It was no small miracle that Kuon survived the forty weeks of Kyoko's pregnancy without having a heart attack. In fact, it was a testament to just how strong the Prince was, since it seemed like every week Kuon was discovering Kyoko doing some new, wildly dangerous thing that would have been dubious under the best of circumstances. For someone in Kyoko's delicate condition, it was positively insane. Which Kuon seemed to constantly have to remind her.

It started, almost immediately, with the Health Juice. He understood that pregnant women could have unusual, even strange cravings, but Kuon did not think the amount of Health Juice Kyoko was consuming could be considered at all good for her. In fact, he honestly wasn't sure (especially given all that he'd heard about other LME academy practices) that it had any healing properties whatsoever, except as a potential emetic. Just looking at the drink made him feel queasy, and it had started looking even more fluorescently green than usual.

When he plucked up the courage to ask her about this change in the evil liquid, Kyoko looked away, embarrassed. "The moss."

"The moss?" he echoed, too distracted by how cute her expression was to comprehend her meaning.

"The - the glowing moss that grows in the tunnels. It's so tasty." She whispered this last bit. "I know it's strange and frankly I wasn't completely sure it was edible until a few months ago, but it's so. GOOD." She looked up at him, her cheeks flushed still. "I don't know if that's a pregnancy thing or not, though - maybe you could try some?"

And like the good husband he was, he did.

It was definitely just a pregnancy thing.

LINE BREAK

The first thing they did after visiting the healer to confirm her pregnancy was, of course, share the good news. Kyoko put a queasy foot down about going with him to tell his parents, instead opting to go tell Kanae. "The king -"

"Dad," Kuon reminded her patiently, as the king had been insisting she call him that since their engagement.

"Dad," she nodded, "will pick me up and spin me. I know he will. He'll be too excited to not do that, he does that to the qu- to Mom all the time just because there's a new flavor of jam. And if he spins me, I'm going to throw up on him, and I can't handle that right now."

Kuon, knowing that his father would, in fact, spin her, agreed to tell them himself. That went predictably well, since the royal couple had already sensed their grandbaby's impending arrival. Also, loudly. They were very loudly happy about the confirmation of what they already knew. After all, they'd been waiting for this news for twenty chapters, give or take a paragraph. So instead, the story will follow Kyoko on her quest to tell Kanae.

She found her, not in the library, but in her rooms, since it was about 6 in the morning. Kyoko knew better than to wake her friend (a tired Kanae was an angry Kanae), so she sat down on her couch and started making a new Kuon doll. Her team had been fighting over them, so she thought it would be best to make one for each of them. Plus, they were so tiny that they were quick to make. By the time Kanae stirred, Kyoko had a decent pile of thimble-sized dolls of the crown prince.

"What the hell?"

"Good morning, Moko!" Kyoko rose slowly to hug her, which had Kanae instantly awake and concerned. Kyoko did not move slowly, after all. She lunged. So for her to not - it meant that something was amiss. She allowed herself to be hugged, which made Kyoko squeal with happiness.

"What's wrong?" she asked, warily giving Kyoko a pat on her back. She didn't seem injured.

"Nothing's wrong! My best friend is letting me hug her and-"

"No, I mean - why the hell are you moving so slowly?"

Kyoko let her go and sat back down. "So I don't vomit in your room."

"Vom- you're pregnant, aren't you?"

"You figured that out a lot faster than Kuon!" Kyoko laughed.

"Yeah, yeah. Are you good with this?" She examined her friend carefully. Aside from the nausea (and the pile of dolls), nothing else seemed amiss.

Kyoko nodded. "I'm planning to study up."

"Fair enough." When Kyoko shifted in her seat, Kanae's eyes narrowed. "What?"

"Well, I wanted to ask - and I know you're not the biggest fan of kids, but I was hoping you'd make an exception in the really really bad case that something happened. Because if something got Kuon and me, there's no one else I would trust more to be able to keep someone safe, and-"

"Mo, just ask the question." It was too early for this. She was going to go back to sleep when Kyoko left. The scholars she was supposed to meet with could wait.

"Would you be the human godmother? Please?"

Kanae rolled her eyes, then extended her pinky finger. "Yeah, I will."

