The Warrior Midwife : An enemies to lovers fae fantasy Read online

  THE WARRIOR MIDWIFE

  BOOK ONE OF THE WARRIOR MIDWIFE TRILOGY

  E.P. BALI

  BLUE MOON RISING PUBLISHING

  "The fae are no joke, girl. Be wise. Be smart. Be cunning if you can."

  PRINCESS. MIDWIFE. WARRIOR

  Her father made a binding agreement with the fae king to protect his kingdom. Now Princess Saraya must pay the price: marry the crown fae prince, go into the monster's lair and give up her protection of the vulnerable women of her home, Quartz City.

  But fate would not have her sent into the fae kingdom. Instead, forces far greater than she could have imagined plot the destruction of humanity.

  The Order of Temari, an ancient guild of warrior midwives, sworn to protect women in childbirth from the demons who would take their baby's magical abilities are all dead. But with Saraya's coming of age, the Order has a chance at rebirth. Instead of going to sit as a human caged and betrothed in the fae kingdom, Saraya disguises herself as a fae warrior and sneaks away into the Mountain Academy, where fae males learn to become full blooded warriors.

  Join Princess Saraya Voltanius on this whirlwind fantasy adventure, in Book 1 of The Warrior Midwife Trilogy.

  The Warrior Midwife is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, incidents and locations are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locations or persons, living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2022 by E. P. Bali

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This first edition published in 2022 by

  Blue Moon Rising Publishing

  www.ektaabali.com

  ISBN ebook: 978-0-6452939-8-2

  Paperback: 978-0-6452939-9-9

  Hardcover: 978-0-6489830-8-8

  Paperback (Pastel Edition): 978-0-6454650-3-7

  Hardcover (Pastel Edition): 978-0-6454650-4-4

  Illustrated Cover design by Carly Diep

  Naked Hardcover by Jessica Lowdell

  Map artwork by Najlakay

  Chapter Header by Jessica Lowdell

  Book Formatting by E.P. Bali with Vellum

  The author acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of the land where this book was written. We acknowledge their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respects to their Elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples today.

  A NOTE ON THE CONTENT

  I care about the mental health of my readers.

  This book contains some themes you might want to know about before you read.

  They are listed at www.ektaabali.com/themes

  Midwives are rare and precious souls, and I have been lucky enough to work with many. This book is for them.

  CONTENTS

  1. Saraya

  2. Saraya

  3. Saraya

  4. Saraya

  5. Saraya

  6. Saraya

  7. Saraya

  8. Saraya

  9. Saraya

  10. Saraya

  11. Drake

  12. Saraya

  13. Saraya

  14. Saraya

  15. Saraya

  16. Saraya

  17. Saraya

  18. Saraya

  19. Saraya

  20. Saraya

  21. Saraya

  22. Saraya

  23. Saraya

  24. Saraya

  25. Saraya

  26. Drake

  27. Saraya

  28. Saraya

  29. Drake

  30. Saraya

  31. Saraya

  32. Saraya

  33. Drake

  34. Saraya

  35. Saraya

  36. Drake

  37. Saraya

  38. Saraya

  39. Drake

  40. Saraya

  Afterword

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by E.P. Bali

  1

  SARAYA

  The princess sat in a whorehouse all night, the door barred with a wardrobe.

  I almost snorted at the thought of the report my stepmother would receive from her spies before turning my concentration to the patient lying before me. Chirra had laboured all day and then late into the night, and when Agatha had summoned me, I knew there would be trouble.

  Chirra groaned, sweat gleaming on her forehead, raven hair plastered to her beautiful but now pale face. Her labour was obstructing, and as I trained my magical eye into her body, I could see waves of uterine contractions trying to unsuccessfully push her baby boy out. Although she was fully dilated, the babe’s head was ever so slightly unflexed. He should have had his chin tucked tightly to his chest, allowing the back portion of his head, the narrowest part, to come first. Instead, the crown of his head was attempting to lead.

  Babies can’t be born that way. The diameter is too wide for the bones of a woman’s pelvis.

  I gritted my teeth. This wasn’t going to be easy. An obstructed birth was one of the hardest things a mother could go through during labour. Without intervention, this baby would die.

  I glanced up at Agatha, standing hunched and beady-eyed next to the bed. In my ancient midwife mentor’s face, I saw the wisdom and wariness of over sixty years of watching over women's labour. She already knew what I was going to say. She gave me a curt nod of permission.

  “He’s stuck, Chirra,” I spoke plainly. That was how the hard-eyed women of Madame Yolande’s brothel preferred it. “His head isn’t at the right angle. I need to shift it if he’s to come out alive. Have I your permission?”

  At the end of yet another gruelling contraction, Chirra gave me a watery, long-suffering look. “Yeah, you got my permission, Princess Saraya. Do it, please.”

