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Panting and pushing, drenched in sweat and half-delirious, I finally understood why they called it “labor.” So often one of my men would mention a wife or mistress’ lying in time with both pride and fear and I had always scoffed. Since my teenage years, I had known the pangs of battle – hunger, hardship, work, worry, injury – and I thought myself above such a pedestrian pain as childbirth. Now, delivering twins, I knew the gods must be punishing me for my hubris. I dug my nails into the nearest arm to me and I felt something slick run down my fingers.
“You’re doing wonderfully,” Alek said and I knew his must have been the arm from which I had drawn blood. His voice was strained and quiet and I could hear the wincing.
“I don’t need your approval,” I said between breaths. “I need your stubborn children to decide who will be first out of the birthing canal.”
He laughed.
“Ah, yes. My stubbornness, my lady.”
There is a reason fathers do not often remain in the chamber, instead getting embarrassingly sloshed with congratulatory friends. If the circumstances had been different, no doubt Alek would have relished the tradition. As it was, only he, Lady Ilona, and I stood in the chamber. Rahadin stood without guarding the door. Never had I felt more vulnerable and I cursed them all for watching me. I wanted to do as wolves did and bunker down somewhere dark and quiet, where the birth could be a quick and private thing and no one would see the pups until I was ready to let them into the world, away from my side. This could not be. We had discussed time and again the plan and I knew it well, for it was as much of my making as the twins I had carried for nearly nine months. I would give birth and not be allowed to know the fate of my children. Alek would hide them away from those who would call them bastards and those who would harm our little family and should I ask, I was to be told they had perished this day unless such a time came when I could legitimize my union with Alek and retroactively claim my children as rightful heirs to the Barovian throne. I had enemies. I was as close to a queen as I could be with a still-living mother, who preferred to distance herself from Court to raise my younger brother. More than that, Alek remained certain there was still a traitor in the castle, and if there truly was a Ba’al Verzi assassin he or she would not back down on the account of children. I respected such dedication to the craft of warfare. I shared it.
I wished I didn’t. I wished at this moment to be a wife and mother as much as I was a queen and conqueror. I wished the people would accept Alek as my husband as easily as they accepted him as my right hand and that our children would be safe in the castle I’d conquered, the land that was as sealed with my blood as they were. I wished for so many things and if I could have thought to pray for them then, I would have.
I should have. I would only know later how keenly my prayers in Barovia were heard and if I had prayed for the right things… Of course, when one is in the throes of childbirth, prayers are hard to speak aloud and words have power. Instead, I howled and screamed as finally, the first of the boys slicked his way into the world. Lady Ilona cleaned him and I lolled my head to see Alek holding the swaddled, fresh babe in his arms. Tears sprang to my eyes and I dared to ask my son’s name.
“Godfrey,” Alek said. “For my mother.”
I almost asked a wry question when the waves of pain began anew and the second of my sons pushed his way into the world. He was smaller than his brother, though they were both remarkably tiny, he balled his fists in such a way that I knew that of the two, my youngest would be the one to fight in this world. The eldest rested peacefully in his father’s arms and Ilona hesitated to lay the fitful younger one on my chest. I hesitated to take him. It is common enough knowledge among ladies’ circles that holding your child is the gateway to loving them irrevocably. I could not afford to love either of my sons. Ilona did not spare me a mother’s grief as she laid the little, youngest one on my chest. He was so soft and so fragile, with his fists clenched so tightly that I wanted to weep. He would fight all his life, but I would not be there to teach him all I knew about how to hold a sword and dodge an attack. Beyond today, he would not know a mother’s touch, although I did not and do not think of myself as the maternal sort. I named him “Alistor” which received a sly look from Alek.
“I will not give him anyone’s name but his own,” I said. “But I will honor his father just a little.”
My name was not tied to either son – not my given name or my family name, though I imagined Godfrey and Alistor von Zarovich as little princes more often than I would ever admit to anyone. Ilona lulled me to sleep with magic, and according to plan, when I awoke, both my sons were gone.
The intervening months bled together in a gray cloud of grief. I seldom ate and barely slept, thrusting myself deep into magical and legal tomes in the vain, vain hope that I could reunite my family. When I met with the boyars and burgomasters about Barovia’s laws, my petitions to allow female heirs the same degree of choice fell upon mostly deaf ears. Only Victor Wachter seemed to hear my good sense and others accused him of partiality, as his favorite child was his daughter, Lovina, who he wished would not only inherit but pass on the Wachter name one day.
“Our Lady Strahd bears the Von Zarovich name,” he said during one particularly heated meeting of Barovia’s House of Lords. “Would you ask that she take on a man’s name when she deigns to marry?”
A headache bloomed in my temple as my blood pressure rose.
“I would expect our lady to uphold traditions,” Reinhold Dilisnya, who also had plenty of daughters, but a different wish for them, said. “Besides, if Queen Ravenovia has her way, Lady Strahd will marry that Dusk Elf prince and Lord Sergei will inherit the Von Zarovich lands and titles.”
