Queen of Unicorns Read online

  The realization was like a slap, nailing me between my shoulder blades and spurring me back to action.

  “Lia?” Jay asked anxiously, falling back into step with me. “Are you all right?”

  “Take me there.” I’d never demanded anything from anyone, but if a baby foal was hurt, now was the time to start.

  I followed Jay over the meadow as he marched quickly along a path that cut through it, worn away by footfall over the years. I waddled quickly to keep up with his fast pace, my jutting belly paining me as I ran. The sight of the unicorn brought me up short. The poor creature I saw before me knocked the breath from my body. Gods, it was even younger than the filly I'd brought home yesterday. Just a baby. Not even old enough to fly.

  And some vile person had rigged a bear trap to clamp around its leg.

  The unicorn whinnied in fright when it saw us, trying to fly away, but only succeeding in digging the trap's teeth deeper into its mangled leg. Its hair was stained with red, and its flesh ripped and torn.

  Its eyes rolled with fear as it tried to scramble backwards, whimpering.

  Next to it, another guard held a lantern so we could see. “I’ve tried to get near it, but every time I do, it moves, making its leg worse,” the guard explained.

  I splayed my hand in a gesture of peace and crept closer to the baby unicorn. “Shhh,” I soothed. “Shhh.”

  It stilled, hearing my voice, and eyed me warily.

  Jay stepped up behind me slowly, his chest a comforting presence at my back. “What do you need?” he whispered into my ear.

  I didn’t break my gaze from the injured animal in front of me. My mind raced, my vision narrowed to a single point of focus: the maimed unicorn.

  “Space, for now. I need to calm it down before it injures itself any more than it already has."

  Jay nodded and stepped back, but I caught his arm before he moved away. “Jay?” I searched his eyes. “Don't go far.”

  He lifted my hand from his arm and dropped a kiss onto my knuckles. “Never,” he swore. He went to have a quiet word with the groom, who had arrived, panting, behind us. They retreated several yards backward to where the guard stood with his lantern

  "Hey there," I said as I cautiously approached the trapped unicorn.

  It didn't move but held my gaze. The hue of its golden eyes was so close to the color of the ring that surrounded my own irises. That was part of the reason I loved the unicorns; I felt like I belonged with them.

  There was no chance the trap had been set for any other creatures. The unicorns were the biggest animals in the meadows. There weren't any bears here, no wild boar. It's why, despite Mother’s concerns, I felt safe roaming the hills and meadows as pregnant as I was.

  “Shhh,” I hushed the unicorn again through vocal cords tight with empathy over its plight. My vision blurred so badly that I could barely see through my tears. My hands shook as they hovered over the trap's release. Metal teeth cut into the foal’s leg right down to the bone. I tried pulling the trap, then pressing down the levers on either side, but the small movement made the unicorn whinny in pain. It fell to its side, whimpering. The movement caused the trap to cut more. My heart nearly broke with pain of its own. I couldn’t bear watching something so small and so innocent get hurt so badly.

  “Eliana... Lia?” Jay called.

  I blinked back the tears as I fought with the trap. “I could use a hand now!”

  I heard rustling in the bushes and turned to see a pair of golden eyes peering out at me. These were different from the young eyes before me. Older. Wiser. But just as terrified. The baby unicorn’s mother.

  I dropped my voice, hoping that the soothing tone would be enough to keep the unicorn and her offspring calm. “I know you can't understand me, but my friends are going to come help us. We need to get the trap from your baby’s leg.”

  The mother blinked her eyes, sweeping her eyelashes down as if in understanding of my words. The baby didn't struggle away as Jay, the guard, and the groom came closer.

  I motioned to the trap with its vicious teeth and the levers on each side that would free the unicorn. “I’m not strong enough to do this alone. If two of you press down there, I’ll pull her free.”

  They nodded and moved into position.

  The unicorn looked up at me and… it could have been my imagination, but I could have sworn that she nodded too.

  “Okay,” Jay breathed. “One, two…”

  He locked eyes with me, and I caught my breath. “Three!”

