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For the record, Amana did apologize for trying to ground me. It seems she’s been raising Inda’s daughter and son, an incredibly rare pair of fairy twins, and the words had come out by reflex. They’re in their thirties, but that’s still children by fairy standards.
When we parted for the evening, she promised to bring them to the castle to meet me. Not right away, of course. They were staying in Tëan Tír for their mourning period. She would wait until the situation stabilized here in Narses, and they had more time to emotionally recover.
His Royal Highness joined me for breakfast in my sitting room. It seems Genette could not permit me to wear the same dress two days in a row, even though I had worn last night’s outfit for less than three hours, and the seamstress had not yet completed the next alteration, so I was decked out in a beautiful kimono which the chambermaids assured me was less than a century old and the least ostentatious hairdo Genette would allow me to wear with it.
Less than a century old was synonymous with brand-new, in this context. Mother has been collecting both Dorian kimonos and their historic predecessors for millennia, and many of them remain wearable, thanks to magic and careful stewardship. Her wardrobe could stun a historian of textiles and clothing from a range of thirty paces. Which is why I insisted on the chambermaids choosing only from the newest garments. Accidentally spilling tea on a thousand-year-old kimono would cause me nightmares for years.
Possibly inspired by my attire, breakfast was on kneeling cushions, served kaiseki style. Rod was less than thrilled with a breakfast of rice, fish, pickles and soup– he’s the eggs and bacon type– but he asked for seconds on the rice and the miso soup, so it didn’t hurt his appetite.
As I picked the last of the meat from my smoked fish, I mentioned, “We can’t wait for long. We need to talk with Mireia soon.”
He looked up from his rice with a sharp stare. “We can’t wait for long… because of that favor you need from her?”
I shook my head quickly, panicking a little. I didn’t want to directly talk to Rod about this before discussing it with Mireia, and I had just almost spilled the beans. “It’s not so much that I need it from her, specifically. But when I think about who I can ask…”
I ran out of steam. How would I get across to him the urgency without telling him what I needed from her? I had stopped myself from saying, She’s the only one who has a reason to agree. I was already giving him too many clues about what I needed. I honestly didn’t want to tell Rod before he asked her to be his concubine, so he wouldn’t feel guilty about ulterior motives later.
Rod stared at me with a speculative glint in his eye that was more like his older brother the King, then glanced over to Lady Halet, who again had the duty this morning.
“Take the chambermaids and leave the room for a bit, My Lady.”
As the four royal knights with Rod had been repeatedly reminded that I was also one, she did not argue. She was in the skirted Royal Knight duty uniform today, so she gave a curtsey and a quiet “At once, Your Highness,” then gestured to the two who had been waiting on us.
Once all had exited and Lady Halet had cast a privacy spell, Rod finished his tea and placed the cup down while looking me in the eye.
“What she needs to do for you is urgent, I take it.”
He was getting way too close to figuring it out. Rod’s usually an idiot, but he can suddenly turn frustratingly intelligent at the worst times.
I cleared my throat. “Yes. It’s quite urgent.”
“It has to do with our babies.”
He declared it as a fact. There wasn’t an ounce of question mark in his tone.
It didn’t escape my notice that he said ‘our babies’, not ‘your babies’. But the more important matter was, he practically knew everything already.
With a sigh, I nodded while looking down at my breakfast. “I didn’t want to tell you yet, Your Highness. I wanted you to ask Mireia to join our family first, so you two could have that much without involving my problems.”
He was silent for a while. Then he just said, “Hmmm.”
After the silence again carried on, this time a little too long, I looked back up at him. He was staring at me with pursed lips, thinking again.
“What is it, Your Highness?”
“You call it ‘our family’,” he mused, “but you’re taking on all the responsibilities by yourself. If it involves ‘our family’, then I should be helping you face it, shouldn’t I?”
I blinked a few times while staring back at him, and thought about retorting that it was my personal matter, which I shouldn’t be burdening him with… but of course, that was completely ridiculous, wasn’t it? If nothing else, part of the process had to involve him and Mireia consummating her concubinage.
Back in Sky Ocean, I had resolved to stop being a wuss about things and face the problems I had to address. And I had resolved to go through with becoming mother to the two souls stored within the amulet.
But I couldn’t do it by myself. I needed his help.
Defeated, I nodded. “Yeah.”
“What does she need to do for you?”
“If I try to conceive them myself through magic, or with your help the old-fashioned way, Gaia might be able to do what she planned, but it has a high chance of failing. And we would lose their souls in the process.”
“Lose them how?”
“Well… there’s a great Celestial Device in the Immortal Realm– or really it’s in the Spirit Realm, and lays at the border of the Immortal Realm– called Samsara. The Wheel of Rebirth. It’s where souls are sorted out and sent into the best world for their next life. The Law of Heaven forces souls to travel there. As soon as their souls leave the amulet without a spirit body, the Law will begin acting on them. If they don’t attach to the new life in my womb, it will carry them away. It’s too strong to stop.”
After a moment chewing on my lip, wondering how to explain the next part, I just gave the simplest form I could think of.
“Any mother’s spirit tries to defend the new life within her, to prevent invaders from taking it over. Samsara is powerful enough to overcome the defenses of anything in the mortal realm, but whether Immortals can do so depends upon the mother. And it seems, I’m too strong for Gaia. So the conception can’t happen inside my body.”