I cursed quietly. He was right. My mother had designs on my marrying High Mage Kasimir Velikov, a prince of the Dusk Elves. I found his company tolerable enough, but he inspired neither love nor loyalty in me. As the darkness that enveloped me refused to lift, he and his sister, Patrina, made many calls to Castle Ravenloft. I often thought my mother would do well to marry Rahadin to High Mage Patrina and allow me to do as I pleased. At first glance, they were not a suitable match. My half-brother cared little for the art of magic; Patrina lived and breathed for the wonders of the Weave. They both carried anger easily and well and it would have been a tempestuous union. At first glance, Kasimir and I had much in common, as we both loved magic and all it had to offer and could spend hours in companionable silence, researching our respective interests. However, I felt no real love for him – merely a mutual and abiding respect that others might have termed as friendship. Alek seethed upon watching us together. He pretended not to but I could feel the way the air shifted around him when Kasimir was in the room or even when his name was mentioned. I took some small satisfaction that I could cause Alek pain, even as I continued to love him. He had taken my sons, even if he had taken them on my order, and I doubted somehow that he suffered as I did from the loss. Kasimir was an inconvenient convenience for me. Patrina was a companion fit for Rahadin’s sullen ways. Of course, no one consulted me in the matter, not yet. No formal proposal had been made.
Then, of course, there was the issue of my younger brother inheriting. I had only met Sergei a few, brief times and then he had been a child and I had been a general. Even beyond that, he had been a boy and I a young woman. Though I walked well among the men in my armies, I could not help but feel the disparity between Sergei and myself. He had the luxury of living with my mother in Huldefolk, near our Dusk Elf kin, where Rahadin had been ousted years ago and I had never known as a home. He must have been a young man now, but I was not so old that he could swoop in and take what was rightfully mine. He would, however, inherit my sons’ birthright or, one day, when he found a princess suitable for marriage, their children would. Some days I hoped that this younger brother I scarcely knew never married and that I would live forever to preserve what little I was allowed to have in this world.
I could not have Alek and I could not have our sons, so I prayed that I would be allowed to have Barovia and sometimes I even prayed that I would be given everything that Sergei took so easily for granted.
They say to be careful what you wish for. What they never tell you is who or what might be listening.
When my torpor did not lift after a few years and my father passed, only further miring me into despair, Lady Ilona sent for my brother Sergei in Huldefolk. He arrived with a prince’s welcome, dressed in bright colors and looking for all the world like a fairytale hero. I noticed he wore the gold and sky blue of the Morning Lord’s priesthood. I wore solemn black, as had been my habit since my father’s death and, indeed, since the loss of my sons. Grief had weathered my features and beside him, I felt that I must have looked like a matron. However, I still kept in daily practice with the blade and it further contrasted with Sergei’s lithe and lean figure. He threw himself from his horse and embraced me without ceremony, which surprised me. Of course, my court would be horrified if I rejected the boy or if I reacted with unwomanly coldness. No one but I seemed to realize it was the first embrace I had known since Alek absconded with my children. No one else cared. I embraced Sergei in return.
“Welcome to Ravenloft,” I said. “I hope you find it to your liking, Prince Sergei.”
“Sister,” he said warmly, “I have spent my youth gobbling up tales of your accomplishments. I have dreamed of this moment for longer than you can know.”
“Not so long. You may be much taller since I last saw you, but it cannot have been so many years.”
A lifetime’s worth of sorrow had passed for me since Sergei’s birth. In twenty years, I had become a commander, led armies to victory, reclaimed a long-lost stronghold for the Von Zarovich family, and a throne for myself. I had lost my father and both my sons. I was older than my years. In that time, the milestones Sergei had lived through were closer to what my sons must have experienced if they lived. Walking, talking… They would be six now if they lived.
“I remember it like it was yesterday, too,” Sergei said, not seeming to denote my derision. “The last time I saw you, your second in command had all but forced you to take a holiday to Huldefolk. It had been risky for you to visit because of the war with the Tergs, but you made it just in time for my birthday. I remember watching you and Rahadin spar. You let me have a swing at you before knocking me to the ground. I learned the taste of humility that day. It tastes like dirt and grass.”
I laughed despite myself and I clapped my brother on the back. I remembered that day in a very distant way but Sergei spoke of it with such fierce fondness and joy that I could not help myself.
“I hope you’ve gotten better with the blade since,” I said.
He looked a little sheepish. “I do practice. Mother commissioned a sword for my birthday in the hopes that I would be as good as you are one day.”
I saw it then: a glorious, elven blade strapped to the side of his horse for easy access. I was a collector of beautiful things and I coveted it for a moment. Its platinum hilt gleamed in the afternoon sun as if it was made of radiant light itself. Its polished finish indicated that it might not have seen much battle action, but I knew those at Huldefolk were fierce warriors who took pristine care of their weapons. It occurred to me then the advantages Sergei had that I was denied: Elvish bladesong lessons, an education in the Church, the rights of a son, the rights of a man… Even Rahadin had been denied such gifts. How lucky to be the youngest son of a family who had already conquered vast tracts of land.
“You are welcome at Ravenloft,” I reiterated. “Come. Let’s feast.”