  The teeth of the bear trap sprang open, and I hugged the unicorn to my body, rolling backwards with her. She whimpered in my arms, burrowing her head into my neck, but I clasped her tightly. “It's all right,” I breathed into her mane. “You’re safe. We’ve got you.”

  The guard grimly collected the sprung trap and placed it into his satchel for later examination.

  Jay leaned forward, hands on his knees, and squinted worriedly at us. “How is she?”

  She peeked up at him. Anxiety was threaded through her body and swam in her eyes. I looked down at her mangled leg. It was bloody and limp. Now that she was free, there was nothing to stanch the flow of blood, nothing to keep it from gushing forth from the wounds the bear trap had left behind.

  “I need to get this bleeding under control. We can use my robe’s sash.” I began to undo the robe, forgetting that we'd brought the groom with us. Jay’s fingers on mine stilled me.

  “Not necessary, Your Highness,” the groom said, crouching down next to me and flipping his bag open. “I came prepared.” With a smile, he offered me gauze and ointment. I returned his smile and accepted his offering, wrapping it around her leg to stanch the blood flow.

  “We'll have to take her back to the palace. She can recover in the staviary. We’ll release her once her injury is healed.”

  I wanted to carry the baby unicorn back myself, keep her close to me, but with my belly the size it was, doing so wouldn’t be possible. I let the guard pick her up, and as he did, the mother came out of the bushes.

  The fear in her eyes was palpable. I could feel it radiating from her as though I was somehow connected to her.

  “We are taking her someplace to get better. You can come too.”

  The mother unicorn nuzzled at me before following the guard who had started the trek back with the baby. I turned to the groom. “Please go and call for the vet and tell him to go immediately to the palace staviary and notify him of the unicorn’s condition.”

  The groom nodded and took off into the city where the vet lived.

  Now that the rush of adrenaline had faded, I was exhausted. I yawned. An unbelievable cramp spasmed across my stomach, making me gasp at the sudden pain.

  “Lia? What is it?” Jay tightened his grip on my arm, his voice full of alarm.

  I looked up at him wide-eyed as the unmistakable sensation of liquid poured down my legs. In the distance, the Shipley town clock struck midnight.

  “I think my water just broke,” I said faintly.

  24th April

  Jay's face paled. “Shit,” he swore, frantically looking around as though a doctor would pop out of the bushes brandishing a stethoscope and popping latex gloves on. The groom had rushed off at such a pace he was nowhere to be seen, and in the other direction, the guard had disappeared into the darkness along with both unicorns.

  Dread clenched at my insides. The meadow was my favorite place in the world... but I didn't want to give birth here. I wanted a clean bed, a doctor, and nurses to watch over me. I wanted my mother.

  A contraction made me suck in my breath and groan as I curled in on myself, clutching my stomach and trying to breathe through the pain.

  Most importantly, I wanted drugs. Lots and lots of medicinal, gloriously numbing drugs.

  “It's going to be okay, Eliana,” Jay promised, reverting back to my full name in his panic. “We’ll have to walk back to the palace, that’s all.”

  “Walk? Are you freaking kidding me?” I let out a
cry as the pain of a thousand daggers pierced my insides. Wasn’t labor supposed to take time? The pain was supposed to build gradually, not suck the life out of me in full force with my first contraction. As the pain finally ebbed away, something nudged my arm. It was the mother unicorn. She’d come back.

  Hope lit in Jay's eyes. “Get on,” he said, jerking his head at the unicorn's back.

  As though the unicorn understood him, she pranced forward and stood in front of me, bending at the knees as though encouraging me to mount her.

  My eyes widened as I realized what he was asking me to do.

  “I can’t get on the unicorn’s back,” I said, my voice trembling.

  “Why not?”

  “Unicorn are wild animals. You can’t just ride them.”

  “We ride them all the time at the palace.”

  I narrowed my eyes at him. “The tame ones that we trained. This is a wild unicorn.”