Kyoko's eyes watered with gratitude as she linked fingers. "You're the best friend I could ever ask for, Moko!"

She just smiled in that fond, exhausted way she always did with Kyoko and pulled back her hand. "Now please get that pile of creepy likenesses of your husband out of my room."

Kyoko's team was thrilled with their new dolls.

LINE BREAK

When Kyoko next encountered the king and queen, it took both Kuon and Julie to restrain Kuu from spinning her. Instead, there were many, many hugs. Also, tears. Mostly from Kuu and Julie, but they also set off Kyoko - as hyper-competent as she was, she was not immune to pregnancy hormones.

LINE BREAK

About a week after Kuon got down on his knees to beg Kyoko to not do roof patrol while pregnant, she sat him down in their living space with a very serious expression on her face. Kuon's instant panic veered (to his credit) not towards her leaving him, but towards something about the baby.

"No, they're fine," Kyoko quickly assured him. "But it is technically about the baby. Because, well, I've realized I don't know a whole lot about babies. Or kids in general, really. So I've decided to go back to the academy for a few months to take some classes about them."

His mind instantly filled with every horrifying fact she had ever casually mentioned about the so-called school. Knowing that arguing the dangers of this would be pointless (after all, she'd survived them already), he took a different but equally true tactic. "But I'd be so lonely without you."

She paused for a moment at this, realizing how dearly she would also miss him, but then brightened. "You could come with me!"

He took her hands in his and looked deeply into her eyes. "Kyoko. My darling. My One True Love. My most beloved." He smiled, noting how these words could still make her blush. "With everything you've told me about the academy, I doubt I would survive."

"I wouldn't let anything happen to you, you know that."

"But the added stress of attending classes and protecting me wouldn't be good for you." One of his hands released hers and drifted meaningfully to her still-toned stomach.

"Oh." She thought about this for a few moments. "That's… fair."

"Maybe we could hire someone to come here? Like some of the local midwives?"

Her eyes sparkled. "That would be wonderful! I could ask Amira and Yui and Michiko! Why didn't I think of that?" She threw her arms around him and peppered his face with kisses. "You're the best, Kuon!"

Had he been any more of an orange cat, he would have purred.

LINE BREAK

After talking to the three she knew and arranging for times to learn from them, Kyoko put out a flier requesting further tutors. After all, she knew close to nothing about kids, so it only made sense to seek out as many experts as she could.

And it only made sense that Julie, disguised as the fortune teller once again, showed up to answer her call. Only this time, Kyoko remembered what Kuon had said in the carriage. So when she began her mystical spiel, Kyoko just said, "Hi, Mom."

She peered out from her veil with a pout. "How did you know it was me?"

Kyoko giggled and gave her a hug. "Kuon ratted you out."

Julie heaved a dramatic sigh. "Well, I suppose there's no point in trying to fool you, then. I won't get in your way, love. I have a good feeling that you'll find just who you're looking for soon." They hugged once more and then Julie left.

Five minutes later, an older woman wearing the exact same outfit as the queen (except with a different shawl) wandered in, claiming to just be passing by. However, it just so happened she was an expert at childcare as she had raised the most wonderful son in the world and felt very confident that her skills and experience would be helpful. And no, she was certainly not the queen in disguise, that would be preposterous. Although she had once or twice heard that she bore a resemblance to Queen Julienna. They happened to be wearing the same outfit? What a strange coincidence!

Kyoko let it slide. It was hard to be annoyed when Julie was so excited about her grandchild.

But she did still need to hire some real help. The Queen was lovely, of course, and a great mother, but Kuon would be the first person to suggest that someone else be consulted for his own child, especially regarding his mother's cooking.

So Kyoko sought out every midwife in the capital, desperate to learn about babies. Kuon tagged along, as he also had no clue about infants. Halfway through their third lesson, one of the midwives asked if they had chosen a governess. Which led to the whole cycle repeating again, complete with Julie in a very bad disguise (and Kuu in an even worse one).

LINE BREAK

Kuon woke up in the dead of the night to the smell of pancakes. This was strange because he swore he'd fallen asleep in bed, not the kitchen. Yet he could hear the distinct sizzle of butter in a pan (a sound he'd grown accustomed to on the road). He cracked his eyes open and saw the canopy of their bed. So maybe it was a dream - nope, he could still smell pancakes. He blearily reached out for Kyoko, only to find her gone. That woke him up fully.

