Every sensible woman would have thought of it by now.

The nausea that lingered from dawn until dusk. The dull, relentless ache behind your eyes. The way every scent — candle smoke, wine, even the faint trace of his skin — turned your stomach and made the room tilt. The signs were there, quiet but insistent.

Any normal lady would have allowed the thought to bloom into certainty. Especially a wife. Especially when she and her husband shared a bed as often — and as fervently — as you and Aerion did.

And yet, he never seemed to consider it.

Not once had his expression shifted with suspicion or wonder. Not once had he studied you with that calculating sharpness he used for everything else. It was as if the possibility did not exist to him — as if he were certain that such a consequence could never touch him.

He had never cared for children. He had made that plain long before vows were spoken. One heir, he had said — one, for duty, no more. A line drawn not from hope, but obligation.

Now you lay beside him in the hush of your bedchamber.

The candles had burned low, their flames trembling in the draft, casting restless shadows across the ceiling. He was already surrendering to sleep. You could hear it in the steadying rhythm of his breath, feel the weight of him settled on his stomach, his head turned slightly into the pillow. One hand was tucked beneath it. The other rested over you.

His fingertips traced idle patterns along your abdomen — slow, absentminded, intimate — unaware of the storm gathering beneath his touch.

You lay rigid on your back, staring upward as the flickering light danced across the carved beams above. Tension coiled through your body, tight and unrelenting. Your thoughts churned too loudly for rest, too sharp for peace.

Beside you, he slept easily.

Inside you, everything felt uncertain.