-Chapter 10-

"She is already connected to another." He pressed two fingers against her forehead. "Aye, and he is not one of us. She's been bound to him by a powerful force. It was inevitable that their pact would be sealed before her return. Currently he carries her in his heart everywhere he goes. And in return she carries his essence."

"Carries what, old wizard?" her father bitterly asked.

He put a hand back on her stomach and hummed again.

"Aye…she is heavy with child."

His hand slid off.

"How dare you tell such lies! If this was true her stomach would be huge! Just look at how thin she is!"

"King Butterfly, this would in fact be true. However in her case, she has clearly not been eating or drinking as she should have been. It leaves the princess small, and weak."

"Then the baby would have died! Star cannot be pregnant!"

"I would desperately hope she's been secretly meeting her groom. Thagerie would never stand for this."

"River, calm down," her mother said. "Don't wake her. With or without a baby she's still unwell. We must think rationally."

Her father huffed but managed to quiet down.

"Old wizard, tell us, with her body so weak, why does this baby still live?" she asked.

The wizard took a deep breath and said, "I can't say for sure. Perhaps it's just luck. But she is without a doubt very heavy. I assume it was someone from Earth who put life in her womb. So perhaps…earthlings are stronger than us. If this is the case then, aye, she may birth well."

"Who did this to my little girl…" her father growled furiously. "I'll have his head for thi—!"

He was abruptly cut off by a small slapping sound, like someone put a hand over his mouth.

"Gas her," her mother bluntly said. "Two weeks."

The other two gasped.

"But! My queen!"

"No baby could live through a poison that deadly."

"Yes but what if it's too much for her? She's already sick enough, what if she can't handle this? She could die!" her father objected.

"She will die if she keeps this baby, River. This is the only choice we have; for our daughter, for our kingdom… There's no guarantee she'll live through this but there is a guarantee Thagerie will kill her if they find out. This is the only chance we have to save her life."

There was an eerie and grim silence for several minutes. It was almost unbearable, and the countless thoughts and emotions whirling around inside her were a nightmare to handle… She wasn't able to focus on any one thing. She couldn't sort out her problems.

"But…my dear…" her father murmured.

"Don't you want to take the only chance we have while it's still there…?"

Her father took an extremely deep, slow breath and said, "Gas her."

She felt the horror still radiating from the wizard but as all three left her room at once, the feeling disappeared.

Her eyes burst open and she shot upright. No amount of dizziness could hope to outmatch the news she should've known the entire time. She'd contributed every single pregnancy symptom to anxiety over the wedding. But now the vomiting—which she had originally thought to be a bit extreme but still assumed it was due to stress—and lightheadedness made sense. And if the wizard was right about how far along she was, if she was "very heavy" with child, then her constant refusal to eat would keep her from showing. It was all so perfectly aligned that…even she had no idea.

She took a sharp inhale as she also realized the only logical explanation as to why the baby lived through all the continuous damage her body was suffering was because she wasn't carrying an ordinary baby. A mewman baby probably would've died no matter how healthy she kept herself, but human babies were much stronger and were capable of living through some pretty harsh conditions.

They both promised never to speak of it again, and she didn't even like thinking about it, but the very last high school party she went too, she begged Marco to tag along and pretty much dragged him to it. Both of them had a good time, danced to upbeat music, socialized with other classmates, and by then so many people wanted them to stop being so dense and spiked their drinks when they weren't looking. Marco didn't have a very high tolerance for alcohol and started to get overly friendly with her once he finished his drink. Peer pressure was what pushed her to drink even more alcohol, which became fun when people started chanting her name. Even Marco joined in, though it was clear he barely had a clue what was going on and was having another one himself. But in time her mind got fuzzy, as did her memories. The last thing she remembered about that party was passionately kissing Marco in front of everyone while they cheered. And she'd vowed never to go to another party because the morning after, she woke up next to Marco in her bed and immediately realized they'd slept with each other that night. Ever since then they both agreed to never speak or think of it again and had done well in pretending it never happened.

But now she didn't know what would happen. Never before had there been a half mewman/half human child. And she didn't want it to die but if it lived she didn't know what she would do or how it would turn out. And having a baby live, for a mewman, was a huge deal and rarely ever happened. She wanted to keep it but Thagerie would never tolerate it. Adoption on Mewni wasn't like on Earth, and it was off limits in royalty. Even her "kind groom" wouldn't stand for it.

Her lungs suddenly jerked and something inside told her to stop breathing. She did but she knew she would have to breathe again soon.

