I'd Give Up The World For You

Rukelion put his plan into motion the next morning. There were so many unused rooms in this castle he could turn one into an extra kitchen solely for Daisy to bake in. All he would need was an oven, some counters, and cookware. He could get that taken care of in a matter of days. 

He would need to talk to Conrad in order to secure his wife's cooperation but he met with him most days so that would be easy enough too. Aside from that, he only needed to cram all of his meetings in before the time he used to get off work in the military. 

Daisy wasn't able to spend quite as much time working in the gardens as she used to since her belly had gotten bigger. It was difficult for her to bend down so she primarily focused on trimming and pruning while standing up. 

Rukelion had firmly told the head gardener that she wasn't allowed to do anything involving ladders in her current condition and he had agreed. That did cut down on how much she could do though without being able to bend. She had probably snapped yesterday partly because she wasn't able to destress as much as usual. 

He sat in his office working on paperwork furiously before his first meeting of the day when there was a knock on the door. Without being invited in, Conrad poked his head inside with a grin. 

"Good morning, Blaze!" 

"What's so good about it?" Rukelion grumbled in response. 

"Let me guess…Veronica is mad at you again."

"How did you know?"

"Because you're always in a worse mood when something is going on with her. Don't worry about it! Pregnancy can make women act differently. Dudley's wife is expecting as well and she's been in a real temper recently," Conrad said as he sat down in a chair across from his friend. 

Rukelion had never heard that before. To be fair, he didn't have much experience with pregnant women. He had one younger sibling who had been born when he was four years old. How was he supposed to remember if his mother had acted differently while carrying Kessia?

Was that really it? Was that why Daisy had been more erratic lately to the point of crying? 

"I hope that's all it is…I hate seeing her miserable," he sighed heavily. 

Conrad patted him on the shoulder. "Hang in there. I'm sure you'll be able to figure out how to navigate her moods. Dudley has! If he can do it anyone can."

That was oddly reassuring. Rukelion felt better about his plans already. "Thanks, Conrad. I think having things be more like they used to will help her too so could you ask Elaine to come over more often? I know she's probably busy—"

"Are you kidding? She talks about Veronica all the time but doesn't want to be a bother now that she's the queen. She'd be thrilled. She always enjoyed their homemaking lessons. I'll send her over tomorrow. What time works best?"

"Early afternoon if possible." 

That was around the time Daisy normally quit working in the garden for the day and had tons of empty hours to fill since he was busy. Having something to do immediately afterward should help since she was a woman of action. She thrived on having things to do. 

Rukelion should have realized that she wouldn't have wanted to have everything done for her. Even if things were hard she still needed distractions. It seemed like her old home was full of them.

"I'll let her know," Conrad promised. "So what's on the agenda for today?" 

He had to push his wife out of his mind so he could get his work done and spend time with her later. It was time to focus!

"We have to meet with the minister of agriculture about some crop dispute in the northeast, the chancellor about reassigning noble titles to fill the vacancies after our purge, and the minister of finance about reapportioning the taxes. Again," he replied flatly.

Conrad rolled his eyes. "Why can't they understand that you want to use the taxes to help the country instead of yourself? Honestly!" 

Because everyone in this rotten country was horribly greedy? If they hadn't been, they wouldn't have destroyed Katalya without a single remorseful thought. It would be so much easier to burn them all and build a new country up from scratch than work within the existing corrupt system. 

"I know," Rukelion said grimly. "We still have a lot of work to do."

So they buckled down and got to it. He managed the in-person meetings most of the day, making sure to have afternoon tea with Daisy to try and cheer her up when he had twenty minutes to spare. 

She seemed listless and her eyes were still a bit puffy from crying so much yesterday. He didn't know what to do that would make her feel better in such a short amount of time so he went to the default. Talking about flowers. That usually did the trick. 

Talking about her favorite thing made her brighten slightly, which was a relief, but at the end of their tea time when he had to go back to work whatever light she had regained immediately dimmed. It killed him but what could he do? He couldn't cancel the meetings with these finicky ministers. He needed them to be on his side here!

At the end of his meetings rather than returning to his office to do paperwork like he had been doing he went off in search of his wife. She was curled up in a chair in the library knitting what appeared to be tiny shoes. They had to be for the baby. 

Rukelion's heart warmed seeing her do something so personal for their child. He had loved his mother dearly but she didn't do things like that. There were other people to do it for her. 

Daisy wasn't the sort of person to rely on anyone else though. She had always made him sweaters personally and it seemed she planned to do the same for their children even though she didn't have to do that anymore. 

"Those look good," he said as he plopped down in the chair next to her. 

She looked up in vague surprise. "Are you taking a break?"

"No, I'm done for the day so I thought I'd join you. I've never seen you make anything like that before. They seem different from socks somehow."

"That's because they are. These are meant to be sturdier than socks. I sent someone to the fabric store to find me a pattern for them specifically. Since I have so much free time these days I want to make most of the baby's clothes myself. Though it would be easier if I knew whether it would be a boy or a girl."

Rukelion looked at her funny. "Isn't that impossible until the baby is born?"

"Here it is. Back home there's this thing called an ultrasound that lets you see a grainy picture of the baby using soundwaves once you're about halfway through your pregnancy. I'd be able to do that around now," Daisy said with a shrug. 

"…that sounds an awful lot like magic."

"As I've said before, we don't have magic so we made technology to make up for it. It's science. This particular science has only been around for about sixty years though. Before that people had to wait until the baby was born like they do here. Some people still wait, preferring to be surprised, but that's a personal choice."

Rukelion frowned. It seemed that she would prefer to know early but there was no way to do that. He could sense the heat of an additional life force coming from her belly but that was all he could do with his magic. 

"I'm sorry I can't help with that," he said regretfully. 

To his surprise, Daisy laughed. "Don't sound so serious! It's not the end of the world. I can make generic baby clothes until it's born. Relax." 

"Are you going to knit everything?"

"Not everything. I have plenty of time to learn how to sew things from scratch as well. All I've done up until this point is mend things that already exist but it can't be that hard. I'm sure they have patterns for it at the fabric store just like they did for the booties."

"I see. That seems like a good project," Rukelion told her. 

Goodness knows she needed more ways to fill her time, especially as winter approached. She shouldn't be outside too much then to avoid catching a cold and potentially affecting the baby. 

"It's something anyway. I know I could buy whatever I wanted but this gives me more to do. It's weird though…I never thought I'd be making my own baby clothes.. Whenever I walked passed the baby section in the store I thought about how cute and small they were but I didn't anticipate ever using them for anything," Daisy said thoughtfully.