Several more months went by in peaceful bliss. My stomach swelled, lowering my activity level to a crawl. It was all I could do these days to walk up and down the stairs to join everyone for meals, which had led to James carrying me everywhere.

I could hardly believe that he was able to lift me with all the extra weight I’d put on — until I felt his muscular arms wrapped around me, of course. Naturally, this led to gentle teasing that my feet weren’t going to touch the ground until the baby was born. I wasn’t complaining.

Otherwise, I didn’t suffer any of the ailments that I’d dealt with during my pregnancy with Haley. Maybe the second time really was easier, as so many pregnancy and childbirth magazines seemed to believe. I wasn’t complaining about that, either.

Dickon had not been located. He seemed to have vanished into thin air. By decree of the queen, his ability to access James’s accounts and private information were canceled. He never reappeared to complain about that, which made everyone believe he was guilty as hell and didn’t want to show his face.

As time went on, Dickon was forgotten. Life moved on mostly unchanged, except for my growing stomach and Lesandra’s increasing bitterness. She seemed to be weaving herself a web of disgust, much in the same way as I was weaving a blanket with my crochet needles.

Haley sat beside me, holding my ball of yarn as I crocheted a new blanket for my baby, just as I had done for her years ago. The rings on my fingers glimmered and glittered as they caught the light with the motion of my hands. The blanket was red and white, reflecting the national colors.

Haley’s had been bright pink, because I had known she was going to be a little girl, my perfect princess. This time, James and I had decided to wait until the birth to learn the sex of the child.

It wasn’t like I wanted to force a meaningless color description on a child or anything. I just didn’t want it to be immortalized by the press that I had assumed one thing and had gotten another. They could twist that in all sorts of ways, and I wasn’t going to give them that satisfaction.

Haley watched my needles dance around each other, creating neat little loops of material. “Will you teach me, Daddy?”

“Maybe when you’re a little older,” I said. “I don’t think your hands are big enough.”

Haley pouted. She reached over and placed her hand on top of mine, stretching out her fingers. I let go of my needle and did the same. Her fingers were barely half the length of mine. “Maybe not,” she conceded.

I smiled and kissed her forehead. “I’d get you one of those toy kits if you would ask for it.”

“No way! Those are for babies!”

Speaking of babies, James was on my other side, swiping through his phone. He let out periodic bursts of excitement whenever he came across a particularly cute piece of furniture, or a perfect little pair of socks. We already had a fully furnished nursery at our disposal, filled with the most wonderful and beautiful items that had been taken from storage and cleaned up.

Nevertheless, James seemed determined to fill the nursery with even more things. If it were up to him, we wouldn’t even be able to reach the crib, there would be so many obstacles in the way.

“Reid,” he said, nudging at me with his elbow.

I finished a tight little loop of yarn and set my needles down. “Yes?”

James thrust his phone at me. “Look! Isn’t this the most perfect teddy bear you’ve ever seen?”

I glanced idly at the screen. “James, that thing is 5 feet tall.”

“And?”

“Bigger isn’t always better.”

Haley piped up,”I’d like a giant teddy bear please, Papa James.”

James grinned, as he always did whenever Haley called him that. There was still a bit of occasional awkwardness between them, and James refused to discipline her, often suggesting she do something instead of telling her to outright. However, those awkward moments were getting to be few and far between.

“Then you shall have a giant teddy bear.”

And he also spoiled her, but what was a guy to do when he was dealing with a future princess?

Technically, the baby would have more rights to the throne than Haley did. She had no royal blood. That didn’t matter to me. She was always going to be my princess.

James stood up. “I think I’m going to head into town to do some shopping. I want to see some of these things for myself. My dear future king, are you coming with me?”

I chuckled. “I’d rather not. I’m kind of tired.”

“You’re always tired.” James placed his hand on top of my head, giving me a condescending pat. I growled at him, playfully snapping at his fingers with my teeth. He jerked his hand away.

