Work Text:
The Stranger is in the birthing chamber with her, she knows it though she cannot see Him. He is in the air, in the scent of the metallic tang of blood, her blood. He is inside her, in her womb, in the pulsing pain that travels down her spine. It is a rhythm that reminds her cruelly of her husband, of nights spent with him between her thighs. Now the rhythm brings her only agony, no pleasure, no promise of release.
“Please,” she whispers, the words come out like a hiss between clenched teeth. “Please,” she says again, begging now.
She fists the linen sheets below her where she kneels, her hands sink further into the softness of the featherbed and she braces for another contraction. “Please,” she sounds almost like a girl, but Loreza is no girl, she is the Princess of Dorne.
A midwife places an impossibly cool palm against her back. Her bedgown is saturated in her sweat and the first blood of her labor but the woman does not seem to mind.
She does not mind because she has done this countless times before, Loreza muses. This is the woman who brought forth Doran and Mors and Olyvar and now she brings forth another.
“Slowly, my princess,” the woman speaks softly as she kneads her wrinkled fingers against Loreza's back, “breathe slowly.”
“So eager,” another woman says, though there is fondness in her tone. “This one cannot wait another turn of the moon to greet the world.”
Loreza chuckles at that, a contraction catches her mid-laughter and her mirth breaks upon her tongue. A strangled sound escapes her and perhaps it is the volume that alerts the caged finch by the window, or perhaps it’s that the sun has begun to crown the sky and the bird is only greeting it.
She straightens without looking away and thinks of her husband, Illyas. It was he who placed the finch there to fill the chamber with birdsong when the child came, he'd said. She smiles thinking of him and how he must surely be pacing just outside the doors, still resenting that the women have forbidden him from stepping inside.
The baby crowns as Loreza thinks of him. One woman kneels behind her and the princess leans against her.
“Breathe princess,” she whispers tenderly into her ear.
There’s pressure when a second woman kneels before her and then there’s nothing, an emptiness.
For a moment she looks away toward the finch in its cage, the soft stutter of wings. It sings again and Loreza lets her eyelids slip shut. A terrible thought crosses her mind: what if this one was born dead too, and worse, what if it survives only to die in a handful of years like the others.
She could not bear losing another she thinks.
The woman behind her shakes her gently by the shoulder, “it’s a girl, my princess!”
A girl, a daughter. She looks then at the bloody little body in the midwife’s hands. Already the woman brings a cloth to clean her daughter and places her into unready arms.
She has not cried yet. Loreza’s eyes meet the woman’s and as if she can read her thoughts, the woman rubs gently at her baby’s chest. She whispers something in the tongue of the Orphans, the language Loreza herself has forgotten.
There is a silence that stretches over the room and fills it. He must still be here, holding her child’s wrist ready to take her too.
But I have not yet named her…”please,” Loreza begs again. She repeats the single syllable like a prayer. Perhaps words would appease the god of death.
The woman rubs circles over the little one’s chest, her voice rises and falls, but if she’s praying to the Mother Rhoyne, then she does not hear her.
The silence is broken by Loreza’s weeping and the scratching of the finch’s claws. She wonders what debt she owes that warrants the collection of a baby before it can even draw breath. The bird sings again and then there’s a cry small and faint, softer than the birdsong, then the baby gasps and a louder wail follows.
“She lives,” the woman tells Loreza.
She lives.
Her baby wriggles in her hold, arms flailing as another cry tears through her little throat. With every wail the chamber seems lighter, as though her daughter's cries have driven Him back enough that He might only exist in the shadows now .
Loreza allows herself to laugh though tears still fall from her eyes, sorrow becomes relief.
The women around her have already begun the work of clearing out the room. One takes the child from Loreza and cleans her, swaddles her, and returns her to her mother.
“Tiny thing,” one says.
Another, “come too soon, but she’ll grow strong, Princess. You’ll see.”
“The little princess is delicate,” the midwife says. “You’ll need a gentler hand with her than you did with her brothers.
In her arms, she is so small, much too small. She’d come too soon, delicate the woman had called her. The baby’s eyes open tentatively, small black eyes adjust to the light of the room. She fusses again, letting out a bleat of discomfort before Loreza takes her hand.
“It is not so bad,” she tries reasoning with the infant. “Look at me.”
She does. The baby turns to Loreza and stops crying for a heartbeat.
She kicks herself free from the swaddling and Loreza catches her tiny foot in the air, she lowers her face and kisses the sole before setting it down gently. “You’re supposed to be delicate. They all say so.”
Her response is another kick.
Loreza exhales, tracing her daughter’s nose and cheek.
“You’re strong,” she says when the baby grasps her finger with surprising determination and strength.
“What will you call her?”
Loreza thinks on it. Her husband had named Doran and Olyvar, perhaps she might name this one. The finch sings again and she thinks of her husband, the man who’d placed it by the window because he wanted his child to hear something beautiful when she first came into the world.
“Elia,” Loreza says without looking up from her. “Her name is Elia.” Elia for Illyas’ mother.
“Very good,” the midwife smiles, squeezing Loreza’s shoulder then moves toward the door. “Bring her father,” she tells one of the women.
Illyas is at the door as soon as it parts. For a moment he waits at the threshold looking at his wife, exhausted but radiant, and at the small bundle in her arms.
Relief breaks across his face so suddenly that Loreza thinks he might weep.
“You have a daughter now, my love,” she says softly as he reaches them. “Elia,” she whispers the name and the baby stirs as if recognizing the sound of her name.
Illyias kneels beside the bed, one hand cradles the back of Loreza’s head gently and he kisses her brow, “A fine name,” he brushes the child’s soft hair.
There’s a pressure that flares low in her abdomen, she sucks in air and winces “take her,” she hands Elia off to her husband. She braces herself for the final pains of labor while her husband looks entirely taken by their daughter.
He rises and brings Elia closer to his chest. The finch sings once more, flapping small wings. Elia seems to hear it and responds with a sleepy sigh.
The chamber feels empty for once since her labor began. Loreza knows the Stranger has gone. For now.