A Beast's Tale

Chapter 87

Ivetta liked Lydia, but she especially liked the effect Lydia had on Nokto. She gave me a detailed accounting of how Lydia reduced Nokto to his dreamlike state in the time he was absent from my office the previous afternoon. As amusing as it all was, I was less interested in the possibility that Nokto might be headed toward an actual relationship and more interested in how quickly Lydia out-foxed the fox. She was clever. And she followed up with the doctor first thing the next morning, further cementing my opinion that Ivetta would be in good hands with her. That should have eased my mind. It didn't.

"Nokto's late this morning," Clavis said the next morning, his constant commentary an irritating backdrop as I tried to put Ivetta out of my mind and focus on work. "Guess his date went well."

Clavis had been going on and on all morning, first about the party he attended in Nokto's place, then about Nokto and Lydia. I was barely listening. There was nothing of importance in his words.

"Finally decided to show up," he said gleefully. I glanced up as Nokto entered the room, the dreamy look of the day before gone from his crimson eyes, but a smile on his lips.

"Morning," Nokto said simply, walking past Clavis to pick up some paperwork from my desk.

"Regina, Janet, and...what was her name...Becky. That's it. They were all sorely disappointed that you weren't at the party last night." Clavis smirked. "But I think Regina forgot all about you by the end of the night."

"Good," Nokto replied. "I ended it with all three of them a while ago."

"So, how about Lydia?" Clavis asked suggestively. "Care to regale us with the latest chapter from your riveting tales of life between the sheets?"

"We had dinner," Nokto said dismissively. "That's all."

"Oh, my, this is serious. What do you think, Chev? Has Nokto caught the disease?"

I set my quill down and stood up. "You can finish all this paperwork while you talk," I said coolly, heading for the door.

"Where are you going?" Clavis asked, surprised.

"Somewhere quieter than here," I replied as I opened the door. "Like the training arena."

The clashing of metal on metal, the scrape of a missed slash glancing off stone, these harsh sounds were easier to handle than Clavis' prattling. None of it was loud enough to drown out my thoughts. The second trimester wasn't so bad, with the excitement of feeling the baby kick for the first time temporarily overriding my worry. But the worry returned and grew with Ivetta's stomach.

I had read enough medical texts to know what her body was supposed to do before and during labor. Ligaments and tendons should stretch and relax, changing the shape of her pelvis and making delivery possible. A fractured pelvis, though now healed, may not be able to adjust appropriately, especially if there was lasting damage to surrounding soft tissue structures. The doctor had an anatomical chart in her file with the specific known and assumed locations of each fracture she endured during her torture, based on the grating and movement he felt during his initial examination when I brought her out of that dungeon. The jagged line drawn across her pelvis would almost certainly cause problems. He was hoping for an early delivery when the baby was smaller. If she couldn't deliver the baby, the last resort was a Cesarean section, which would almost certainly kill her. Lydia was familiar with the procedure, but she'd only seen one woman survive it. The measure was meant to save the baby, not the mother.

I would rather lose the baby than Ivetta.

Sleep evaded me that night, in spite of the rigorous exercise with my knights. My body was tired. My mind was not. Ivetta was fast asleep in my arms, cuddled up to my side as she did every night. I looked forward to her sharing my bed when we got married, but I never expected her to be this clingy. Awake or asleep, she sought my embrace. My side of the bed was simply where I got into bed, and her side of the bed was the same. We spent most of our time in the middle. I didn't mind, and I had begun to have trouble sleeping alone when I had to leave her for an inspection tour. This was how it should always be.