A Wintertide Spell by Jody Wallace Page A

rapier.
    She was damned good with a rapier.
    Disappointed and tired, she exited
the other side of the alley and stared up and down Sundry Street, searching
amidst all the last-minute shoppers for her husband’s glossy brown head and
confident stride. His broad shoulders. His strong arms and manly chest. Most of
all, his rascally smile—the one that had seduced her seven years ago, when
she’d been a mere baron’s daughter and he’d been the most eligible bachelor in the
kingdom.
    So what if one of his birthing
gifts was that he was destined to love thirteen women before his fiftieth year?
They’d both been confident she would be his one and only, that the gift was
somehow a trick.
    She’d been a fool. Fairy birthing
gifts always came true. Always.
    Had Reginald grown tired of married
life? Of her? Their marriage bed had been warm but celibate with her advanced
pregnancy. From his secretive behavior, to the gold disappearing from the
castle accounts, to the strange way he’d begun to treat her, the Queen was
convinced Reginald had moved on to his next fated love.
    Geneva’s only consolation was that
whoever this woman was, she too would be left behind when Reginald met lady
number three.
    At least she, his Queen, would be
his first love, his wife and the mother of his daughters. All daughters. Only
daughters. For Malady’s curse, the Female Curse, meant no boy children would be
born to any nobles in the Middle Kingdoms forever more.
    And it was all Geneva’s fault.
    Of course, none of this mattered at
the moment. As she warmed herself in the Dandy Fairy Pawn Shop, considering the
gift of magic flutes for her daughters and a knife in the dark for her husband,
Geneva’s first real contraction hit her like a horse’s hoof. Wetness trickled
hotly between her legs.
    Early, but not unexpected.
    “Exquisite choice, madam.” The
proprietor approached her and tapped one of the flutes with a long finger.
“Guaranteed to play at least one hundred melodies.”
    “Give me three,” she said, gritting
her teeth against the pain, “and then give me your fairy-fone.”
    The man raised his eyebrows.
“Excuse me? This is not a public fone booth. You can’t just walk in off the
street and demand the use of my private device.”
    This babe, number three, would not
take as long as her others. To the Hinterlands with all this subterfuge.
    Geneva dropped the hood of her
cloak and gave the man an icy glare. “Your fairy-fone, citizen.”
    He paled and bowed at the same
time, nearly striking his forehead on the glass counter. “Your Highness, yes,
your Highness, at once.”
    Geneva, with the fone, used her
status to obtain the fastest conveyance available. No time to get someone from
the castle, but she did know a guy.
    The driver, who arrived before
Geneva had suffered through a third contraction, said nothing about the fact
his Queen was unescorted in town. She’d earned a reputation for eccentricity
since marrying their King. Unlike most ladies of the nobility, she dirtied her
hands with castle tasks and planned to educate her daughters to do the same.
    Of course, she didn’t tell the
driver she was in labor right away, either, although the Dandy Fairy Proprietor
might have guessed. That delightful fillip would be in all the broadsheets and
gossip rags soon enough, and there was no need to panic him.
    “Pay this man well,” she said to
the steward when she alighted at the castle gates. “The babe comes, and he made
sure I arrived home in good time.”
    The steward and driver blanched in
tandem. Her anxious staff exploded in a flurry of activity. Bells began to
toll, and a flock of messengers were sent in search of the absent King,
believed to be, like she’d claimed to be, shopping for last minute gifts in
town.
    She wished them better luck than
she’d had.
    When the guards insisted on
carrying her to her chamber, Geneva didn’t argue. Her legs had grown numb and
her skirts wet, yet not once did the nervous men flinch