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After exactly five months, Kalasin decides that she hates being pregnant.
She hates it that her back hurts constantly. She hates not being able to keep any food down. Sleeping on her back has been rendered impossible, thanks to the—presence—inside her.
It has begun to kick her quite often, now. It's a startling feeling, and Kalasin wishes that she could tell it to stop.
Most of the time, she even wishes that it had never happened. Varice knits her baby clothes in pink and blue, delivering more and more every week. Kalasin thanks her friend with a smile and a hug, as always, but the clothes end up lying on her window seat in a heap, ignored.
Every now and then Kaddar ventures into her room a little tentatively, sits on the window seat, and folds the tiny clothes with care, before taking them to his dresser and setting them in a separate drawer.
Kaddar soon discovers that strawberries, oranges, and mangoes are just about the only things that she can keep down. A couple of hours after mealtimes, he brings her a plate, because he knows that she throws up almost everything else. She accepts the food with grace and a quiet word of thanks, but he sees the warring gratitude and resentment in her eyes as she looks at him.
He worries about her, sometimes—worries if it's normal that a mother-to-be should feel this way toward her unborn child. He hopes she will grow out of it, for the child's sake.
The country rejoices at the news that Carthak will soon have an heir. If the child is a son, that is.
Through an unspoken arrangement, they haven't asked Nadi, Kalasin's personal healer and Kaddar's elder sister, for any information about the gender of the baby. Kaddar doesn't want to disappoint or to be disappointed (if it's born healthy, he should be grateful, regardless of gender, a voice in his head tells him reproachfully) and Kalasin doesn't want to know anything about the child who has stolen her freedom.
Kalasin's delivery, three months and three weeks later, is an exercise in silent rage.
When she sees her daughter (daughter, says a malevolent voice inside her, daughter, all this for nothing; see how you've failed?) for the first time after she regains consciousness, she sees a tiny girl wrapped in a pink blanket with her features and Kaddar's eyes. The baby stares at her mother for a moment before letting out a sudden scream, echoing Kalasin's anger.
Something inside her crumbles, and she pulls the baby close, and the empress has never fully realized how alike love and hate are, until that moment. Kalasin holds her child and stands on the edge between them. It is as sharp as a scythe, cutting her heart in two.
When Kaddar sees Kalasin, the first thing he does is kiss her so hard she can't breathe for a good few moments. He looks down to the child she cradles, and reaches out to touch the baby's cheek, wordlessly.
Kaddar hates the part of him that is disappointed because it is a girl, but Kalasin is holding the child toward him, her eyes defiant, daring him to show any sign of disapproval, and he accepts her a little awkwardly. He hasn't held anything this tiny in recent memory.
"What are we going to name her?" Kalasin asks him softly.
He lowers his eyes to the yawning baby in his arms. "Tradition dictates that the mother name the daughter, and the father…"
His voice fails him, and Kalasin gives him a cool look. "I see," she says stiffly, reaching out and taking her daughter back. Kaddar almost doesn't let her go. "I think Kalahari would be a nice name."
Kaddar nods his head. "Then Kalahari it shall be."
An awkward silence falls over them, and Princess Kalahari Iliniat looks from one parent to another before closing her eyes and nestling against Kalasin's chest.
After a while, the well-wishers start to arrive. Kalasin is in no mood to put up with councilors whose words of congratulations don't quite reach their eyes, but she gives them an equally insincere smile. She hears the unspoken better luck next time, and turns away, closing her eyes bitterly, and feigns sleep.
She's read enough history and historical fiction to know about daughters in royal families. First-born daughters in empires that aren't yet completely stable.
Kalasin determines not to let Kalahari be forgotten. That she won't be shunted to the side when she gets a younger brother. That she won't end up married to somebody who she doesn't want to be married to. That she won't be shipped off to some convent—Kalasin wonders if her daughter has inherited the Gift—and that she'll have some control over what happens in her future.
The Empress closes her eyes and falls asleep.
-
I'd like to say that, yes, it is established canon confirmed by TP that Kally and Kaddar's first child is a son, born at the end of TQ. But, I mean, artistic license! Plus, making their first child a daughter makes everything so much cooler and more complicated.
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