“Well, why don’t you take a nap? I can take Haley with me. We’ll get ice cream, give you some time to yourself.”

And you’ll probably come back with a giant teddy bear. Don’t you think you can fool me, I thought.

A grin played around the corners of James’s mouth, telling me that he knew exactly what I was thinking. I sighed, then smiled back at him. “That’s fine by me. Crocheting is a lot these days.”

James and Haley hopped away, holding hands. I watched them, just admiring their contrast. Big, tall, strong man with dark features. Precious little girl, fair as hell. I loved them both so much.

I picked up my crochet needles and got back to work. Haley wasn’t the best yarn holder, but I wasn’t about to tell her that.

As I worked, creating a blanket fit for a prince or princess, the sun slid along the sky. The clouds parted, allowing warm shafts of golden light to spill through the window. With sunlight draped over my shoulders like a blanket, I felt my general state of tiredness morph into something even harder to deal with: sleepiness.

I drowsed.

I woke when a shadow fell across me. I blinked, stirring around, expecting to see that the entire room had been swathed in dreamy shadows once more. Instead, the only darkened place was in front of me.

Lesandra stood there.

Fear jabbed at me like a stab from a knife, which was coincidentally exactly what I expected to happen. This woman hated my guts. If she could eliminate me, or the baby…

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Lesandra said. She tilted her head, bringing up one hand to touch her heart in an offended gesture. “Surely you aren’t afraid of me?”

I struggled to get my wits about me. I sat up a little straighter, looking around. No guards nearby. No way to leave this living room except through the main door. Lesandra stood in my path. If I tried to escape, she would grab me.

“Reid?” she said.

I stared at her, searching her face. She looked back at me, her head still tilted like a puzzled puppy. I searched her eyes, studied the lines of her face, searching for deception and anger. I was baffled to find nothing at all. The earth as I knew it had disappeared, leaving me walking an unfamiliar path.

“What do you want?” I finally asked. “Why are you in James’s wing of the palace? You don’t belong here.”

“It seems like everyone feels that way these days,” Lesandra sighed. She shook her head, causing her hair to ripple around her face like liquid light. “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, and I’ve realized that I have been acting terribly.”

I had to wonder when she’d been doing all this thinking, because last night she had glared at me like she was trying to set me on fire. It was always possible she’d had an epiphany overnight or something, I supposed.

And then I remembered how James had said she had occasional good moments, where she was a delight to be around, usually in the aftermath of an argument. This could well be one of those times. I should take advantage of it. Maybe I could find out what made her tick, lower the tension between everyone with what I learned.

I shrugged. “It’s been kind of tense for everyone.”

“Oh, I know. And that’s why I brought you this, to make up for the way I’ve acted.”

Lesandra pointed off to the side, bringing my attention to the standing tray beside her for the first time. There were two pots of tea, steam rising from their contents, two tea cups, and a plate of tea cakes.

The cakes looked … weird. I’d had tea cakes at the palace before, and they had always been beautifully round, with spiraling patterns cut into their surface. These were lumpy balls of dough, a sad imitation of the real thing.

“I made those tea cakes myself,” Lesandra said. She clasped her hands behind her back, the picture of schoolgirl innocence. “I know they aren’t much to look at, but I thought you deserved something nicer than whatever I could get the servants to whip up.”

I would have much preferred the servants to have made something for me. However, what harm could a snack do? “We can have tea together, sure,” I said.

Smiling, Lesandra sat down and picked up the teapot nearest to her. “Mine is black tea,” she explained. “I know you can’t have caffeine.” She poured a cup for herself. Judging from the perfumed scent, it was definitely a strong black tea.

Etiquette says you should pour for me, I thought. I’d been reading up on manners and court procedures in my spare time, trying to prepare myself for the life ahead of me. I couldn’t really blame her, though. After all, I was perfectly capable of pouring my own tea.