"Kyoko?" he called out, throwing back the covers.

"Over here!"

He followed her voice through a doorway he'd sworn wasn't there a month ago and into a small kitchen. "What…?"

"Sorry, did I wake you?" She flipped a pancake in its pan. "I just… I woke up and was starving."

"When did this kitchen get here?" He walked over and hugged her from behind, enjoying her warmth. He rested his head on hers.

"Um, I think…" she paused to flip a pancake, "about three weeks ago? The king - Dad had it commissioned around the time of the wedding. Probably for this exact reason."

He nodded drowsily, wishing he'd thought of it. But then, he'd never really been one to think about food. "Why pancakes?"

"They sounded good. I just wish we had salmon to put in them."

Kuon pulled a face that she couldn't see.

LINE BREAK

Kuu and Julie had realized something horrific: They did not have any portraits of Kuon and Kyoko together, save for their wedding portrait. This just couldn't stand! How else would future generations know how absolutely wonderful and beautiful their children were? Certainly, they would know about Kuon (the literal dozens of portraits he'd had to sit for over the years ensured that), but what about Kyoko? (For the record, future historians would be deeply confused by the apparently identical generations of rulers - at least until someone thought to determine the age of the paint.)

With no time to waste, they summoned their children and their finest painters. Kyoko protested at first, citing the many other significantly more useful things she could be doing with the time it would take to sit for a portrait - namely, ensuring the safety of the castle. Kuon just put an arm around her with an exhausted smile. He had long since learned that fighting his parents on this was entirely pointless. In the end, Kyoko agreed to sit for the portrait. But naturally, the Hoppington family also had to be included.

Sir Hoppington sat on Kuon's shoulder, a tiny knight's helmet perched on his mucousy head. Lady Lily perched on Kyoko's, wearing a tiny flower crown. The background held the tank of tadpoles, their legs just starting to form. Kuon sat with his arm around Kyoko. She leaned into him, her hands positioned just so in front of her stomach. The painter insisted that it was a common method of indicating her expectant state.

Future scholars would study this particular portrait intensely, as it was the subject of much academic debate. The main question, of course, revolved around the inclusion of the Frogs to the Throne. What could these frogs possibly symbolize? The tadpoles were explained easily enough by Kyoko's hand placement - clearly, she was pregnant, and the many tadpoles represented the hope for their fertility.

But the presence of the fully grown frogs was fiercely debated. One suggestion was that the frogs were simply pets, and that was why they had suddenly appeared in this generation of royals. This was immediately shot down and thoroughly mocked in the footnotes of papers. A more respected school of thought was that they were guardian spirits of some sort. Why else would one be wearing a knight's helmet? They simply must be allegories for the protective spirit of the royals. But, another scholar would inevitably point out, there was the (by then) longstanding position of Frogs to the Throne. This would go back and forth, achieving nothing, while other scholars argued the meaning behind the flowers in Lady Lily's flower crown. None of them ever thought that the particular flowers were chosen because they were small enough to fit on her head.

That is for future generations to debate, however. In the present, Kyoko was learning how boring sitting for portraits was. She was used to moving and doing, not sitting. Sure, she could hold a position for quite some time without issue (Ruto had trained her well), but that was usually when she was staking something out. Here, with no purpose other than for someone to capture her likeness… it was incredibly dull.

Kuon, sensing her frustration, signaled to the painter that they needed a break. While the Frogs to the Throne hopped off to tend to their offspring, Kuon offered Kyoko a hand up. "How about we go stretch our legs?"

Kyoko took it, to his eternal joy, and rose to her feet. "Please. Let's go for a few laps."

"Laps?" He blinked down at her.

"Around the castle!" She smiled up at him and started leading him outside. "I could use a run."

Kuon, to his credit, kept up well with Kyoko. What she had over him in speed, he made up for with the length of his stride. Later, when they returned to the portrait room, they were sweaty but much more able to sit. Kyoko even dozed, leaning against Kuon as she was. The painter captured Kuon's fond smile as he gazed down at his wife.

The future scholars would never need to debate the fact that the two were truly, madly, deeply in love.