the numbers settle.
I refused the cot. Casimir dragged a chair beside mine. Anya brought tea we did not drink.
“I thought we lost him,” I whispered.
“So did I,” he said, voice scraped clean.
Dawn seeped in. Ari stirred. “Mama?”
“I’m here.”
“Did I sleep long?”
“Yes. You were very sick, but you’re better.”
He saw the equipment, his father slumped in the chair. “Was it bad?”
“It was,” Casimir said gently. “But you fought. You’re here.” He took Ari’s hand with infinite care, tears running unchecked.
Midmorning, Saren confirmed he could sleep without constant intervention. She left Anya to monitor and drew us into the sitting room. “Several days of recovery: bed rest, careful watch, adjusted protocol. He should be all right.”
After she left we stood in the middle of the room, emptied by fear. Casimir’s control cracked. He pulled me close with desperate fierceness. “I can’t lose him,” he said into my hair. “I can’t lose either of you.”
“You won’t,” I said, holding him just as tight. “We survived this.”
He framed my face with shaking hands. “When he went gray—” His voice broke. “I’ve commanded armies and buried my father. I’ve never been so afraid.”
“I know.”
He kissed me—desperate, not gentle. I answered with the same hunger, six years of terror and love compressed into heat and breath. We stumbled until my back met the wall. His hands mapped my sides; I tugged at his shirt, needing proof of life.
“I love you,” he gasped. “God help me, I love you.”
“I love you too. I always have.”
We were frantic, not quite making love, seeking the reassurance of heartbeat and warmth. When we finally stilled, foreheads together, our breaths tangled.
“We should rest,” I said, though I did not step away.
“I can’t leave you. Please—let me stay.”
I nodded. We lay fully clothed on my bed, wrapped around each other like survivors of shipwreck. Exhaustion dragged us under while Anya kept watch.
Dusk woke me. Casimir still held me. For one perfect moment we were only two people who loved each other and the child sleeping safely nearby.
Then I saw the note slid under the door—cream parchment stark on dark wood. I eased free, opened it, and felt cold run through me.
Emergency Council meeting at dawn. Prince Ari’s medical crisis has prompted immediate review of custody. Attendance mandatory.
I stared until the letters blurred. Fear tried to rise; I pressed it down. We would meet them on their chosen battlefield—with facts, with witnesses, with the simple truth of a boy whose parents had kept him alive.
Night returned. The palace breathed in low, tired noises—boots in distant corridors, a log collapsing to coals. I returned to Ari’s room. He lay pale but steady, lashes dark on his cheeks. I wrote the night into the log: time of onset, measures taken, doses, responses, witnesses. When I finished, I tied the worn ribbon around my wrist.
Casimir stepped in quietly. “How is he?”
“Stable,” I said. “How are you?”
He exhaled. “Ruined. Grateful.” He looked at the note in my hand, then at me. “We’ll face them.”
“We will,” I said. “But if they call this incident proof I’m unfit—”
“They won’t.”
“They might.”
He took my ink-stained fingers. “Then I will tell them what I saw: a mother who bled her fear in silence and never let go of her child’s hand.”
“You’ll testify?”
“I’ll swear it before every god and law.”
We stood watching Ari’s slow, reliable breaths. Past and future circled like hawks over a cliff. I chose the present: the warmth in my palm, the rise and fall, survival spelled in small movements.
Before dawn, I washed my face in cold water and braided my hair back from shaking hands. Anya dressed Ari in soft linen and tucked the raven beside him. Saren signed the night’s entries and sealed them. Guards changed at the door, eyes lowered.
Casimir brought bread and fruit we barely touched. When he reached for my hand, I let him take it.
“Whatever happens,” he said, “we walk in together.”
“Together,” I said—and meant it.
The sky bruised toward morning. Bells tolled the hour, low and inexorable. I kissed Ari’s forehead, tasting salt and iron the room could not scrub away.
“Sleep, my brave boy,” I whispered. “We’ll be back soon.”
We crossed the threshold into the waking palace, carrying truth like a fragile flame.
Outside, the corridor smelled of stone dust and iron. Servants bowed, then pretended not to see the ink on my cuffs or the pallor on the king’s face. Word had flown ahead of us; even the torches seemed to listen. I matched my breath to our footsteps—four beats for calm, hold for two, release. I learned that trick in clinics that reeked of alcohol and fear.
We passed a window where snow made a world of the gardens. For an instant I watched flakes cross the dark and thought of the life that might have been: a cottage by a narrow sea, a child who learned tides instead of transfusions, a man who could be only a man. Then the vision dissolved, leaving the colder beauty of what was: a kingdom, a courtroom, a fight we would not abandon.
Casimir squeezed my hand once. “Fire,” he said.
“Stone,” I answered, the Lysaran reply. “Anchor and flame.”