The Dragonless Wife Is A Royal Heiress

Clotilda Robbins POV:

"Push, damn you! The first babe is wedged against your hipbone!"

Nurse Elara shoved down mercilessly on the crest of my swollen belly.

My fingernails shredded the moldy straw of the mattress. My body was tearing in two-a brutal, obstructed labor that had dragged on for fourteen agonizing hours in the freezing dark of the lower wards. My core, barren of dragonfire, could offer no heat to ease the tearing flesh.

"Where is he..." I wheezed, blood and bile bubbling at the corner of my lips as another contraction shattered my spine. "The messenger... did he reach the High Terrace? Kraig swore... he swore on his Dragon Oath he would hold my hand when our seed entered this world..."

"Hold your hand?" Elara barked a cruel, mocking laugh, shoving an iron basin between my splayed thighs. "Lord Kraig received the sanctuary's distress missive three hours ago, girl. Do you know what he told the courier? 'Lady Karissa has a delicate constitution and the royal feast must not be disturbed by the hysterics of a Dragonless vessel.' He is pouring vintage fire-wine for your foster sister beneath the silk canopies of the Grand Plaza, while you rot on these stones."

The words hit harder than the physical agony ripping through my womb. Kraig was there. He knew I was dying on these flagstones, yet he chose Karissa.

A feral, ragged scream tore from my throat as I bore down with the last dying ember of my strength. The tearing was absolute. A wet, strangled cry echoed off the damp limestone as the first infant slipped into the world-immediately followed by a violent aftershock that forced the second babe into the cold air.

"Two of them," Elara muttered, recoiling with undisguised disgust. "A boy and a girl. Not a single spark of draconic heat in their skin. Cold as river stones. Useless Dragonless runts."

She cut the cords with rusted shears and dropped the tiny, shivering bundles into a rough wooden trough beside the iron cot.

The dim crystal lamp flickered overhead, casting sickly green light across the room-the ward for the Dragonless, the discarded dregs of Dawncrest.

Before I could draw enough breath back into my starved lungs, heavy steel-shod footsteps snapped down the outer corridor.

The iron-bound door swung open, admitting a blast of winter draft and a tall man wrapped in an expensive, dark wool mantle.

Declan Foster. Kraig's personal aide and captain of the Black Stone Guard.

He halted three paces away, pulling his silk-lined cloak tight around his throat, his face pinched in utter revulsion.

"Declan..." I rasped, trembling violently as cold well water splashed over my torn flesh. "Kraig... did he come?"

"Lord Harris is occupied," Declan said, his tone flat and bureaucratic. "He is seated at the Duke's high table beside Lady Karissa. He expressly forbade any interruptions for trivial matters."

"Trivial?" My voice shattered. "These are his children! I nearly bled to death!"

"The Lord instructed me to deliver a command," Declan continued smoothly. "Cease these pathetic, manipulative dramatics at once. Sudden labor during the opening ceremonies of the Royal Tour is an embarrassment to the Black Stone crest."

He reached beneath his cloak and tossed a greasy leather pouch onto the bed.

The pouch struck my bruised shins with a dull thud. Common silver coins clinked inside.

"Fifty silver pieces," Declan sneered. "Pay the midwife. Settle the fee for this lower cell. And do not dare show your face near the upper terrace. If you bring shame upon the Harris name before Lady Karissa, you will find yourself cast beyond the outer walls."

He turned on his heel. The heavy door slammed shut, the latch falling into place like the blade of a guillotine.

The pouch felt heavier than a tombstone. It was not support; it was the hush money tossed to a stray.

Slowly, agonizingly, I dragged my legs over the edge of the cot. The cold floor bit into my bare soles. Biting my lip until blood coated my tongue, I pulled myself toward the trough.

I lifted the tiny girl first. Her skin was turning a faint, terrifying shade of blue under the damp rags. Pressing her freezing cheek against my bare collarbone, I felt her faint, fluttering heartbeat.

"Nora," I whispered. "Your name is Nora."

In the old tongue of the first dragon-kin, it meant light. She had come out first, into the dark, into the cold, into a room where no one had been waiting for her. Let her be the light, then. Let her be the thing that came first, that would not be put out.

My son stirred against my shoulder, his tiny fist knotting in the thin fabric of my shift. I turned my face into his warmth and felt the shape of him-so small, so stubbornly alive.

"And you are Leo," I said, my throat closing. "Leo. The lion-heart. You were turned wrong inside me, and still you fought your way out. Both of you did. Do you hear me? You fought."

"No one will ever call you nothing again."

I said their names again, and again, until the syllables stopped shaking on my tongue-until they belonged to me the way my own breath belonged to me.

Nora. Leo.

Not the heirs of Black Stone. Mine.

"Never," I whispered into the soft fuzz of Nora's head, my tears finally spilling over my eyelashes, burning like acid as they rolled down my cheeks and soaked into their swaddling rags. "I will never let him make you beg."

I set the twins back down into the trough, wrapping my own tattered wool shawl over them to keep out the draft.

My hands, though covered in sweat and grime, had stopped shaking.

On the small iron stand beside the basin lay a single scrap of rough parchment and a stub of charcoal left behind by the attending clerks.

I took the charcoal in my fingers.

With sharp, hard strokes, I wrote out a formal declaration to the Registry of Oaths:

[I, Clotilda, mother of Nora and Leo, hereby invoke the Parting Ritual. I demand the severing of the Dragon Oath and the absolute dissolution of all bonds tying me and my children to Lord Kraig Harris. Their names were mine to give. They are not his to take.]

I folded the parchment twice.

I had no dragonfire in my blood to melt the ceremonial red wax, no noble sigil to stamp upon the fold.

I simply pressed my bloodied thumb against the fiber of the paper, leaving behind a stark, dark red smear.