Children Of The Sky (The Scripts Of Neptune, Book 2)

Epilogue

The birds had barely started their morning chorus when Nyle was shaken awake by someone gripping his shoulder. He groaned drowsily and buried his head in his pillow, blocking out the sound and trying to sink back into the sweet arms of slumber.

"Nyle." Lillian's voice near his ear was gentle but urgent, and his eyes snapped open in the darkness. "I think the baby's coming soon."

Pushing his pillow aside, Nyle raised his head and looked at her; she was little more than a silhouette in the shadows of the dawn. "Yeah?" he said, breathless and suddenly lucid.

"Yeah," she said, amusement coloring her tone. "My water broke half an hour ago."

"Gods, Lil." Rubbing the sleep from his eyes, Nyle swung his legs over the edge of the bed and peeled back the covers. Despite the balmy mid-summer weather there on the western coast of the Serpentine land, the mornings were still chilly, and he shivered. "And you didn't wake me?"

"You were up late," Lillian said as he lit the lamp on the stand by the bed and turned back to her. She didn't look any different than usual, sitting cross-legged on her side of the mattress with a mug of tea and her hair down. "Besides, I'm barely getting contractions yet."

Trying to remember what Lacey had said about the general process of labor, Nyle ran a hand through his hair. "Is Lacey up? I'll go get her."

Lillian set her tea down and caught his arm as he moved to stand up, laughing a little. "Nyle," she said, touching the side of his face. Her palm was warm. "Take a minute to wake up before you start panicking, love. I got Lacey up as soon as I suspected something was happening."

"Right." Sitting down heavily, Nyle blew out a slow sigh and rubbed his face. Stifling a yawn, he sifted through his haphazard, hurried thoughts, eventually calming himself enough to think straight. Gods, it was happening--after so long thinking about it and waiting and dreaming, it was happening. The surge of excitement that ran through his body made his breath catch. "We're having a baby," he whispered, and Lillian's mouth pulled into a grin as her eyes danced with a soft, knowing joy. Reaching out and taking her face in his hands, he brought his forehead to hers. She covered his hands with hers and closed her eyes, still smiling so big those rare dimples were showing. "We're really having a baby."

It took hours for the fiercer contractions to come, and Lillian moved about as she normally did even then, pausing to lean on the counter or the table and breathe through it when a wave of pain would swell and ebb again. Nyle did what he could, but when he confessed to Lacey that he felt helpless, she told him it was normal. There wasn't much to do but wait.

And wait he did, until the contractions got bad enough that Lillian had to sit down and moan through her teeth nearly every minute as Lacey gripped her hand. Nyle started pacing, then, running his hands through his hair and fighting the rising anxiety in his chest.

It wasn't long before Lacey realized he was close to snapping and shooed him out the door, locking it behind her. Nyle stood there and stared at it for a moment afterwards, his chest tight with the beginnings of true alarm as he heard Lillian crying out again. She'd be fine, he told himself. Lacey knew what she was doing, and she'd get him if she needed him.

And yet the worry built, buzzing like a beehive in his bones. He took up pacing the deck, swatting the midges that swarmed around his head; the tide was in, and it'd been raining more lately, leaving their little stilted house in a swampy expanse of seagrass. The tidy pillars of smoke from the town farther inland hung like clouds in the clear sky, whitened by the brilliant summer sunshine.

Paleo paddled out in a narrow canoe when the heat of the day was approaching in all its sweltering power. He was wearing a broad-brimmed hat that bumped the pole of the ladder when he caught it to bring himself to a halt; there were stairs at the end of the deck, but when the water was high watercraft were the only effective method of transportation, and thus Nyle had built a way to get to the house to accommodate.