  I nodded and glanced at Agatha, who grabbed the girl’s hand. Chirra clasped Agatha’s hand back, and I saw the muscle in her jaw tick as she clenched her teeth.

  Closing my eyes, I reached into Chirra’s uterus with my mind and felt for her baby’s head. In the bright lines of his rapidly beating heart, I could see a great tiredness. This needed to be done. I grasped the babe’s head on both sides with my magic, pushed him a little out of Chirra’s pelvis, and gently tucked his chin in.

  Chirra swallowed her own scream. I opened my eyes to look upon her with admiration. She was a strong woman. The women of the Sticks always were.

  “It’s done.”

  Chirra groaned deep in her throat, her body signalling her to push.

  Half an hour later, the baby was born, screaming bloody murder, his head deeply moulded and swollen. We assured a worried Chirra his head would normalise in a few days, but Agatha and I exchanged a look. She would have to keep an eye on this baby and enlist a wet nurse right away, as a labour this long meant this baby had little to no reserves of energy left.

  The room took on the ethereal hush that I had learned, long ago, came after the birth of a baby. A silent shiver slipped through my being, and I found myself turning to look behind me. But of course, by the soft orange glow of the luminous quartz crystal bulb, I could see the room was empty except for the wardrobe barring the door. The distant sound of pub conversation and chink of glasses that came from the drinking room on the ground floor of the brothel, filtered through.

  Agatha helped Chirra latch her baby to her breast while I kept a fixed magical eye on Chirra’s uterus
, as she was at high risk of haemorrhaging. After her placenta was born a little while later, I assisted her tired uterus to contract and control its bleeding while Agatha fed Chirra a tonic of ergot to help prevent excessive blood loss after I left.

  I sighed in relief. Picking up the wooden bowl with the dinner plate-sized placenta within, I wiped my own sweaty brow with my wrist and took the placenta over to the door so that Agatha could bury it later, as was Lobrathian custom.

  I washed my hands thoroughly using the pitcher of water and soap in the small basin Agatha had brought in. When I finished, I turned and caught Chirra’s dark eye, her babe snuggled and suckling by her side. We smiled tiredly at each other.

  “Thank you, Princess.” Her voice was barely a dry rasp.

  “My pleasure. You’ll take some time off, please?”

  Chirra grimaced. “I’ll try, Princess.”

  Agatha, watching over the babe, grumbled under her breath. We both knew Chirra would wait a week maximum, plugging her bleeding with the special sea moss dubbed ‘the whore’s best friend’ and pass the baby off to a wet nurse for the evenings. There was no way for Chirra to know who the father was, so she was on her own. And even in the shining capital of Quartz, where the luminous quartz quarry brought plenty of money into the city, you only got paid if you worked.

  It had been better when my mother was alive. In the five years of her absence, the city’s poor had burgeoned, and once again, as before her arrival, the slums took back their name, ‘the Sticks,’ for the Stickly tree branches they used to thatch their leaking rooves.

  I went over to the door of Chirra’s room and proceeded to shove my weight against the wardrobe, pushing it back into place against the wall.

  Abilities like mine had long since disappeared from the human realm for reasons unknown. Although it was common knowledge that I ‘helped’ childbearing women, most commonfolk didn’t really understand how I did it, even if they saw it with their bare eyes. And in a brothel like this, locks on doors were not approved of, but I still needed to work undisturbed.

  Agatha beckoned to me, and we left Chirra to doze with her new baby in peace, which was likely one of the few free evenings she would get. Yolande Tully was a fair and hardworking Madame, but she expected no less from her girls. We walked down the creaking, wooden corridor, ignoring the various sounds coming from the rooms we passed, and headed to the small balcony the girls used to smoke or get fresh air.

  The night was cool, and I appreciated its caress on my hot skin, the air smelling of the sweet magnolias that Yolande had planted around her establishment in an attempt to make it look more pleasant. The city lay before us, illuminated by the multi-coloured luminous quartz crystals that our city was known for. Mined in the great quarry just outside the city gates, we traded the valuable crystals with our neighbouring human kingdoms. It was the only known mine on the continent, and it made us a valuable ally.

  A crescent moon sat queen-like high in the western sky, and I knew that meant I should be hurrying back to the palace within the hour.

  Agatha took a hand-rolled cigarette out of one of the many pockets in her patchwork cardigan and lit it up, inhaling deeply. She exhaled blue smoke, and we watched it coil in the breeze like something from a dream.

  Blue ganja was the popular relaxant amongst both nobility and commonfolk and, I supposed, the only way Agatha could unwind after decades of midwifery.

  “I need you alert for Bluebell,” she croaked, eyeing me with piercing blue eyes that missed nothing. “Those twins will come any day now. The last time was bad enough.”