She hopped off her bed, most of the dizziness already gone from a decent rest period, and ran over to the door knowing the gas was leaking into her room. She tried to open it but the doorknob wouldn't turn—it was locked shut, most likely on her parents' orders. So instead she tried kicking at it, seeing if it would at least crack. If she could crack it, she could break it. If she could break it, she could get out. Whatever happened after that…she wouldn't know until after—this assuming it did—it happened. But when kicking didn't seem to do anything, she used a stronger force of throwing herself against the door like she'd seen football players do. All that did was hurt her, not the door…

Moving around only made her want to breathe more. Seeing a pinkish fog surround her feet, though, was even more worrisome and she took a few steps back. She wasn't sure what was worse: seeing the gas or knowing it was there but not seeing it. She couldn't avoid it for long. Soon it would fill up her entire room and—

And right now the gas hadn't reached the top… That was her safe spot for now.

She tried to distract herself from the growing pain in her lungs and fiddled with the back of her dress only to find that there were no zippers or buttons. It was rather untraditional but…she solved the dilemma by simply ripping open a large hole and pulled her wings through. They used to be too small to be very helpful but as she aged they grew larger and larger. They weren't on par with her mother's yet but they were still perfectly capable of flight.

She let them carry her to a top corner, where she hovered above the gas's reach. She sucked in a huge breath of clean air and nervously watched the pink fog spread over her entire floor, slowly creeping up and over her bed and furniture as it continued to rise higher and higher. She pulled her knees up, not wanting to so much as touch it, even though it hadn't yet reached her.

Looking around, scanning the ceiling, did nothing to calm her or give her any hope. Then again, there wasn't any hope to give. She already knew she was too weak to make it through two weeks of poison. But even if she got out and survived, the baby would stay and she would still be killed. Both were death sentences, and all because she stupidly went to a party and made some wrong choices there.

She caught a whiff of the gas and knew her time was up. She fluttered down and forced herself to keep breathing even though her lungs were trying to reject the toxic air. It was worse than holding her breath. It wasn't burning or pain, more like an intense gravitational pull that made her chest want to fall off her body.

She walked over to the door an tried the knob again, as though perhaps something had changed, but as expected, it still stuck. Nothing happened, nothing changed, no one walked by… It was just a guess but maybe they cleared the halls and rooms near her bedroom to spare the staff from the poison. Nobody would be foolish enough to come through knowing other people wouldn't step in to get them out. She imagined they would only use tiny portals that she couldn't fit through to regularly bring her food and drinks. Things that would keep her alive, but only just. Earth had "abortions", which, considering the baby died in those, was an idea she abhorred, but Mewni didn't have that because if a mewman did get pregnant, it was the most blessed thing in the world to have the baby survive. The only way to hurt a baby on Mewni was to hurt the mother carrying it. This gas was extremely deadly but took time to work, so essentially they would almost kill her, which meant that even if she did manage to survive as weak as she already was, the baby wouldn't make it. This was…this was Mewni's first and hopefully only abortion.

And like the wizard said, it wasn't just hers, this was Marco's too. As if losing him forever wasn't bad enough…

"The blood moon. The pact being sealed. Connected to each other," she grumbled.

She looked at her stomach.

"And what are you?" she asked. "The 'force'? The 'seal'? The 'connection'? Or are you just some extra thing inside me that nobody wants?"

She saw her reflection in the corner of her eyes and glanced at it. Her mirror. Her mirror. She could call her mother and clear up this mess and maybe be let go. Just. She had to pretend to be oblivious to the pregnancy factor at first, and surprised upon being told why she was being poisoned by a gas normally used to carry out a type of death sentence. Then maybe her parents would take pity on her confusion and allow her to get out of the fumes.

She ran over to her mirror and said, "Call Mom."

"Calling 'Mom'," the mirror replied.

It rang for a moment and her mother's face appeared on the screen. Frankly she didn't know whether to be furious or elated, or possibly both.

"Mom! My door is locked and there's this gas leak in my room," she 'explained' with as much innocence in her voice as she could muster.

"Yes," her mother said. "As the princess of Mewni already engaged to a prince of one of the most powerful kingdoms in the entire dimension…!" Her mother took a quick breath to calm herself. "Star, what in the world provoked you to carry a child of human origin?"

"I…I swear I didn't know I was carrying anything with me! But there was once that, I-I didn't know what I was doing a-and it was only one time—"

"How many times do you think it takes, Star? Ten? Twenty? A hundred?"

"Why are you killing me for this?!"

