She turns and stalks off, and though Camden trots halfway down the hall after her, Jules cannot bring herself to.
“Jules?” Madrigal calls. “Is everything all right?”
“Everything’s fine.” Jules returns to her mother’s room and puts the neglected cup of nettle leaf tea into her hands. “Now drink.”
Madrigal takes a sip. “You are a good daughter, Jules Milone.”
“A good daughter.” Jules snorts. “I’ve only been as good a daughter as you have been a mother.” She looks at Madrigal, still small, beneath her enormous, swollen belly. “Maybe we both should have tried harder.”
Madrigal purses her lips. “Your friend Emilia is very fond of you.”
“Of course she is. I’m her pet queen. Ridiculous as that sounds.”
“I think it’s more than that.”
“Are you pleased? This is what you wanted, isn’t it? For me to go to the warriors and learn their side of my gift? Embrace some great destiny?”
Her mother frowns at the tone that has crept into her voice. Jules had not meant for it to, but nor can she help it. It has been this way between them for too long to change, even in the face of illness.
“Maybe once,” Madrigal says. “That was what I wanted. But now I’m dying, Jules. And I would just very much like for us to be able to go home.”
“And we will. Or you and the baby will, and with luck I’ll follow, someday.”
“I heard what you said out there, in the hall. But it isn’t true. The binding must be cut from my vein with a blade. If I die having this baby, you will remain bound, until you choose to release it.” She stares into her teacup. “I may be a bad mother, but I wouldn’t have placed a binding on you that could be broken if I died by accident.”
“That’s not what I—”
“Never mind. I’ve left things with Cait. Thinned blood from shallow cuts. And she knows how to—”
Madrigal groans and grasps the sides of her stomach. The cup tumbles into the bed and tea stains the quilt dark.
“Madrigal?”
“Call Willa. Call Caragh.”
Jules shouts for them. Moments later, Willa limps into the room, hurrying without her cane, and shoves Jules out of the way. Willa presses her hands into Madrigal’s stomach and pulls back the blankets. There is blood, and water.
“What do we do?” Jules asks.
“Get your aunt from the barn. Tell her to prepare for a birth.” Willa lays Madrigal back onto the pillow with strong arms and uses gentle fingers to caress her cheeks. “There is no stopping it now.”
As Madrigal’s labor intensifies, Jules and Camden wait with Emilia in the sitting room, staring into the fire.
“Is that normal?” Jules asks when Madrigal starts to scream.
Emilia raises her brows.
“I do not know. The war gifted often scream during birth, but it is usually more of a bellow. Like an elk.” She makes a fist. “Like triumph.”
Madrigal’s cries do not sound like triumph.
“Here.” Mathilde comes to them from the kitchen, carrying cups of watered wine.
“Where have you been?”
“Away. Keeping busy. Oracles are no comfort during times like these when we cannot foresee the outcome.” She takes a swallow from Emilia’s cup before handing it over. “And even sometimes when we can.”
The door to Madrigal’s room opens and shuts, and Willa comes hurriedly down the hall. Her face is impassive. Calm. But the gray braid near the nape of her neck is wet with sweat.
“What’s happening?” Jules asks. “Are they . . . will they be all right?”
Willa ignores her and goes in to retrieve something from the kitchen. She returns in moments with a tray. It is covered over with cloth, but Jules sees the shine of silver underneath. Blades.
“Willa?”
“It will be over quickly, one way or the other.” She says nothing more, and they hear the door open and shut again.
“It will be all right, Jules,” Emilia says. “Who better to deliver a baby than the Midwives of the Black Cottage?”
“I will go outside and start a fire,” says Mathilde. “I will pray for her.”
The door down the hall opens again, and Aria the crow comes flying out of the room in a panic. Her poor caw sounds raw to the ear, and she batters her wings against the walls.
“Should we let her outside?” Emilia asks.
Jules looks to Camden, and the big cat deftly stalks the crow until she is close enough to pounce, then traps the bird softly in her jaws. She lies down on the rug, purring as Aria stops flapping and calms, her little beak wide open to pant.
“I’ll get her some water.” Emilia pauses on the way and looks gravely at Jules. “You should perhaps go and be with your mother.”
Jules walks down the hallway on legs made of wood. And she does not have Camden to lean on, since she stayed back on the rug with Aria.
She turns the knob and swings the door open. Her knees nearly buckle when she sees Caragh slick with bright red blood.
“Jules,” Caragh says, and gently moves her back into the hall.
“Is it over? Was he born?”
Caragh wipes her hands.
“He will not come out.”
“Jules! I want my Jules!”
At her mother’s cry, Jules pushes past her aunt and bursts back into the room. Madrigal is covered, her legs squirming beneath the blankets in pain. Willa stands to the side of the bed, wiping her hands on a towel.
“She has lost a lot of blood,” says the Midwife. “Not making much sense.”
Jules goes to the bed and takes Madrigal’s hand.
“How are you doing?”
“As well as I expected to.” She smiles. She is almost unrecognizable under so much paleness and sweat, thinner everywhere but in the belly. She resembles a gray corpse, like the one she said she saw in her vision. “I did a wrong taking Matthew from my own sister. Making the charm to keep him.”
“Nothing more wrong than what you always do,” Jules says, and presses a cool, wet cloth to her forehead.
Madrigal laughs breathlessly.
“Should I apologize? Is there time?”
“There’s plenty of time,” says Caragh, “when you’re up and out of this bed. I’ll accept that apology, with you down on one knee.”
Madrigal laughs harder.
“You know you’re nothing like me, Jules. You’re like her. So tough. So mean.” She touches Jules’s cheek with her fingertips. “Except that you’re crying.”
Jules sniffs. She had not realized. “Just hurry up, Madrigal, will you? I’m tired of waiting for this baby.”
Madrigal nods. She looks past Jules to Willa, who has uncovered her tray of knives.
“Will it be fast?” Madrigal asks.
“It will be fast, child.”
“What are you going to do?” Jules asks, eyes wide. “Will she survive it?”
Willa frowns. “I do not know.”
“It’ll be all right, my Jules. I’m paying the price of my low magic.” Madrigal lays back. “Put him on my chest when it’s over. So I might see him a moment.”
“Madrigal?” Jules stumbles backward as Willa approaches the bed. “Mother?”
Her eyes are blurry, but had they been clear, Caragh would have still been hard to see. She moved so fast. One second Willa was leaned over Madrigal’s belly, and the other, she had been shoved out into the hall and the door locked behind her.
“Caragh,” Madrigal says. “What are you doing?”
“Maddie, you have to push now.”
“No. Let Willa back in here. I’m tired. Go with Jules into the kitchen. Or outside.”
But Caragh does not listen. She takes up position at the foot of the bed and puts her hand on her sister’s knee.
“Madrigal, push. You aren’t done yet.”
“I can’t.”
“Aunt Caragh,” Jules says quietly, “maybe let her rest a minute.”
“She rests, she dies.” She slaps Madrigal across the hip. “Push!”
“I can’t!”
“Yes you can, you silly brat! You just think you can’t because of some foolish vision! Now get up and push!”
Madrigal forces herself up onto her elbows. She bares her teeth. There is so much blood in the bed. So much sweat on her face.