Chapter Text
Kiera screamed once again as the all too familiar pain threaded itself through her body, almost merging into one.
She thought savagely as the pain began to abate, All this pain for a dead child.
The midwives and servants rushed throughout the room like headless chicks, and the grey Maester, their leader with his clanging chains that made her want to get up on her shaking legs and choke him to a halt.
Her dear husband most like was drowning himself in a puddle of wine or maybe his own bile, honestly it could have been both. Valarr would have paced a hole in the hallway had he been there.
Two dead sons for her first husband, twice that to her second.
“Ahhrghh! Do something you useless cunt, instead of buzzing around like an annoying fly!” She glared at the Maester with sweat soaked eyes.
“My Lady, if you would kindly-” The doddering fool was cut off by another one of her screams, mind going blank with pain.
Her older sister had given birth nine times, ten children alive. Well, they did survive infancy, their subsequent deaths had nothing to do with Rohanne’s birthing ability.
Kiera thought misbecomingly, of her more beautiful, more accomplished, more capable eldest sister, the one she has not seen in years, and the one she had once loved the most. The one who will always be more.
Her sweet sister. Purple and pink, the pair of them, they had decided and chosen in girlhood.
Symbols of forevermore, the then naïve girl Kiera had thought. Mayhaps to be together but only in death, the hardened woman Kiera thought now.
Would she give birth to as many dead children as her sister had? Or would she be too dead to win against this stupid one-sided competition.
She was roused from her bitter thoughts, “My Lady! I can see the head! You need to push!”
“What the fuck do you think I was doing up till now?” Her goodfather had certainly rubbed off his charm on her.
“One last push, My Lady!”
Last push for the seventh dead child.
The pushed with all the might her tired body could muster, yelling in unison.
The babe finally slid out and caught by the Maester.
Sweat burned her eyes, exhaustion burned her body and grief burned through her mind.
“It is a girl, My Lady!”
Ahh.. my first dead daughter, she thought as sleep pulled her below, her fatigue truly must be great as she heard a distant shrill cry of a babe.