Well of the Damned by K.C. May

threatened to burst through
his skin. Leaping to his feet, he thrust his fists into the air. “I’m
going to be a papa,” he shouted.
    Feanna
began to cry, covering her face with her hands.
    Gavin
fell to his knees beside her once again and took her wrists to gently
pull her hands away. “Aw, sweetheart. What’s wrong? Don’t
you want this?”
    She
nodded and cried harder. “More than anything. I’m so
happy,” she managed to say between sobs. She put her wet arms
around his neck and held him tightly, desperately.
    He laughed again and kissed her
cheek soundly several times. She released him, laughing and crying in
the tub. He couldn’t remember the last time he was so happy. “A
papa.” He leaped to his feet again and shouted, “Papaaaaaaaa!”
By now, he was fairly sure the news was spreading through the palace,
starting with his own manservant, Quint, waiting outside with the
clothes and boots he would wear that day, or the battler standing
guard at the door. No doubt the whispers were at this very moment
igniting excitement and relief throughout the palace and soon the
city — an heir would be born to ensure the kingdom didn’t
go another two hundred years without a monarch.
    “Are
you sure, Gavin?” she asked, standing. “We can’t
announce this news if you’re not absolutely certain.” Her
grinning handmaiden handed her a towel and helped her step out of the
tub, and she began to dry herself.
    “I
am. Completely, utterly,” he said, unwilling to admit to that
sliver of doubt in his mind. He’d never sensed a woman’s
pregnancy this way before. It could have been something else, he
supposed, but what? An illness? A tumor? No. No. Those possibilities
he pushed from his mind. A baby it was, and that was that. His baby.
    He
took his wife, mostly wet and wrapped in a towel, into his arms and
spun her around so that she squealed with both fear and joy. They
laughed together and kissed, and after Eriska had stepped out of the
room and shut the door behind her, he took Feanna to the bed and made
love to her.
    “Can
you tell whether it’s a boy or a girl?” she asked later,
lying in his arms.
    He
shifted, moving her gently aside. “Let me try again. Hazes
aren’t male or female, but when I use the healing magic, I can
feel if the person’s a man or woman.” Sitting
cross-legged beside her, he placed his hands on her belly and shut
his eyes. His hands began to warm, but they didn’t heat up the
way they did when he was healing an injury. There was movement under
her skin, like the flow of a river, but it went in both directions —
her blood, maybe. He identified the female nature of her body, which
permeated every drop of blood, every speck of tissue and bone, and
focused on what it felt like and how different it was from his
maleness. There was more he could sense if only he had more strength
in his magic.
    Excited,
he used his hidden eye to find Daia and the orange, swirling tendril
in the center of her egg-shaped haze — a conduit with which he
could access his full potential for power. As usual when she sensed
him trying to connect with her gift, she extended her tendril and
strengthened his magic.
    Returning
his concentration to Feanna and the life within her, he let the
sensation envelop his hands, felt it carry his awareness, his
thoughts, through her body to the center where it fed this new life.
It was so small, no larger than his thumbnail, but big enough that he
could sense the life flow within it. “It’s a boy,”
he whispered, unsure how he knew but certain it was the truth. His
son. He was feeling his son, connecting to him.
    Something
changed. Something shifted within the tiny baby forming within her,
and he knew. His son had reached with his own tiny haze to touch
Gavin’s. “Feanna,” he said in a whisper. “He’s
aware. He knows me.”
    A
surge of emotion swept through his body, his arms, and his hands. It
was too powerful to contain, and he let it flow into her belly.