Chapter 404: "You’re overthinking the blueprints,"

Damar, who had been across the hall discussing the forge ventilation with a group of beavers, stopped mid-sentence. He’d seen the whole thing. He walked over, his movements fluid and regal, and knelt beside us.

He looked at Lyra’s hand on my stomach, then up at me, his own green eyes softening with a look of pure, unshielded pride.

"She knows," Damar murmured, his voice low and rich. He placed his hand over Lyra’s, his long fingers covering her tiny ones. "The first to greet her siblings. My smart girl."

"She’s definitely got your intuition," I said, stroking Lyra’s silver locks. "The other two are too busy wrestling to notice, but she felt it immediately."

Someone tell Phina not to eat Raiden’s ear, please.

Damar leaned in, his forehead resting against mine for a brief second.

"You’re doing great," he whispered, and those words somehow had a way of making me relax.

"Thank you, Damar. For your support and everything."

"It’s fine." He said and pulled back, flashing me one of those rare radiant smiles. "Just don’t push yourself too hard."

"Yes. I promise," I murmured, watching him scoop Lyra up.

​She looked so tiny against his broad chest, her silver hair shimmering under the sea-crystal light of the hall. She gave me one last look over her father’s shoulder—a look that felt far too wise for a cub—before they headed back toward the nursery.

​The moment they were out of sight, I looked down at my slate. The warmth Lyra’s hand had left behind seemed to hum against my skin. Thirty-two days. My timeline was shrinking, but my motivation had just doubled. I wasn’t just building for the kingdom now; I was building for the little life that Lyra had already recognized as family.

...

I spent the next few hours lost in charcoal lines and stone measurements. I needed to design a gravity-fed filtration system that wouldn’t require constant maintenance. If these babies were going to spend half their time in a pool, that water had to be pristine.

But then I paused.

I was going through all this trouble to make pools, but what if I give birth to them and they don’t like staying in water? 𝒇𝓻𝓮𝓮𝙬𝙚𝒃𝒏𝓸𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝓬𝓸𝒎

What if they take more of my genes, and they like to roam around the land?

What if...?

A lot of what-ifs began to crawl in, and the charcoal in my hand broke as I subconsciously pressed harder against the slate.

Doubt.

Ah, this was going to be a problem.

I was starting to doubt myself. Maybe I should put the slate down for a second and take deep breaths. If I start doubting and questioning the things I plan to build, I will never get anywhere.

I set the broken charcoal down and leaned my head back against the cold stone wall, closing my eyes. My heart was thumping a bit too fast. I was an architect—I thrived on "what ifs" when they were about structural integrity or weight distribution, but these personal "what ifs" were a whole different monster.

What if they don’t have scales? What if they hate the water? What if I’m building a massive, expensive indoor pond for kids who just want to climb trees like their tiger-mom?

I looked at the messy lines on my slate. I was spiraling. Pregnancy hormones were one thing, but the pressure of building a literal kingdom while my body was on a 50-day countdown was starting to crack my foundation.

"Deep breaths, Arinya," I whispered to myself, mimicking Fenric’s calm tone. "In for four, hold for four, out for four."

As I sat there in the quiet of the hall, the silence was broken by the steady, rhythmic clink-clink-clink of Oryn’s crew working in the distance. It was a grounding sound.

If I don’t build it and they need it, they suffer. If I build it and they don’t need it... Well, then, I just have a really cool indoor pool and a great irrigation system for the crops.

The logic helped. I reached for a fresh piece of charcoal, but before I could start drawing again, a shadow fell over my slate.

I looked up to see Thalor standing there. He didn’t look like a prince or a warrior in that moment; he just looked like a man who was desperately in love with a woman who was overworking herself.

He sat down on the floor next to my bench, not caring about the floor being dusty.

"You’re overthinking the blueprints," he said softly, his violet eyes reading my face like one of my designs. "What’s on your mind?"

"I’m worried I’m building a home they won’t fit into," I admitted, my voice small. "What if they’re more land than sea? What if all this water-focused design is a waste of time?"

Thalor reached out, gently taking the slate from my lap and setting it aside. He took my hand, his thumb stroking the back of my knuckles.

"Arinya, look at us," he said, gesturing to the palace around us. "We are a serpent, a snow tiger, a wolf, and a merman. Did you make a blueprint for us before we got together?" He asked, and I shook my head. "That’s right. Unpredictability. That’s the fun about living, and the unpredictability of our children will be the same. Fun. So, it does not matter what they come out as; our job is to get everything ready. And when they are ready, they will find their own balance between the land and the deep. But they will always need a mother who builds a place where they can choose."

He leaned in, pressing his forehead against mine. "Build the pool, Arinya. If they don’t swim in it, they will play beside it. Nothing you build for them with love is a waste."

I let out a long, shaky breath, the tension in my shoulders finally melting. He was right. I was building options, not cages.

And the fun part about a new birth was the unpredictability. There was no way to tell if it was a boy or a girl, if it liked pink or blue. Our job, as parents, is to provide all of it and have them choose.

"Okay," I murmured, leaning into him. "I’ll build the pool. But if they end up being tree-climbers, you’re the one who has to explain to your father why his grandkids are nesting in the branches."

Thalor laughed, and the sound echoed beautifully in the high-ceilinged hall.

"I think the Sea King will be too busy being a grandfather to care about the branches."

I held the charcoal firmly in my hand. The doubt wasn’t gone, but it was manageable now. I was on a timer and I couldn’t afford to waste time questioning my own vision.

I was going to build the best damn multi-ecosystem nursery this world had ever seen. And probably the only multi-ecosystem nursery.

"Now," I said, my ’Queen’ spark returning to my eyes. "Help me with this filtration math. If I use a sand-and-charcoal bed at the inlet, how much flow-rate do you think we’ll lose?"