Rod’s brow wrinkled as he put the rest together. “So you need it to happen inside another woman’s body?”
I nodded. “While we sleep next to each other, Gaia will move my… essence to the substitute and take care of matters there, then move the new babies back to me. She’s able to accelerate the process so that it doesn’t take the amount of time that natural fertilization requires. It would be over in one night.”
I was saying all this while slowly growing redder and redder. Even now, I couldn’t discuss things like this without blushing.
The furrow in his brow grew deeper rather than the opposite. “So… You would hold hands with Mireia instead of me?”
I giggled. “Are you jealous, Your Highness?”
“No! I mean… that’s not what concerns me. Wouldn’t this make Mireia the… father, rather than me?”
It never occurred to me that he might take it that way. Gaia probably could pull off a baby between two women that way, if she truly wanted to, but that wasn’t what she was planning.
“Um… no. Before we do this, our helper will have to… receive your seed first, Your Highness. It must be inside her, waiting for my essence to arrive. So, you will lay with her and make the babies yours. They will simply be conceived and attached to the souls while inside Mireia’s womb, before returning to mine.”
I was probably as bright as a red light bulb at this point.
Rod’s eyes grew when he heard his role, and his scowl became intense after. He didn’t respond with words, but he communicated a lot, anyway.
“So you can see how it is difficult to ask,” I added, weakly.
He gave a terse nod, then stared down at his empty tea cup, sitting on the tray in front of him.
“Shall I pour more tea, Your Highness?”
“No,” he said, bluntly, then caught himself and replied, “No, thank you, My Lady. I’ve had enough.”
After he stared at the empty cup a bit longer, he nodded. “I see why you were concerned now. It’s… it’s very encouraging that you were being so considerate of her.”
“I was being considerate of you, as well, Your Highness,” I answered. “I want you and Mireia to share a relationship that is separate from my matters. I want you to be together for each other, not for me.”
He smiled, with a tinge of sadness, then shook his head. “Ti, why must it be separate? Weren’t you wanting to welcome her into our family?”
I couldn’t come up with an answer to that. I could understand what he was thinking, but I didn’t really like it.
“Your Highness, I also want her to have her own private relationship with you. You are going to be the one and only man in her life, after all.”
A tapping on the door ended our private conversation. From the other side, Lady Halet announced, “Your Highness, you have a visitor who is insistent upon seeing you now.”
Rod scowled, then asked, “Is it an emergency? I’m having an important conversation on an urgent matter.”
“Your Highness, this matter concerns your conversation,” came Mireia’s voice.
Both Rod and I were wide-eyed as we looked at each other. The subject of our conversation had come to speak for herself, but…
“How did she know?” Rod muttered with baffled tones.
“If she does know already, then we ought to include her,” I decided, then raised my voice, “Please have her enter, My Lady.”
The door slid aside– the sitting room had a somewhat Dorian design to it, which is why we had a tatami platform upon which to take breakfast– and Mireia entered. She got down on her knees and bowed her head.
“I greet His Royal Highness,” she stated quietly. “And Her Highness of Faerie as well.”
She seemed very unlike Mireia right now, but it was definitely her. It was clearly her aura… although there was something extra in it that had me wary.
Lady Halet stated, “I shall re-cast the privacy spell once the door closes. Please allow a moment.”
We nodded and the door closed. Once I saw the spell again take hold, I said, “We can speak now.”
“Mir, what are you doing here?” Rod asked.
“Wait,” I said before she could answer. “Mir, you… aren’t alone, are you?”
“I am not, Your Highness,” she replied.
I sighed, because I recognized the extra signature. Even though I had last seen it ten thousand years ago.
“Is Mir even the one speaking to me? No, I know she isn’t. Is she conscious?”
“She is conscious, and will be able to speak for herself when she needs to. At the moment, she’s too embarrassed to come out, so I was pretending to be her.”
“Do you have an Ostish name? No, I’m going to guess you’re the one they call Rhea.”
Mireia, or at least Mireia’s face, smiled. “Indeed. I am also Demeter and Persephone, when the farming folk worship me. But Rhea is similar to the name you knew me as, in Elder times, so call me that.”
The Twelve of the Tutelary Council don’t have equal cultivation, nor do they have equal jobs. The one I was speaking to wasn’t much more than a celestial maiden herself. She had mostly acted as a coordinator of Elder activities regarding reforestation and revegetation back during the time after the Freeze. Since Senhion had been largely involved in managing the oceans, she had little interaction with this one, who was a mere minor daughter of Oranos and Gaia in the Ostish religion. Despite being an Immortal, she was ranked alongside demigods and saints.
Rhea was not literally a child of Oranos and Gaia, but she was their underling, so I could guess who had sent her. What I couldn’t figure out was how.
“The Great Senior sent me, actually,” she answered my thoughts. “And she borrowed your connection to this child in order to do it. Neither Gaia nor the Great Senior could have done this without overburdening her, so they have me acting as proxy. I’ve been discussing the matter with her this morning.”
I was appalled. “I wanted to ask her! If you make it a divine mission, she’ll have no choice!”
Rhea shook her head, then declared, “We no longer have time for that, Little Sen.”
