Prompt: a white Christmas

Baby's First Creatormas

The Lady Kahlan Rahl wasn't having a very good day. She held her four-month-old son's head against her breast, and tried to let the soft sounds of his breastfeeding calm her.

Her thoughts were chaotic, fear and anger making her tremble. Last night—

Darken's hands on her (once more trim) waist, his frankly admiring stare—"Should we not think about giving little Nicholas a baby sister?"

Kahlan's heart had been in her throat—wild hope, that Richard might yet have a female Confessor to bring him back to her, and anticipation, at the thought of no longer sleeping alone—quickly chased by horror at herself, to be thinking she and Darken Rahl might have a normal family—disgust, that she should want him back—

She'd slapped him; not hard enough, Kahlan rather suspected.

Worst of all was her guilt—already, to have committed the unpardonable sin of allowing a male Confessor to live—

To let Richard's memory be lost whilst she was in Darken's embraces—

Kahlan brushed away tears, rocking herself and Nicholas in her chair. She was a fool.

"Still angry with me?" Darken asked curiously, opening the door without ceremony.

Kahlan glared at him. How he could even ask her such a question—

Darken strolled to the window, and peered out, looking critically at the casement. "This needs to be fixed; if only there were a competent carpenter in all D'Hara—"

"How dare you—" Kahlan said furiously, then bit her lip as Nicholas pulled away from her to loudly express his displeasure at her tension.

"Hush," Darken told her severely, and Kahlan's head swam—what she wouldn't give for the release of her power—"look."

He took Nicholas from her, and then watched appreciatively as Kahlan pulled up her bodice. She glared, thinking Richard would never have been so disrespectful, and then remembering the time he'd come upon her bathing—

She swallowed tears at the memory. Darken grasped her elbow and pulled her roughly to her feet, and to the window.

"Take your hands off me!" Kahlan said, in a venomous whisper.

"Kahlan. Look," he commanded.

Outside, all was white. Swirling snow still fell around the palace, making Kahlan glad for the cozy fire in her room. It was beautiful, but Kahlan was in no mood for the beauties of nature.

"You—" she said, turning away from the window.

But Darken looked down at her with unusual tenderness (he really did look charmingly domestic, with Nicholas in his arms), and asked, not ordered, "Kahlan. It's Nicholas's first Creatormas. It's snowing, which almost never happens in D'Hara. Can't we cry truce, for once?"

"I—" Kahlan took a breath. But Darken was right. This was no time for discord. "A white Creatormas," she said wonderingly. And she took refuge in staring out the window at the cold snow, instead of meeting the question in Darken's unexpectedly warm eyes.

A truce—just for the holiday. For Nicholas. Surely that was only right.