  I cringed inwardly. Bluebell was only a girl of seventeen, and this was her second pregnancy. I’d been at her first birth two years ago and hadn’t gotten there in time to be of any use. The baby had been stillborn, and I don’t think she ever fully mentally recovered from it.

  “I know,” I said. “At this point, it’ll take the goddess herself to keep me away. She has a purple candle.”

  “I’ll light it myself. Visit her beforehand if you can. She’s an anxious little thing.”

  I nodded and took a moment to centre myself, looking out at the bright city of my home.

  There were hidden, multicoloured candles in my room given to me by my mother before she passed. I had a whole stack of them lined up in a neat row, and Agatha and I gave them out to the pregnant mothers in case of emergency. Each candle came as a pair, and when one was lit, its twin would light up too. So if one of the many midwives in the city needed help, she’d light a candle, I’d see its twin light up in my room, and I’d head out into the city.

  Attending every birth was impossible, of course. The many midwives of the city were far too competent under Agatha’s watchful eye, but when there was an issue that couldn’t be solved with herbs and brains, they’d call for me, and I’d come running every time.

  I bade Agatha goodbye and trudged through the long corridor of pleasure rooms and down the winding stairs into the drinking room.

  I was a usual presence in the city at night. Though the women never batted an eyelid at me, men never neglected to make sure I knew they were watching. But drunk men were always quick to notice a lone woman, especially a half-Ellythian with skin noticeably darker than the pale-skinned Lobrathian natives.

  “Is it that princess again?” came a gruff slur from a table to my right.

  Shooting a droll look at the group of men sitting at the table closest to the stair, I paused. They were labourers from the quarry by the dirt and dust on their clothes. And by the lilt in his accent, I guessed they’d come from Kaalon, our neighbouring Kingdom, to seek work. I tried my best to ignore blonde-haired Genevieve, grinding against a man in the corner of the room, her skirts hitched high around her waist. All in another night’s work.

  “That princess,” I said loftily, “is pleased to tell you that Chirra has birthed a bouncing baby boy. Both are alive and well.”

  “That means she’s out of business for how long?” whined a younger man with barely a wisp of hair on his upper lip. The others grumbled into their tankards.

  I scowled at the one who’d spoken. One of these men could very well be the father. “She’ll take as long as she’s able. Good evening, gentlemen.” I turned on my booted heel and made my way out of Madame Yolande’s establishment and onto the dark cobblestoned street.

  I was always followed by either my father’s guards or my stepmother’s. They never knew exactly when I left the palace, but I was easy to find. If you asked anyone in the local vicinity, they always knew who was giving birth, so naturally, that’s where I would be. And by the glint of copper under the light of the moon, I knew it was my stepmother’s guards—the Queen’s guards, who were on the prowl tonight.

  Ignoring them, I made my way down the main street, brightly lit with orange quartz, and into the retail district. Bluebell and her young husband lived with her parents above their bakery on Canty Street, so it was only a short walk for me through the vacant city.

  Quartz City was as safe as any other. It had its share of pickpockets and criminals who only came out after dark, its gamblers, and its mobsters. With this in mind, my mother had insisted that my younger sister and I be trained in weapons from a young age. And even after her death, although my stepmother hated it, we still drilled swords with the armsmaster five times a week, and I made sure I took a lesson in knives since I couldn’t be very well lugging a sword with me everywhere. So, I had two personal knives with simple leather hilts—one sheathed to my thigh and the other at my wrist.

  Despite the minor risk, I crossed the empty town square and revelled in the nighttime stroll. In the moments of being out in the city alone, just me and the commonfolk, I had freedom. It was a tiny, delicate glass orb, this freedom, but it was all mine. It was not my father’s nor my stepmother’s nor the eagle-eyed advisor’s. And in that orb glowed a peaceful power that I had all to myself. And once I returned to the palace, that orb popped like a bubble, and my magic, my skills, practically meant nothin
g anymore.

  As I had guessed, when I reached the line of shopfronts that marked the beginning of the food district, a faint light shone from the bakery window. The Bakers, naturally, got up well before dawn to start off their loaves for the day. I rapped my knuckles on their glass front door.

  A sandy-haired young man rushed across the shop towards me and unlatched the door.

  “Your Highness!” Charlie was Bluebell’s nineteen-year-old husband and a sweet boy who knew how to look after her. “Bluey is just here.”

  I entered the store, the smell of yeast and sugar making my stomach growl. “How’s she going?” I asked him in a low voice.

  He shifted nervously. “Okay, I think. The tightnings have been keepin’ her up at night. So we just started the bakery up and let her parents sleep.”

  The tightnings were the pre-labour pains women often got well before actual labour. And having twins, Bluebell’s uterus was likely to want to ‘practise’ more than anyone else’s. Contractions were a marvel to watch, using my own powers. Like a tide washing against a beach, the muscles bunched in brilliant waves across the abdomen. A woman’s body was truly a marvellous wonder.