Page 61 of Pregnant at the Palace Altar

Gone.

The blood was a visceral reminder of a past he’d worked so hard to forget. But he’d foreseen this, had he not?

Katerina and blood.

This is what love did.

“Your Majesty,” the doctor said once she had instructed the medics. “I have called emergency services to transport the queen to the hospital.” Katerina was moved to a stretcher. Lifeless.

“She is...dead?”

“No,” the doctor said, following the medics carrying Katerina away from him.

Blood. Blood. Blood.

“Meet us at the hospital, Your Majesty. We are working hard to save all three lives. I will explain everything once she is stable.”

Then they were gone. And he was in a room alone with bloody sheets.

Until his sister ran in. She was breathing heavily, her arm curled around her own rounded stomach. She should not have run. Lysias was not far behind her. Diamandis stared at both of them, neither quite making sense in the context of everything.

Blood.

“What has happened?” Zandra asked. He barely felt the hand clutching his arm. “Diamandis?”

“I have sentenced them to death.”

“What?”

“Come, Diamandis,” Lysias said firmly, taking his other arm. “Let us go to the hospital and wait for an update.”

He did not remember anything from that moment on. It was all a blur and suddenly he was in some sterile, private waiting room of a hospital. Life and death did not care if you were royalty. Tragedy did not care if you had already seen your fill.

Lysias and Zandra took turns at his side, reassuring him that things would be fine. That the longer it took, the better prognosis there must be. If she was dead, he would know.

But they were wrong. He knew this in his soul. Even when the doctor explained that Katerina had gone into early labor. That there were complications, but they were working to deal with them.

He was not allowed to see her, so he knew.

She was dead. He was certain of it. They were all dead because he had loved them. Because he had wanted to make it all real.

And this was his payment for such foolishness.

Zandra sat next to him after the doctor left and took her hand in his. She squeezed. “Have faith, brother,” she said.

“There is no faith. They are dead. It is my fault. I loved them. I have sentenced them to death.”

Zandra did not move away, but he could tell she didn’t understand. Couldn’t. She thought he was overwrought, and he was, but Zandra could never fully understand.

“You sentenced them to death...by loving them?” she repeated. A question.

“Yes.” A curse.

She was silent for a few moments, though she did not let his hand go. “Do you really think you have such power?” she asked incredulously. “Your emotions controlscience? The human body?”

He sighed heavily. “Fate, Zandra. Fate controls everything. And mine is death.”

She scoffed. Shescoffedat him! Here in the middle of yet another bloody tragedy. “We make our own fate, Diamandis, or I would have been dead in a ditch long ago. But I fought. I survived the unthinkable. It was so bad I don’t even remember it, nor do I want to. And I am here, back where I rightfully belong, because I do not care about fate, and neither should you. You are the king of Kalyva.”

---