Chapter 2: Numbers That Don't Add Up

"Say that again."

Caius doesn't move from the doorway. His voice has gone somewhere flat and far away, like he's talking through glass.

Dr. Halloway Iris, according to the badge clipped to her scrubs, though I don't know that yet, I'm just reading it because I need somewhere to put my eyes clears her throat and steps the rest of the way into the room. She shuts the door behind her. Doesn't want this getting out before she's ready, I guess.

"Eleven weeks," she says again. "Bloodwork came back an hour ago. I wanted to confirm with an ultrasound first, but after the fainting spell this morning I didn't think waiting was smart."

"He fainted?" Caius says it to her. Not to me. Like I'm a line item in somebody else's report.

"Briefly. Hallway outside the east wing. One of the staff caught him before he hit the floor." Then she actually looks at me. First time since she walked in. "How are you feeling now?"

"Confused." It's the most honest word I've got. "Mostly just confused."

Something crosses her face. Not suspicion exactly. Close to it like she's noting the strangeness of my voice the way you'd note a stranger's accent. I file that away. Whoever Rowan Vance was, he didn't sound like this.

Caius still hasn't moved. His hand's on the doorframe like it's holding him up. And for one second just one I see something under all that ice. Not softness. Closer to fear, badly hidden on a face that isn't used to hiding anything badly.

"Eleven weeks." Quieter this time. He's doing math in his head, I can see it happening, and whatever number he's landing on, he hates it. "That's before the council session.

"Caius

"That's before." Louder now. Not a question. An accusation, though I can't tell who it's aimed at — me, or some version of the last two months only he can see. "You stood in front of my mother and told her to her face you never wanted this marriage. And the whole time "

"I don't remember that."

It's true. It doesn't help me at all. How do I explain to this man that the person who said those words isn't sitting in this bed anymore, without sounding exactly like the liar he already thinks I am.

"Convenient," he says.

"None of this is convenient." Sharper than I mean it. Iris glances between us like she's watching something she wasn't invited to see. "I don't know what I said three nights ago. I don't know this room. I don't know your mother, I don't know Marcus, I don't know any of it I woke up an hour ago in a body that isn't mine.

I stop. Too far. Even reeling, I know that's too far.

Caius is staring like I've grown a second head. "In a body that isn't what?"

"Nothing." I flatten my palm against the sheet, hold onto something that at least stays still. "It doesn't matter."

He doesn't believe me. I can tell. But he doesn't push either, probably because Iris is standing right there with a tablet and a Dominion badge, and whatever this is between us, he doesn't want it witnessed. His jaw works once. Twice.

"I need to run the ultrasound," Iris says into the silence, mercifully practical. "And given the fainting episode I'd like to keep him overnight for observation."

"No," Caius says.

"My lord "

"He stays in this house. I'll have Garrison bring in whatever equipment you need." He's not looking at either of us now, already somewhere else in his head. "I don't want this discussed outside these walls. Not yet."

"That's not your decision."

Both of them look at me like I've said it in a different language.

"It's my body." I say it slower, since apparently it needs spelling out. "My pregnancy. If I want a hospital, I'll get a hospital."

"You won't." It's not a threat exactly. It's worse — it's certainty, the tone of a man who's never once had to consider that someone might just say no to him. "The second word of this leaves this house, every House in the Dominion knows within the hour. And every one of them starts calculating what an heir is worth. You have no idea what you'd be walking into."

"Then tell me."

He doesn't. He just looks at me a beat too long, long enough that something stupid and warm tightens in my chest despite everything, despite not knowing this man at all, despite the fact that six hours ago I didn't even know I'd be here and then he turns and walks out. Leaves the door open behind him, like he can't decide whether to shut me in or shut me out.

Iris waits until his footsteps fade before she breathes out.

"Well," she says. "That went about how I figured it would."

"Is he always like that?"

"Cold?" She sets the tablet down and starts unwinding a cord from a small ultrasound unit she must've carried in with her. "No. Usually he's worse."

That almost gets a laugh out of me. Comes out more like a cough.

"Lie back," she says, gentler. I do. She lifts the hem of the borrowed nightshirt and squeezes cold gel onto skin that still doesn't feel like mine, and I stare at the ceiling while she moves the wand in slow circles, watching a screen angled away from me.

"There," she says, soft. "Right there."

I turn my head. Gray and white smear on the screen, too small to mean anything except there's a flicker in the middle of it. Small. Fast. Stubborn.

"Heartbeat," Iris says.

I don't know this kid. Don't know this body, this house, this man who looked at me like I was something he had to brace against. Six hours ago I was somebody else completely, and now there's a heartbeat on a screen that has nothing to do with the life I actually lived and everything to do with the one I'm apparently keeping.

"Okay," I say, to no one. To the flicker. "Okay."

Iris watches me for a second, the way you watch something you're not sure how to file. Then she switches the machine off. The flicker's gone. The room goes quiet.

"There's something else," she says.

"What."

She hesitates. Actually hesitates this doesn't seem like a woman who hesitates much and glances at the closed door, checking it's still closed.

"The dates don't work," she says, low. "Eleven weeks puts conception before you and Lord Thorn were even married." She looks straight at me, and there's no suspicion left in her face at all. Just something closer to worry.

"Rowan. Whose child does this House think it's getting?"