Chapter 111: Chapter 111
Seraphina’s Point of View
"The southern gate carriage has departed, My Lady," Delia said, her voice filled with a subtle, tense relief as she pulled back the drapes of my bedchamber windows.
I leaned against the headboard, my hands resting protectively over the my belly. Bastian had took Sarina to visit her parents’ home back in the Amber Fire territory. He had left before dawn, eager to appease his new concubine.
"Help me up, Delia," I commanded.
"But Lady Seraphina, the palace physician ordered strict bed rest for ten days!" Delia gasped anxiously, rushing forward to grab my slippers. "If Master Bastian returns and finds you out of your chambers—"
"While they are not at home, I refuse to rot in this dark prison while that snake’s perfume still hangs in our corridors!" I snapped, my voice shaking with a bitter rage. "Fetch the other housemaid. I am taking the two of you to the private royal garden for some fresh air."
Delia didn’t dare to argue further. Backed by my insistence, the two maids carefully supported my elbows as we walked slowly down the stone paths of the inner palace. The mountain air slightly easing the paranoia that had consumed my thoughts since the wedding night.
For an hour, I walked among the frost-covered winter blooms, desperately trying to convince myself that I still held control over Bastian’s heart and the future Luna’s crown.
However, on the way back toward the eastern wing, we were passing by the narrow stone steps nestled right next to the towering pine tree bordering the servant quarters. The ground was slick with frost, but my boots were treaded.
Suddenly, I felt my right leg violently bend inward at the knee joint, as if a shockwave had struck my muscle. Before a gasp could even escape my throat, I was aggressively pushed forward from behind by an unseen force.
"Lady Seraphina!" Delia shrieked, her fingers clawing frantically at my cloak.
The impact was too fast, the momentum entirely unnatural. The two maids couldn’t hold me back at all, their grips slipping against my sleeves as our bodies were propelled down the stone steps.
In a desperate, split-second panic to shield my belly, one of them propped herself up violently on the ground, her arm snapping with a loud crack, causing the three of them to fall together in a chaotic, crushing heap at the base of the pine tree.
A sharp, blinding agony exploded across my midsection as my hips slammed hard against the jagged rocks. I was deeply frightened and squeezed beneath the weight of the falling servants, the terrifying sensation of an internal tearing making my breath catch in my throat.
"My belly... oh moon goddess , my belly!" I screamed out, a terror taking control of my mind as I immediately experienced a sharp, excruciating abdominal pain that made the entire garden spin in circles.
Delia, weeping hysterically despite her bruised shoulders, dragged herself up and began to shout frantically for the guards.
Within minutes, the courtyard was a blur of shouting warriors. When I was carried back to the bedroom and laid across the bed, the horror was already undeniable... I was already bleeding heavily, the blood stain rapidly blooming across my linen skirts.
The emergency tore through the palace hierarchy. Bastian’s mother, Vivienne, rushed through the door first, her face twisted into a mask of pure fear as she clutched her hair. Right behind her, Mrs. Margot marched into the room, her eyes scanning the blood on the floor with an intense, unreadable sharpness.
Even Fred’s mother—who had been staying in the guest wing after the wedding banquet—came. They were all crowding the bedside with an overwhelming, suffocating noise.
The physician rushed straight to the bed, his hands trembling as he pressed his fingers firmly against my radial artery to run a rapid pulse test.
"Save the child, physician!" Vivienne wailed hysterically, grabbing the old man’s robes. "You must save my grandchild"
The doctor diagnosed my pulse with a deeply sigh, his face turning completely pale as he looked up at the gathering women.
"The internal trauma is too severe, Lady Vivienne. She was overly frightened and the physical impact has completely detached the core placenta. She is actively facing an unavoidable miscarriage."
"No! They pushed me!" I yelled from the pillows, as I thrashed against the pain. "Someone did this!!! Someone is actively plotting against me! Investigate please !"
"Sera, please, you must stay still!" Mrs. Margot commanded, leaning over my mattress to pin my shoulders down. "Do not destroy your remaining energy with shouting!"
The physician tried all kinds of premium drugs, forcing highly concentrated moon-lily tonics and bitter, life-saving resins down my throat to desperately protect me from the miscarriage, but the red torrent wouldn’t stop.
The agonizing heat inside my abdomen grew so painful and suffocating that my vision began to rapidly fray at the edges, and I eventually fainted into a dead coma of exhaustion,
*
*
*
The silence of the bedroom was filled with a freezing cold when my consciousness finally clawed its way back to the surface. The bright morning sun had completely vanished, replaced by the dim shadow of a single tallow candle mounted on the stone wall.
Bastian stood rigidly by the edge of the bed. He had already returned to the pack house upon hearing the urgent news. The high palace physician was just packing his case, his shoulders slumped in defeat.
"Well?" Bastian demanded, his deep voice dropping to a gravelly register that I had never heard from him tone. "Is my child stable?"
The doctor slowly shook his head, his eyes staring down at the blood-stained cloths piled inside the washbasin. "I have done everything within my power, Master Bastian. The baby could not be saved."
I lay completely motionless, my hands resting flat over an abdomen that now felt entirely hollow, empty, and dead. Waking up to learn the devastating truth that my baby had miscarried, but I didn’t show any emotion.
Delia and Vivienne were weeping by the curtains, I did not cry or make a single loud fuss this time. The screaming rage had completely vanished from my throat, leaving nothing but an ice-cold, dead void inside my soul.
Bastian let out a groan, his knees buckling as he dropped onto the edge of the bed. He reached out, his large hands grabbing my cold fingers, squeezing them tightly as he accompanied me by the bed with an intense, desperate remorse.
"Sera... look at me, please," Bastian said, his voice cracking with a bleeding hurt as he buried his face against my palm. "I swear to you on my honor, this changes nothing between us. I am once again guaranteeing with my entire life that the Luna’s position will always belong to you, and no side concubine will ever touch your status. I promise you."
However, I didn’t turn my head to look at his tear-stained face, nor did I return the squeeze of his hand. I simply stared at the blank fabric above me.
"What is forced cannot last long, Bastian,"I said whispered back, my tone entirely dead, flat, and chillingly calm.
Bastian flinched, his eyes widening in shock. "Sera, what are you saying? We are the true chosen match."
"No, we are not," I murmured, a bitter, ghost-like smile touching my lips for a fraction of a second.
That was the truth. I believed that the happiness brought by changing marriages with Ivy on that wedding night was our destiny... but it was only a few months of stolen gold. Look at my empty womb. This isn’t an accident.
Now, it is a direct punishment from heaven for what we stole... for what I stole.
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