Gunfire. The crack rips through her senses, setting her head ringing. The momentary lapse in concentration is all the time it takes for a Legionary to send her to her knees.
What she sees next makes her heart jump to her throat. Veronica. Bright, cheerful, Veronica, lying motionless in a puddle of scarlet.
The Courier can only watch as the Bear falls to the Bull.
…
She must have screamed, she realises. Or gasped or flinched or lashed out, because not a minute after she opens her eyes, the room is flooded with light. She forces her body into a sitting position – her current condition making the motion difficult.
There is a pale hand on her stomach, panic lacing the Frumentarius' voice as he asks if she is in pain, is it the baby, does she need him to get one of the healers?
Words stick in her throat; she shakes her head before managing to choke out, "Nightmare." Her voice cracks on the last syllable.
His expression melts into a vague semblance of sympathy, laced with misplaced concern.
"You're safe," Vulpes tells her, arm slipping around her shoulder. "It's okay."
She wants to pull away. To scream at him, to make him see that no, it's not. She didn't choose this. Her friends are dead, lying somewhere in an unmarked mass grave. Her childhood home is filled with concrete, and it and the surrounding area is now ruled by a misogynistic dictator. She is due to give birth in nine weeks, and she isn't sure exactly which aspect of her life terrifies her the most.
Mrs Inculta. Just the thought of the name is enough to make her feel ill.
She wants to cry. Instead, she lets her husband kiss her cheek and nuzzle her neck and murmur soft Latin into her skin.
She tries not to let the tears spill over as he turns off the lights and falls asleep with his chest to her back and a protective arm over her swollen stomach.