Kai Drakon's Arc

Chapter 19 of 30

The nights wore Azure down worse than anything had. Ren woke every two hours, hungry and loud. Azure fed him, changed him, and lay back down just as he cried again. By the third week her hands shook when she lifted the broth pot. Kai watched the circles return under her eyes. This time no midwife would fix it. Only sleep would, and Ren refused to allow it. "Sleep tonight," Kai said. "I'll take him." Azure looked at Ren, then at Kai. "He wants me. Not you." "He wants to be fed and held. I can hold." Kai took the baby from her arms. "Lie down." She did not argue. That told him how tired she was. But the plan cracked by dawn. The larder was near empty. He had spent three days at home, and no one had gone to town. There was no bread, no meat, only two dried peppers and cold broth. Azure needed food to make milk. Kai needed food to keep standing. He could not do both—walk to town and keep Ren quiet while Azure slept. He carried Ren outside and thought it through. The market sat too far. But he remembered the cavern he and Kael passed on their way to mine crystals. A rough entrance sank into the earth, its stone rim studded with old jewels and weathered pots. Kael had said a trader kept dry goods there, tucked among the pots, and traded for stones. It was closer than town. Kai still had one blue gemstone left over from the rings. He strapped Ren to his chest with a cloth sling. The baby fussed, then settled against his heartbeat. Kai walked fast. The cavern mouth waited exactly where he remembered, jewels catching the morning light along its curved edge. Inside, the trader crouched among clay pots stacked in rows. Kai traded the gemstone for a sack of flour, dried meat, and a jar of honey. The trader also gave him something better—a fired clay bottle with a narrow spout, used for feeding animals young. "Milk stays cool in the pot," the trader said. "Warm it in water. The little one drinks from the spout." Kai walked home faster than he'd left. Ren slept the whole way. He found Azure awake at the table, worried. He set the sack down and held up the clay bottle. "You pump milk when you have strength," he said. "I feed him at night with this. You sleep through." Azure stared at the bottle. Then at the food. Her shoulders dropped an inch. "Thank you so much honey," she said. Dry. "You should have married a cow." Kai laughed and kissed Azure on the lips. That night he fed Ren twice from the clay bottle while Azure slept eight straight hours. She woke clear-eyed, her hands steady again. The exhaustion had a fix now.