When she came to, her hands instinctively followed the length of her body, chilled at how flat her usually bulging belly had become. She knew of the stale air, musky and thin with the odor of unholy concoctions, and how dead she felt inside. She remembered, painfully, the horrible pull she had felt, followed by the sickness, before she had passed out.
          Michelle turned her head sluggishly, one hand absently stroking the place where their twisted love had festered. She could vaguely trace the outline of the other Daughters, gathering on the other side of the room. One, however, was stray from the group; positioned nearer to her bedside. By the violent shade of red and the pristine white shirt - a startling clash that offended her sensitive eyes - she knew that it was Jordan.
          "Jordan?" Michelle croaked, nearly startling herself with the sound of her ragged voice. The Daughter was slow to turn and address her, and the bed-ridden woman felt a strange void begin to consume her.
          "Yes?" There was something about the way Jordan spoke to her that deeply troubled the exhausted woman. Michelle tried to ease herself into the upright position, but found that she could not.
          "Where... where is Vranphile?" Even speaking was an effort; Michelle's temples throbbed dully and she let her eyelids flutter closed, allowing the comforting darkness to swallow her. Blissfully she existed in total solitude for a brief moment before she opened her eyes again, allowing the world to once again invade her senses.
          Jordan hesitated. "I'm sorry," she said quietly, and Michelle fiercely shook her head and closed her eyes, battling a flurry of emotions. The hand that lingered on her stomach clenched into a painful fist, fingernails digging into her palm to keep her from screaming. Michelle tried to regulate her breathing, her sickly features contorted up in an expression of grief. Finally she calmed herself, softening as she replaced her anguish with her usual detached, distant look.
          "I don't know what you mean," she said after a while.
          Jordan's mouth was slightly ajar, as though to say something else, but someone cleared their throat. The obsidian-haired woman turned around, unhappy creases tugging at the corners of her mouth. "Sir?"
          "Jordan," Vranphile said, as a way of dismissal. She nodded, bowing respectfully out of the way, but he ignored her, moving past her to stand over Michelle's lying form. Her perspective of him, tall above her, made her feel oddly small and timid.
          "Vranphile," she whispered, exceedingly aware of how they were suddenly intimately alone. "Where.. where is the child?"
          Vranphile's face held no sign of grief, and for a moment, hope riochetted through her empty chest. Then he heaved a great sigh and covered his face with his hand, completely obstructing her view of his reaction. Michelle looked on with her quiescent, almost tranquil apperance.
          "It died," Vranphile said, his voice painfully soft.
          Michelle's stormless manner melted away, dissolving into hot, tragic tears. Her body shook with each shuddering sob, wrapping her arms around herself as if to someone find the consolidation she so desperately needed.
          "Our.. our child..." More then anything she wanted Vranphile to take her in his arms, to grieve with her. But the monarch was oddly still above her, completely inanimate.
          "Vranphile.." Michelle whispered. "It hurts so much..."
          "It should," he said suddenly, and Michelle started, looking up. Vranphile was staring down her in a way that she could only identify as hatred. "You killed it."