Chapter 150
No sooner had those words ended than the maids darted out into the corridor like arrows.
Marisen and the nanny, who had been frozen as if paralyzed, also hurriedly clung to the bedside.
Thalia looked over their pale faces with frightened eyes, then grabbed the clothes of the eastern woman who was stuffing pillows beneath her hips.
“W-What is happening? Is something wrong?”
For an instant, pity flashed across the woman’s brown, sun-tanned face.
She wrapped her hands around Thalia’s cold hand and answered calmly,
“Please do not worry too much. For now... we are only watching the situation.”
It was an answer that avoided a detailed explanation.
Thalia gasped like someone being strangled and pulled the woman’s clothes even more roughly.
“The baby... Nothing is wrong with the baby, right?”
The woman gave no answer.
Thalia tugged at her sleeve even harder.
“I’m asking whether my baby is all right!”
“You must not move like that!”
The woman quickly pressed down on her shoulders.
Her dark brown eyes, shining with determination, firmly held Thalia’s gaze, which was stained with anxiety and fear.
“Take deep breaths. For the child’s sake, you must stay strong.”
Thalia looked up at that resolute face with tear-filled eyes, then soon inhaled deeply.
If I do this, everything will really be all right, won’t it?
She wanted to ask that, but the woman had already run to one side of the room and seemed completely occupied with gathering a mountain of linen cloth.
As Thalia followed her with bloodshot eyes, Marisen tightly grasped her pale hand.
“I-I will cast healing magic on you.”
Her complexion, too, had gone deathly pale.
Thalia clasped the healer’s hand as if clinging to it.
Soon, warm energy seeped into her body.
But no miracle happened in which every problem was solved by magic.
The lower abdomen that had been aching as if pricked by ice picks soon began to clench strongly, as though being wrung out.
Thalia let out a sharp groan and curled up.
Seeing that, Tiuran rushed over and laid her body straight again.
“More amniotic fluid must not flow out! Please, even if it hurts, you have to endure it.”
Thalia struggled desperately to follow her instructions.
But the pain was so severe that it was too hard to remain still.
She tore at the blanket and breathed roughly.
At that moment, the door flew open, and a middle-aged woman in a black religious robe rushed in.
“Move aside.”
The priestess approached the bedside as if pushing Marisen away and immediately lifted Thalia’s skirt up to her thighs.
Her soaked underwear and loosely bandaged legs were fully exposed, but she had no time to feel ashamed.
Thalia chewed on her lip at the pain that grew sharper and sharper.
Meanwhile, the priestess removed her underwear, spread her knees apart, and inserted her fingers into her body.
Before Thalia could even be shocked by that startling action, the priestess turned back and shouted,
“The cervix has already begun to open. The baby is coming.”
“It is still far too early!”
Her nanny’s scream pierced her eardrums like needles.
Even amid her confusion, Thalia wrapped both arms around her belly protectively.
That was right.
It was still far too early.
There were still three months left until the expected birth date.
Thalia shook her head urgently.
“No. Stop it! Stop it somehow!”
“Once the water has broken, there is no turning back. We must get the child out quickly.”
The priestess spoke in a strict tone and gestured with her chin to the maids waiting by the door.
“Set up a screen around the bed. And you, bring the medical bag from my quarters. It should be prepared on the shelf.”
Following the priestess’s instructions, the maids moved in perfect order.
Thalia watched the chaotic scene as if watching a nightmare.
Then she felt another wave of intense pain assault her and squeezed her eyes shut.
The pressure on her belly was growing worse and worse.
Now Thalia could clearly recognize it.
The child was trying to come out.
The terror brought by that fact was so extreme that Thalia could not even properly perceive the pain that felt as if her waist would break.
Only one thought filled her mind.
Can a baby who comes out now survive?
Even Thalia, who knew nothing about pregnancy and childbirth, knew that the survival rate of premature babies was not very high.
How much had the baby grown inside her belly until now?
With trembling hands, she fumbled over her belly, which had become as hard as stone.
Just half a day ago, she had worried that the baby might be too big.
She had even slightly regretted eating so much without thinking of the consequences.
But now, she regretted madly that she had not grown the baby more.
She should have eaten and eaten with all her strength.
She should have raised the child strong enough to endure any situation.
“You must not lose consciousness! Your Highness, you must endure.”
Someone brought a cold towel to her face.
Only when her eyelids flew open at that cool sensation did Thalia realize that she had been closing her eyes.
Blinking her bloodshot eyes and staring at the dark ceiling where candlelight flickered, Thalia slowly lowered her gaze and looked over those surrounding her.
Among the priestess, Tiuran, Marisen, her nanny, and the head maid and three or four maids who had taken their places at some point, Thalia kept rolling her eyes over and over without pause, yet she did not know what she was searching for.
The moment she opened her mouth to ask something, another terrible agony came.
This time, it was pain powerful enough to freeze all thought.
Thalia instantly lost all patience and began thrashing her arms and legs wildly.
A sharp scream burst from her open mouth.
At that moment, a sound like the growl of a beast came through the wall.
“Move aside.”
“Your Grace, Her Highness the Grand Duchess is giving birth. Entering the room now goes against propriety...”
At the same time that someone urgently trying to stop him let out a scream of pain, the door burst open, and a man in a black military uniform appeared between the screens.
Thalia stretched her arms toward him like a drowning person begging for salvation.
“Varkas...”
Varkas immediately approached the bedside and bent down toward her.
Thalia clung desperately to his hot neck, which was drenched in sweat.
Through her vision distorted by tears, his disheveled face came faintly into view.
“Help me, Varkas... Please help me... It hurts so much.”
At her tearful plea, the arms wrapped around her tightened firmly.
Holding her so tightly she could barely breathe, Varkas asked the priestess sharply,
“What is happening?”
“The birth canal is opening smoothly. However, the child is not descending...”
As her belly contracted strongly again, every sound grew impossibly distant.
Thalia sobbed faintly and wildly clawed at the thick, tough fabric surrounding his solid body.
It felt as if her lower body were being crushed alive.
“Your Highness, now you must push downward. Your Highness must push the child out!”
Thalia shook her head madly.
No.
I can’t.
I’m scared.
It hurts too much.
It hurts.
She looked up at Varkas as if pleading.
She looked and looked, as if clinging to him would solve everything.
Through her tear-blurred vision, his face, paler than ever before, came into view.
That plaster-like face lowered until it hovered just above the bridge of her nose.
“It’s all right, Thalia. It’s all right, so don’t cry.”
With his cold, stiff hand, he wiped the tears from her cheeks and spoke in an eerily low, sunken voice.
Thalia twisted her face.
It was not all right.
Nothing was all right.
But if he said so, she wanted to believe that it was.
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