She helped herself to a strawberry from the bowl to fruit, watching him out of the corner of her eye with a half-smile.

“I’m not the one,” she said after her first bite, “whose been sleeping in a forest for Aura knows how long.” Morgana paused, finishing the strawberry and placing the remaining leaves on the edge of one of the small plates on the tray. “Undercover work isn’t easy, but at least it still has silk sheets.”

Glancing up, she followed his gaze, her smile growing. Her skin responded to his fingertips as they traced the line of her robe. Morgana turned her head and held his eye as he watched her over the rim of his cup.

“I’m not stopping you,” she said, helping herself to another strawberry, “but you might make a bit of a mess with the tray.”

They passed a moment in companionable silence, her eating, him sipping his coffee, the sound of birds fluttering in the background. She’d forgotten what peace, what contentment felt like. Her whole being felt looser, freer, a crushing weight had lifted from her shoulders, and this new world, where everything she cherished was safe and within reach, felt oddly unreal.

Until...

She looked back across at Mace, raising her eyebrows questioningly.

“Why do you ask?” she wondered, abandoning her assault on the fruit bowl. Her weightlessness of just moments before melted away, as a moth took up residence in her stomach. Well, she thought, busying her hands by stacking her used plates neatly on the tray, at least it had company these days.

“I’m fine,” she said, a little too brusquely. Morgana winced, forcing a smile instead.

Before everything had happened, she’d never given much thought to being a mother. It was something other women did, women like Nimueh and Phoenix, warmer women. There was something too, to be said of the vulnerability motherhood seemed to create, and she’d always put so much effort into concealing hers. When she’d first found out she was pregnant, there’d been so much more to worry about. The prospect of birth and parenthood had seemed to remote compared to the imminent danger it placed her in with her brother. That had been a problem she had been able to focus on, to find ways to fix – acceptance was harder.

Her eyes began to burn, and she bit down on her lip to force them back, fighting to keep her expression mild in the hope Mace wouldn’t notice. She tried to focus on looking attentive, trying to process his words. He’d been wonderful from the first, attentive, apparently delighted by the prospect of being a father – and oh! He’d make a wonderful one. How easily he said the words, for the baby - she didn’t even think she’d referred to it as such yet, not even to herself. It was the pregnancy only, so much more matter-of-fact, so much more her.

A tear escaped and she moved hurriedly to bat it away.

“I wouldn’t mind a walk in the gardens,” she said, trying to disguise the crack in her voice. “And I don’t suppose I’m past a little archery just yet.”

Morgana tried another smile.

“You can play target if you like,” she teased, moving the tray onto the bedside table and rolling over on her side.

“But your original idea has promise too,” Morgana mused, running her fingers down his arm. “I might need a little more convincing though. It does seem to be such a lovely sunny day.”