Chapter 51 — "Tessa's Turn"

The first sign comes at dawn, in the birthing room.

They built it for Roxy back in season three — a big room off the main house with a wide bed dressed in clean sheets, a rocking chair in the corner, a kettle always warm on the side table, and a window that looks out over the east pasture where the sun comes up over the fence line like something opening its eyes. Tess has been sleeping in it for a week. Not because anyone told her to. Because the nursery is right there, two doors down, and because when she woke up at three in the morning with her belly so tight she couldn't roll over, the walk was short enough that she didn't have to wake the whole house.

She's standing at the window in her nightgown when it happens. A tightening. Low and deep, wrapping around her belly like a broad hand squeezing and then letting go.

It is not like Braxton Hicks. She knows Braxton Hicks. She's been living with Braxton Hicks for a month, and this is nothing like that.

This is a door swinging open.

"Tess." Vivian's voice from the doorway, soft and knowing, like she felt it through the floorboards. Vivian has been getting up at dawn every morning for nine months — Wren still nurses before the sun is up — and she stands there with her shawl over her nightgown and her green eyes already certain. "That face I know."

"It just —" Tess presses her palm to the underside of her belly. It happens again. A long, slow cinch, from the bottom up, her whole womb drawing tight as a fist. She breathes through it the way Vivian taught her, in through the nose, out through the mouth, and when it lets her go she laughs — a startled, breathless, disbelieving laugh. "Vivian. That wasn't practice."

Vivian crosses the room in three steps and puts both hands on Tess's belly, feeling it, reading it like a ledger page. Her eyes shine.

"Sit," she says. "I'll wake him."

· · ·

Damion is already awake.

He's standing at the big window of the master bedroom when Vivian comes in, still and dark against the grey-blue morning light, his shirt off, his hands braced on the windowsill. Elena is asleep in the four-poster behind him, curled around Darian in the bedside cradle, her hair a spill of dark silk across the pillow. He turns when he hears Vivian's bare feet, and he reads her face before she says a word.

"Tess?" he says.

"Real ones. Six, seven minutes apart. Her water hasn't broken yet."

He crosses to the bed and bends over Elena, and he puts his mouth close to her ear, and his voice is the low calm thing that has held this farm together through every birth and every storm.

"Elena." A kiss to her temple. "Wake up, my queen. Our Tessa's starting."

Elena's eyes open. For one breath she's still half in a dream, and then it lands, and she sits straight up, hair falling everywhere, and she grins — wide, joyful, completely awake.

"Now?" she whispers. "This morning?"

"Now," he says, and he cups her face and kisses her slow and deep, and she can feel him smiling against her mouth. "This morning."

Darian makes a small sleepy sound in his cradle and Elena lifts him, and she nurses him quick and gentle while Damion dresses, and the whole house starts to hum — that low bright hum that means something is happening, and every woman in this house can hear it.

· · ·

By the time Damion walks into the birthing room, Tessa is on the bed propped up on the pillows, her auburn hair loose around her shoulders, her nightgown pushed up over the enormous bare mound of her belly. Vivian is timing her — watch in hand, calm as a metronome — and Elena is already there, barefoot in her robe, climbing onto the bed beside her sister, taking Tessa's hand without a word.

"Tess," Damion says.

And she looks up at him, and her eyes are huge and wet and brave, and he goes to her like a tide, and he sits on the edge of the bed, and he takes her face in both his hands.

"Breathe for me," he says quietly. "That's it. Right through it. I'm here. I'm not leaving this room."

The contraction comes. Her belly rises and hardens under his palm like the moon surfacing, and he keeps his hand flat on it, and he breathes with her — slow, steady, audible — and Vivian counts under her breath, and Elena strokes Tess's hair, and when it passes Tess exhales a shaking laugh.

"You're doing it so well," Elena whispers. "So good, baby."

"I wanted —" Tess pants, and she looks at Damion, and the tears standing in her eyes spill over all at once. "I wanted to be brave like Roxy was. I wanted to just — be proud the whole way."

Damion wipes her tears with his thumbs. His voice drops, rough with tenderness.

"Tess. Look at me." She does. "You were the shy one. You used to turn your whole body away from me in the pasture because you couldn't stand me looking at you. And now you're sitting in front of all of us with the biggest belly on this farm, and you're about to give me our daughter, and you want to know what I see?" He leans in until their foreheads touch. "I see the proudest woman I know."

Her whole face crumples. She sobs once — just once — and then the next contraction takes her, and she rides it gripping his hand so hard her knuckles go white, and he never flinches.

· · ·

The morning moves the way births move. Slow, then not.

For the first hours, it's almost peaceful. The contractions come every six minutes, then every five, and Tess dozes between them with her head on Elena's shoulder, waking only when her belly draws tight. Elena reads to her — softly, from a battered paperback of poems — and the words wash over the room like warm water. Damion sits on the edge of the bed with Tess's feet in his lap, and he rubs them slow and firm, his thumbs pressing into her arches, and every time she sighs he looks up at her with that calm grey gaze like I've got you, there's nowhere else I'd be.

