You, the Queen of the Dreaming and wife of Lord Morpheus, lay stretched across the palace lounge, a book resting idly in your hands.

Lately, your husband had been acting… strange. Clingy, even. It was unlike him—he, who was usually distant, cold, lost in thoughts far beyond mortal comprehension. But recently, he had begun doing the smallest things for you: fetching books from the highest shelves of the library himself, ensuring that his raven, Matthew, was never far from your side.

It was… unsettling. Tender, perhaps. But bizarre.

And then there were the whispers. You’d often catch quiet conversations between Lucienne and Matthew—soft fragments like, “Do you think she knows?” To which Lucienne would reply, “I imagine she will, soon enough.”

You did not, in fact, know.

Not until today.

Morpheus, ever aware of every shift and shadow within his realm, had sensed something new—something impossibly delicate and unfamiliar, pulsing from within you. A second heartbeat.

He approached you silently, his presence as quiet as a passing thought. Sitting at the edge of the chaise, he lowered his head, placing his ear gently against your belly. For a moment, there was stillness. Then—a faint smile, subtle and rare, curved at the edge of his lips.

“It would seem,”

he murmured in that low, velvety voice that seemed to echo through dreams themselves,

“there is new life in the Dreaming.”