  Jay ran his hands through his hair, panic plastered onto his features. “Are you serious? She came back for you. She voluntarily left her own baby so that you could ride her back to the palace and have yours.”

  I shook my head. My senses were scrambled with fear, and my body was already gearing up for another contraction.

  “Will you get on the damned unicorn before I lose my mind?” Jay said, his voice cracking.

  “I’m scared. What if I fall?” I loved unicorns. Heights, not so much.

  Jay didn’t answer me. Instead, he hauled me onto the unicorn’s back and jumped up behind me. “I won’t let you fall, Lia.” And with that, the unicorn spread her wings, and we took off into the night sky.

  The flight from the meadow back to the palace was a blur of pain and delirium, and, I was pretty sure, vomit.

  If I wasn't nominated for sainthood after this, I thought, I never would be.

  After what felt like hours, but in reality couldn’t have been more than ten minutes, we began the descent to the palace.

  A guard shielded his eyes against the moonlight and pointed up at us. From the way his arms were moving as he gesticulated wildly, it was clear that he was addressing other guards nearby, but I couldn't hear his words. Judging by the way the other three guards flocked to his side, he'd called them to make sure he wasn't hallucinating.

  One slowly started to raise his bow to aim an arrow towards us.

  Oh, no no no, I thought with dismay, my spine tightening with dread, but the man behind him shoved his arm toward the ground.

  “Are you mad?” he demanded of the archer.

  We were close enough now that I could hear his words, floating up to us on a breeze as we got closer. “You never harm a unicorn. The worst kind of luck follows unicorn hunters.”

  “There are people riding it!” the first guard complained.

  The other man shook his head. “Never harm a unicorn,” he repeated. “You never know what kind of karma will come back to bite you in the ass if you do.”

  Good to know they cared about the unicorn. Now, if only I could get them to care about the princess giving birth on top of it.

  I was breathless as the unicorn’s hooves clattered onto the tower ramparts. The sudden impact of the unicorn’s landing walloped the air from my lungs and sent another jolt of pain ricocheting through my body.

  The guards stared at me, jaws agape.

  The one who had been speaking elbowed his compatriot in the side. “And you can never be sure which unicorns are carrying pregnant heirs to the kingdom,” he said faintly. “Apparently.”

  “Good morning, gentlemen,” I said, smiling at them through gritted teeth. “Pleasant night, isn’t it?” I tried not to think about what I must look like. Nine months pregnant, eyes red from crying, hair a mess from my midnight rescue mission, and sweating in my nightclothes.

  “Could I trouble you to—” The contraction worsened, and I doubled over, at last releasing my hold on the unicorn's neck to clutch my stomach. She lowered in a sort of bow to allow me an easier route to dismount.

  The guards rushed forward to help me from the unicorn’s back, easing me down as I held myself in a position that was the closest I could get to folding into a ball.

  “Your Highness, may we be of some assistance?” the guard with the bow said.

  “Yes, absolutely,” I gasped, squeezing his forearm and giving him a look filled with venom. “Or we could stand around here on this rooftop until the baby falls out of me. My voice climbed the octaves as pain ripped through me, and I yowled like a keening cat. “Get me to a doctor, you imbecile,” I roared. “Now!”

  “Impossible,” I said later to the words the doctor had just uttered and wondering if she was indeed qualified to bring a child into the world.

  The doctor’s lips twitched as she fought to suppress a grin from between my feet up in stirrups. She stood, and her gloves made a snapping sound as she removed them and then disposed of them in the trash. “I’m afraid it’s not only possible, Your Highness, but it’s a fact. You’re in labor—” She smiled apologetically. “You’re just not in enough labor to push. Not yet, anyway.”

  I pressed the heels of my palms against my eyes and resisted the urge to scream. It seemed like contractions were taking hold of me every minute, despite what the doctor and her watch said. I’d been contracting for hours. Why didn’t my baby want to come out?

  I barely had time to get my breath back when another tidal force of pain washed over me.

  Mother rushed in as the doctor left. She caught the door before it swung closed .