"We have no intention of killing you. It's the baby that has to go. And if enough poison gets in your system then your body will have no choice but to send it straight to the baby too. You're strong enough to survive this. No baby has a chance against it."

"Mom, please, just… C-Can't you let me have the baby and then find a new home for it?"

"One reason is because we have no idea how much longer you'll have the baby in you. Another reason is that this baby is human, and we wouldn't know how to properly care for human children. And lastly, you have to marry as quickly as you can. This wedding has to take place. We don't know—"

"Wait, wait! Humans."

"What about them?"

"No, Mom, humans. This is a human baby, like you said. I…I did stuff on Earth, with a human. And apparently…this happened… But I know who the father is. What if I give birth, then give it to the father? He'll know how to take care of a human baby."

"You yourself didn't even know you were pregnant, why would he?"

She paused for a minute. "Well, obviously, I would have to tell him. I could…explain the situation. And then—"

"And then what? What if he doesn't want it?"

"Ummmm…well…I guess…"

"Who will take care of the baby if he won't?"

"Well, uh, humans aren't like us. They adopt other peoples' babies all the time and they love them and treat them like their own babies."

"And what will you do in the mean time? I know you well enough to know you'll want to stay a part of the baby's life but you know you can't. Star. You've already lost so much. I know this must be so frustrating for you, and I wish things were different… I want you to be happy but if this baby stays on Earth and grows up there, you'll only ever be feeling another separation. And it would be even worse for you when you have your next child, Thagerie's heir. Always wondering what happened to the child you gave up and always wondering what it would be like for both of them to grow up together…"

"Mom…no… Please, just, let me keep it, let me give it to the father, I-I won't say a word…let me at least try…"

Her mother looked away and shook her head. "This can't happen, Star. I'm sorry. The sooner we get rid of the baby, the sooner the wedding can commence, and the sooner Mewni will be saved. We don't have the luxury of taking another risk with this baby. If this was the child of the prince things would be different but you chose a human instead. As unfortunate as it is, these are the consequences you must pay."

The mirror cut off. The call had ended. She lowered her wings in defeat stared with wide eyes at all the facts laid out before her. Clearly her parents had discussed this more thoroughly after they'd left her room because this wasn't part of what she'd heard, and while it was true that no one knew how much longer it would be before she would give birth, or how much time it would take to recover from it, she could try giving it to Marco. She could explain everything to him and hope he understood. But…even she didn't know if the Safe Kid was ready to raise a child. She'd never even asked him if he wanted children in the future.

But she did know he could cure the child of Earth illnesses. He was well organized and always seemed to know what to do far before she did. He wasn't a scatterbrain like her. He was born and raised on Earth. He was probably more fit to raise a human baby than she was…

She thought about calling Marco, since her mirror service did extend to other dimensions, but second guessed it. What would she tell him? Bring up that drunk one-night stand neither of them felt comfortable talking about? That he had a baby he never knew about, and now they were trying to kill it? That she knew for years that she would be married but accepted him anyway? That she knew she would hurt him but was selfish? That she was weak and would die soon—probably within a few short days? She couldn't talk to him… She had nothing to say…

"So I guess…you'll never know your parents…or grandparents…from either side of the family…" she murmured. "Maybe you can meet them sometime in the afterlife. Don't worry. I'll be right beside you."

She turned around and slumped against the wall, wondering which was worse—dying here or living the life of an offering. She loved her kingdom and her people, and she was loyal to them, but if she had never been sent to Earth none of this would've happened. She wouldn't have anything to feel sorry about and she would be healthy and guaranteed a real future, one that lasted longer than a few days.

A/N

It's SUPER rare for me to update this quickly and the only reason I did is because I'm having a bit of a phobia crisis... I have a surgery on Thursday and um...well it was sort of sprung up on me. So the next update will be really delayed due to two reasons: I'm running out of nerve here and it takes time to recover from surgery, during which I will not be working on any chapters.

You guys are hysterical. XD The moment I mentioned her stomach, automatically she MUST be pregnant. Never once in the entire story (before now of course) did I say she slept with Marco. In fact I dropped like what, four lines or so trying to suggest that she did not sleep with anyone in the time frame of the story. You weren't wrong but I even showed that to my friend and we were both rolling! X'D I guess I kinda asked for that though. But in all honesty, THANK YOU. I've been nervous over the surgery and those reviews just, they were so funny! I would look at them several times and crack up! So seriously, I'm really grateful for something to calm my nerves (or tickle them in this case).

Happy Easter!