A/N: This is the last vignette for this series I currently have planned, but I loved writing this pairing and hope to write more in the future (an aspiration which will hopefully be helped along by the eventual release of the fifth and sixth books!) I've also got another separate oneshot in the works.

Also, if I'm allowed to say so, this is far and away my favorite vignette of this fic and the one that was most fun to write, and I would be thrilled if you'd leave a review, kind readers!

Contrary to the author's note in chapter one, I do own one character here. It should be obvious which.

IV: Harmony and Rhythm

Set post-series: spoilers for The Queen of Attolia and A Conspiracy of Kings.

A harsh wailing, thin and hungry, jolted Irene out of the recesses of dreamless slumber, through the cloudy horizon of hazy half-sleep, and into the galvanized world of the wakeful. She blinked up at the filigreed ceiling and involuntarily sighed.

Eugenides stirred beside her, his good arm flexing beneath her neck where it served as a counterpart to her pillow. Since her pregnancy, they had abandoned any pretense of separation and now shared Attolia's chambers at night, though he still often retreated to his more simply furnished rooms in daylight.

His voice was a sleepy, lightly accented mumble. "Is Persipone awake again?"

"For the third time in as many hours," she affirmed, staring at the water-clock beside their bed with a persistent sense of failure tugging at her stomach. As her husband had not quite yet grasped the nuances of lifting a baby with only one arm, it was she who rolled out of bed and padded over to the crib in the corner opposite the door.

The infant's crying was slightly tamed when she was scooped up by her mother, who shushed her and carried her back to their bed. Eugenides had already moved the pillows so she could sit up and nurse. Even suckling, Persipone whimpered against Irene's breast.

"Shall I sing her a lullaby?" Eugenides asked offhandedly, slender fingers stroking her tiny dark head.

"I think Persipone, and I, and everyone else within a mile's radius would prefer to be spared that experience," she replied wryly, and he let out a mock-affronted chuckle.

For a moment they were silent, watching the attentions of their daughter. Eugenides placed his hand softly along the length of Persipone's body, and Irene marveled, not for the first time, at how tiny she was. How long would that last?

"How long will this last? I'm exhausted," mumbled Eugenides finally. "Did we know a child would be this wearisome? How did we ever come to have a daughter?"

Involuntarily, a light chuckle flitted from her throat. "It's your fault," she murmured.

"Is it? I seem to recall it was you who was endowed by the gods with a womb, and waddled about like a cow for nine months. A beautiful cow," he amended as she turned a cold gaze on him, "radiant as the eastern horizon even in your worst moments." She rolled her eyes, but he kept talking.

"And as I recall, it was you who insisted she share our chambers rather than be attended by a wet nurse."

Her jaw clenched reflexively. The argument against a wet nurse had been not so much an argument as a proclamation, one to which Eugenides had complied with minimal resistance after the first explosive exchange of "Gods, no" and shattering inkwells.

Gratefully, she had noticed, not one of his arguments had even obliquely referenced any fear that she would simply be incapable of good mothering. It wasn't that he didn't trust her. He only feared for her ability to be both Attolia and Irene mother-of-an-infant.

After nearly three weeks of motherhood, she was halfway inclined to concede (at least in her own mind) that he might have been right. She had never been so exhausted in all her life. She could not give over the ruling of her land—lands, as Eddis and Sounis had been joined underneath their feet—entirely to Attolis (gods forbid). She and Eugenides both had been scraping less than half the sleep they needed each night, and she often left meetings of state to nurse Persipone. Her advisers were frustrated, her barons were skeptical, and her husband was doing his best not to nettle her about her frazzled state. But she would not be moved—her child would be raised by her own mother, and Eugenides' ridiculously hands-on gods could strike her down if she wasn't going to do it to the best of her limited ability.

Her husband soothed her burst of temper with a warm palm on her shoulder beneath her nightdress and a cheek pressed against her hair.

"I wouldn't have our daughter know the absence of her mother for so much as a single day," he said, his voice low against her skin. Both of them knew what it was like to grow up motherless, and it was one of the reasons their argument over the wet nurse had been so brief. He had not the force of will to deny her that which seemed the most reasonable request of all at a primeval level.

An involuntary sniffle left her as Persipone finished nursing and Irene lifted her to her shoulder.

"This treasure is more than sufficient recompense for a few hours of lost sleep," she murmured, still startled at the tenderness she could feel towards their baby. Eugenides adjusted the dropped shoulder of her nightdress and turned to face her fully.

"You're still fuming over how this is somehow my fault," he asserted playfully. Irene leaned back against the headboard, eyes finally shifting from their daughter's tiny face to his, faintly sketched in the starlight from the window behind her.

She clarified, "You maneuvered your way into marrying me."

One eyebrow arched. "I don't follow."

"Sharing the bed is a prerequisite for a baby, Eugenides."

"Oh. Well, yes. But you made me king."

"You fell in love with me."

There was a pause. Tipping his head back, her husband finally closed his eyes and smiled. "Trump card, My Queen."

"Indeed, My King."