  “I brought you some ice chips,” she said, carrying a bucket and passing me an ice chip from it. “What did the doctor say? Are you well? Is the baby all right?”

  She’d been gone from the room for less than ten minutes!

  I chewed on the ice chip and let the cold liquid soothe my throat.

  “Yes. No… I don’t know,” I moaned and turned my face into the pillow. “All I want to do is have a baby. Isn’t that a nice thing to do? Why does the baby want to hurt me?” My voice was muffled, and when I peeked out to see my mother, the worry wrinkles had vanished from her face.

  “You’re fine,” she said in a sigh of relief. “Thank the gods.”

  I resisted the urge to pound my fists into the sheets as Mother took a seat beside me in the well-worn rocking chair she had used to rock me in as a baby. The minute we’d found out that I was pregnant, she’d had the chair dragged into the palace’s hospital suite that awaited me and my future offspring.

  Hours went by, marked by the ticking of the clock on the wall and the contractions that seemed to come quicker and quicker, not letting up in their voracity and indeed getting worse. I found myself wishing they were only as bad as I’d thought they had been when they first started.

  “I can’t do this!” I screamed as another squeezed me, terrorizing me with its grip. My body tensed as the wave washed over me, crushing me. “I can’t do this anymore.” I whimpered, my head dripping with sweat.

  “I’ll find the doctor,” my mother said as I found myself on another downhill slide that would take me into my next contraction. “Your contractions are coming thick and fast now.”

  “No shit!”

  I’d never let a swear word leave my mouth before, but now seemed like an appropriate time to start.

  The doctor bustled in and took a look, dipping her head out of my line of sight behind a sheet covering my legs to my knees.

  “There’d better be a baby there,” I mustered.

  She let out a peal of laughter and popped up above the sheet. “Not yet, but we’ll have one soon. You are ready to push.”

  I felt for my mother’s hand as a contraction started. This time, instead of letting it take hold of me, I took hold of it, harnessing its power as I bore down.

  I was vaguely aware of my mother screaming push beside me.

  “Good, good,” the doctor said as I gasped for breath. “If you feel up to it, push again.”

  I closed my eyes and pushed with every ounce
of energy I had.

  Then on the next contraction, I pushed again and then again and again until my body was spent with exhaustion.

  “All right, Princess Eliana, you're almost there.” The doctor sounded bright and cheery, and I ground my teeth, my cheeks feeling hot.

  “You said that the last time,” I grumbled.

  My mother smoothed my wet hair back from my sweaty forehead and kissed my cheek. I leaned gratefully into the cool cloth that she pressed onto my skin. “You're doing splendidly, darling,” she breathed. “Just another few pushes, and you’ll hold that baby in your arms.”

  “Get ready,” the doctor coached. "Just one more big push, and that's it. Just one tiny push, you can do that, can't you?”

  “Depends,” I grunted. I shifted among the sweaty bed sheets and pillows to a sitting position. “Which is it, big or tiny?”

  The doctor blinked and looked uncertainly at my mother, who shook her head and hitched up her dress, underskirts and all. She kicked off her heels and, barefoot, climbed into the bed with me. She got into a position of support behind me. Her legs pillowed mine. She grasped my hands tightly.

  “When you entered my life,”—she breathed into my ear as she squeezed my fingers—“I had your father to rely upon. And I never had to do this, so I can only imagine the kind of pain you're in right now,” she said. “But I never want you to forget that you are not alone.”

  A sob tore out of my throat. “I am alone,” I said despondently. “I want Luka.” For all my big strong talk about not needing a man by my side, I was afraid. And I didn't want to do this without Luka. But I knew that I had to. My baby would depend on me.

  She shook me. “You are not,” she said emphatically. “You are not now, nor will you ever be alone, Eliana Rhiann. You have your father. You have me. You have Jay and the entire kingdom behind you.”

  “It’s not the same,” I choked out. I didn’t bother to blink back the tears coursing over my cheeks, unchecked.

  “Of course, it’s not.” She threaded her fingers through mine and whispered into my ear. “But it’s not nothing either.”