"I keep thinking," Tess says suddenly, between contractions, her voice small and dreamy, "about the first time. In the pasture. Season two. I was so scared I shook."

Damion's hands still on her feet. His eyes go dark and warm.

"I remember," he says quietly.

"I thought you were going to — I don't know. See through me. Like I'd turn inside out if you looked at me too long." She laughs, breathless, and the next contraction builds and takes her, and he holds her foot through it, and when it passes she finishes: "And then you just — you knelt down in the grass. You didn't grab me. You just looked up at me and said come here, little one, and your voice was so gentle I forgot to be afraid."

"I remember," he says again, and his voice is rougher now. He leans forward and kisses the top of her foot, then her ankle, and Elena watches them with her heart in her throat.

"You made me proud of being shy," Tess whispers. "You made it feel like — like a gift. Like I was giving you something nobody else could give."

"You were," he says. "You are."

The contraction comes and he holds her through it, and she grips the sheet, and she doesn't cry out this time — she breathes, she rides it, she comes out the other side flushed and panting and smiling, and Elena presses a kiss to her damp hair and murmurs, "God, you're beautiful," and means it with her whole soul.

· · ·

June brings the warm cloths and sets them by the bed, and her eyes are full of tears already, and she kisses Tess's forehead and whispers, "You're gonna be so good at this, sweet girl." Mara brings the tray from the kitchen — honeyed tea, broth, a damp cloth folded neat — and she sets it down and bends to press her cheek to Tess's belly and murmurs to the baby inside, "Come on, little one. Everybody's waiting." Roxy barrels in with Cassian on her hip for thirty seconds — just long enough to plant a kiss on Tess's sweaty temple and say, "Give 'em hell, shrimp" — and then she disappears again with the baby, because the little ones go to the Quarters with the sitter today, every one of them, and the house belongs to Tess.

Vivian never leaves the bedside. She's done this. She knows the road. She times, she coaches, she keeps her voice level and her hands steady, and when Tess starts to panic — I can't, it's too much, I can't — Vivian leans down close and says, "Yes you can. You were made for this. Look at Damion."

And Tess looks at Damion. He is right there. He has not moved from the side of the bed. His hand is on her belly or on her face or holding hers, and his grey eyes never leave her, and every time a contraction builds he breathes with her, low and even, like he's lending her his lungs.

"You hear me, little one?" Elena whispers, holding Tess's other hand, her own eyes wet and shining. "Your sister's been waiting to meet you. Darian's been waiting. We're all right here."

The water breaks around noon — a warm gush that soaks the pad beneath her and makes Tess laugh, startled and delighted, right in the middle of a contraction, and the room laughs with her, and Damion kisses her damp forehead and says, "There she is."

Vivian checks her. "Nearly there," she says quietly, and something electric passes through the room.

· · ·

The last hour is the real work.

Tess is up on her hands and knees on the bed for a while, rocking, her nightgown pushed up around her waist, and Damion is right behind her — not touching her there, not tonight, just his big hands on her hips and her lower back, steady pressure where she needs it, his voice a low current in her ear.

"That's it. That's my girl. You're doing it. You're doing it."

She screams into a contraction — a raw, open, animal sound — and Mara is suddenly there with a cool cloth on the back of her neck, and June is at her shoulder murmuring, "Good, good, you're so good," and Elena is in front of her, face to face, holding both her hands, and Vivian is behind with Damion, guiding.

And then — a pressure so enormous Tess thinks she'll split open — and a burning, a stretching, and Vivian's voice going sharp and joyful: "Head! Tess, I see her head! One more — push, Tessa, push like you mean it —"

Tess bears down with everything she has. Her whole body is one long scream of effort. Damion's hands lock around hers. Elena is crying. And then —

A rush. A slide. A sudden shocking lightness, like the moon dropping out of her.

And silence. One terrible, beautiful second of silence.

And then a cry — thin and furious and perfect — fills the room.

Tess collapses forward onto her elbows. She can't see. She's laughing and sobbing at the same time and she can't see anything, and then someone — Damion — turns her gently, and there is a warm wet bundle on her chest, skin to skin, and the crying baby quiets the moment she settles against her mother's heartbeat, and Tess stares down at her.

"A daughter," Vivian says softly. "Tessa. You have a daughter."

The baby is small and red and perfect, with a dusting of dark wet hair and her mother's stubborn chin, and she opens her eyes — unfocused, grey-blue, brand new — and Tess makes a sound like her heart breaking open in the best way.

"Hi," she whispers. "Hi, hi, hi. You're here. You're here, little one."

Damion is sitting on the bed beside her, and his hand is on the baby's back — so big, so gentle — and when he looks up at Tess, his eyes are wet.

"You did it," he says quietly. "My brave girl. My proud, beautiful girl."

He leans down and kisses her — long, slow, reverent — and the whole room goes soft and golden around them.

"Let me see her," Mara breathes, and she comes to the bedside with tears running openly down her face, and she looks at the baby and her voice goes husky. "She's got your chin, shrimp. That stubborn little chin." She bends and kisses Tess's forehead, hard. "You were magnificent."