I picked up the teapot meant for me and poured some into my cup. The appearance of the tea struck me right away. It was yellow. Not the yellow-green of green tea, but a sickly shade of yellow that reminded me of bile.

The next thing that hit me was the smell. It was almost like gasoline, with an afterthought of rotting vegetables.

“Uh, what kind of tea is mine?”

Lesandra sipped away at her black tea, apparently without a care in the world. She peeped over the rim of the cup at me, eyes wide and innocent. “I’m not quite sure. I asked a chef apprentice in the kitchen for a tea without caffeine, and he recommended this one. It looks a little lemony, doesn’t it?”

Maybe this color would be called lemon in hell, but that wasn’t how I would have described it. It was like egg yolks gone off, dehydrated piss, the goo that oozed from the inside of a bug when you killed it.

However, she had gone through all the trouble of making it. She’d baked the tea cakes, dragged the tray all the way here from the kitchen. Living a royal life, having done none of those things at all until right now, I had to give her some credit for the effort.

And, really, it looked better than the fertility tea.

I brought my teacup to my lips and took a sip.

The tea struck my senses like a wave of ocean water to the face, carrying a taste of sharpness. Then, as I swallowed from pure surprise, the aftertaste was somehow too fruity and pungent.

“Wow,” I gasped. I felt as though my throat and tongue had been scorched, though the actual temperature of the tea wasn’t all that hot. “That was … something.”

“It’s not lemon?”

“I have never tasted a lemon like that before in my entire life.”

Lesandra shrugged. “Then, it must be some sort of herbal tea. Maybe rosehip? But, in any case, why don’t you try it with some milk and sugar?” She gestured to the little dishes of each.

I tried them, as she suggested, but neither addition really seemed to do much for the brew. In fact, they seemed to make it worse. I put on a carefree front so she wouldn’t be offended, taking smaller and smaller sips of tea as we talked idly about the baby and what my plans were for it.

Some of her word choices seemed weird, though I couldn’t quite figure out why. In the end, I only managed to finish one cup of tea before I had to stop. “Drink as much as you like,” Lesandra encouraged. “It won’t hurt you.”

I stared at her, alarm bells starting to ring in the back of my mind. “I, uh, I think I’m just not in a tea mood right now. Pregnancy cravings and not cravings and all that,” I babbled.

Is it just me, or did her eyes darken?

Surely, I was mistaken.

“Then why don’t you try a cake? After all, I went to the trouble of making them special.”

I hoped against hope that the cakes would at least be edible. After all, she’d followed a recipe for them, instead of asking a random person for a recommendation. Flour, cinnamon, sugar, nuts and fruits … not even she could mess those up.

Picking up a tea cake, I took a small bite. The flavor was nothing special, but it wasn’t all that bad, either. Encouraged, I took a bigger bite. And that was when I tasted it. “Um,” I said, coughing a little. “They’re kind of … bitter.”

“Oh, dear,” Lesandra said. She picked up one of the cakes and broke it apart, almost as if she was trying to inspect it.

My stomach gave a little lurch. I clasped my hand over my rounded belly, startled and upset as the feeling grew worse. “I wonder if I put in too much baking soda?” Lesandra said. “Or salt? Or poison?”

I stared at her. My mouth fell open. Horror pulsed through my entire body. I reached to grab onto her, missing her by a mile as she stood up and backed away. My arm still drifted through the air, much too slow.

Everything rushed in on me and my stomach lurched again, waves of nausea rising and crashing around inside me. I retched, unable to stop myself.

Lesandra shoved me over, kicked the tray over on top of me. I felt the wetness of the tea soaking my clothes, and then another cramp shivered through my stomach and I retched again.

“If I can’t win this, no one can.”

At least, that was what I thought she said. I couldn’t tell. I was shivering, shaking, curling up around my stomach. Faint cries echoed around me, and I only vaguely recognized them as my own.

I heard footsteps, then a series of furious shouts. After that, I wasn’t able to hold onto much of the present as everything swirled around me.

My baby…