June is next, and she can't stop smiling, and she presses both hands to her own heart and whispers, "Look at her. Just look at her." She touches one fingertip to the baby's tiny curled fist, and the baby's fingers close around it, and June gasps like it's a miracle. "She grabbed me. She grabbed my finger."

"She's strong," Elena laughs through her tears, and she leans in close, her cheek nearly touching Tess's, and she looks at the baby with pure wonder. "Darian's going to be so jealous. His little sister-cousin is beautiful."

"She's not jealous-making," Tess laughs, exhausted and incandescent. "She's perfect."

Vivian stands at the foot of the bed, watching them all, her hands folded, her serene face lit from inside. She catches Damion's eye over the crowd, and she nods once — well done, both of you — and he nods back.

· · ·

They let her rest. They let her hold her daughter and just breathe, the baby's mouth rooting at her breast on instinct, latching with a fierce little tug that makes Tess gasp and then melt. The afterbirth comes easy. The cord is cut. Vivian does what Vivian does, calm and thorough, and Elena never leaves the bed, and Damion holds Tess's hand and watches his daughter nurse like it's the most sacred thing he's ever seen.

When the room finally settles — Tess propped up clean and warm, the baby wrapped in the soft cream blanket Elena knitted months ago — Damion stands.

He goes to the study. He comes back with the ledger.

It's the leather breeding ledger, worn smooth by his hands, the one that holds every entry this farm was built on — every breeding, every conception, every birth. He sits on the edge of the bed, and he opens it, and he writes in his slow deliberate hand, and the scratch of the pen is the only sound in the room.

Season Five. First birth.

Tessa — a daughter.

Born at home, in the birthing room, with her sisters around her. Brave from the first breath to the last. Mother and child thriving.

He closes the book. He looks at Tess.

"She needs a name, little one," he says softly.

Tess looks down at the baby — her baby, the tiny girl warm against her chest, her little mouth still making soft nursing motions in her dreams — and her eyes fill again.

"Lark," she whispers. She looks up at him. "Her name is Lark."

Damion says it once, testing the weight of it, tasting it. "Lark." His grey eyes go warm and dark. "Our Lark." He bends and kisses the baby's downy head, and then Tess's mouth, and Elena is crying happy tears into Mara's shoulder, and June is beaming, and Vivian just smiles her serene knowing smile.

· · ·

That evening, when the house is quiet and the lamps are low, Elena finds Damion on the porch.

He's standing at the rail, looking out over the darkening pasture, and she comes up behind him and wraps her arms around his waist and lays her cheek between his shoulder blades. For a while neither of them speaks. The crickets are loud. The first stars are coming out.

"She was so brave," Elena whispers.

"She was," he says. He turns in her arms and gathers her close, and he kisses the top of her head. "You were too. You never left her."

"I wouldn't have missed it." She tilts her face up to him. "Daddy?"

"Yes, my queen."

"When it's our turn again —" She stops, and her cheeks go pink, and she laughs at herself. "I mean. When I'm ready. I want it like that. All of us. Everybody in the room."

He looks down at her for a long moment, grey eyes soft and dark, and he cups her face and kisses her slow.

"Everything you want," he says. "Is already yours."

She goes back inside with her heart full, and a few minutes later he follows her in, heading for the birthing room — because Tessa is awake now, and it's time.

Tess is awake, propped up in the bed, nursing Lark in the golden lamplight. The baby feeds with her eyes half open, one tiny fist pressed against her mother's breast, and Tess looks up when he enters, and she doesn't turn away. She doesn't hide. The shy one is gone — or no, not gone. Transformed. The shyness turned inside-out into something fiercer: devotion, pride, possession.

"Hi," she whispers.

He sits on the edge of the bed. He looks at his daughter. He looks at his Tessa — flushed, exhausted, radiant — and he reaches out and cups her cheek, and his thumb brushes the corner of her mouth.

"Tell me," he says quietly.

"We did it, little one," Tess whispers — to Lark, to him, to the whole bright future laid out in front of them like a road. She bends her head and kisses the baby's forehead, and when she looks back up at him, her smile is the bravest thing on the farm. "We really did it."

He stays until they're both asleep — Lark milk-drunk and limp against her mother's chest, Tess with her cheek resting on the baby's head — and he watches them in the lamplight for a long time, his hand on both of them, and then he writes one more line in the ledger before he blows out the lamp.

She wept when she held her. Then she smiled like a queen.

Chapter 52 — "The Harvest Moon Rises"

Two weeks after Lark's birth, the whole farm smells like cinnamon and woodsmoke.

It started with Mara. Mara, of all people — red hair tied up in a scarf, flour on her forearms, standing in the big kitchen at six in the morning with a list as long as her arm — announcing that if Cedar Hollow Farm was going to have its first ever harvest festival, then by God it was going to be done right.

"We need garlands," she said. "We need lanterns in the barn. We need pies — six pies, minimum — and I want corn husks on the tables and I want somebody to tell me where the good ...