23 - Sookie Stackhouse and Eric Northman Look to the Future - Part Two

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Chapter Twenty Three

I stood and nodded slightly.

"Your Majesty," I said.

I wondered I was still supposed to curtsey now that I was Vampire. Whether I was or whether I wasn't didn't really matter, a nod was all she was going to get.

"Sookie, please, you can call me Trinity. We are old friends, are we not?" she asked sweetly, staring at me intensely, her eyes glowing with an eerie focus of emotion.

Apparently the nod was fine with her.

She dismissed the Ladies in Waiting standing behind her with a backwards wave of her hand, not even turning to look at them. They backed out of the room and closed the twenty foot tall pointed oak doors quietly behind them.

I wouldn't have gone so far as to call us friends. We had always been cordial to each other and we shared the common bond of having been recently Turned by our respective spouses. She was Turned more than twenty years ago, right before her wedding to the King. That was still recent in vampire years.

Trinity had been a human model with elfin features and a heart shaped face. The past twenty years had not touched her almost perfect beauty. Her right arm moved to rest on her large stomach, accenting its size and shape under her flowing empire waisted dress.

I tried not to look at her swollen abdomen as I replied. "Yes, certainly, Trinity." This answer was ambiguous enough to satisfy her.

She came up to me, closer than the usual space people kept from each other. As petite and small boned as she looked from a distance, she was actually a good five inches taller than I was. That made her about two inches taller than the King.

"You have given birth to Eric Northman's children," she stated, still staring at me.

She suddenly bent forward and started to sniff me, a startling and wholly vampire thing to do. I took a step back instinctively.

"I am married to Eric and we have children. I was artificially inseminated, if you must know. We chose an anonymous donor selected to match Eric's physical features," I said a tad stiffly.

I didn't want to offend the queen but I wanted to put an end to this line of conversation. She could not, under any circumstances, know I was inseminated with sperm Anna Hita brought back from a parallel dimension, a dimension wherein a human Eric died in battle before ever Turning vampire. Anna Hita could not allow her secret to be known. I owed it to her to keep her special powers confidential.

I knew that what was under Queen Trinity's gorgeous dress was not a pregnancy. I smelled foam and lead, probably the materials used to make the belly. An "empathy belly" it was called, if I remembered rightly from a TV show I watched years ago about avoiding teen pregnancies.

I had watched it when my girls were in their tween years and becoming a little boy-crazy. Those empathy bellies show non-pregnant people what it is like to be heavy with life. I wondered if they made one that showed the grueling last months of carrying triplets. I doubted it.

"Then they are not truly his?" she asked, the corners of her pouty mouth turned down in disappointment.

I smiled, trying to lighten the mood. "Well, he says if you feed them then they look like you. They're pretty and blond like me."

I sounded proud of them because I was. Since Eric and I shared the same coloring it was entirely possible that the girls looked like me and an unknown blond donor.

"I see," she said and plopped down heavily on a chaise lounge.

I remained standing, the protocol when in the presence of the king or queen. Trinity's show of being exhausted with child carrying was just that, a show. She could have walked around with ten anvils strapped to her belly and not felt the strain of it. She was Vampire.

"The King wants to see you," she said lifelessly. "You may go." She made a dismissive gesture with her hand.

"Thank you, it was good to see you again," I said with another little nod, backing out of the room as her Ladies-in-Waiting had done.

She didn't answer, she just stared at the hearth watching the shadows of the fire on the white marble. She looked very depressed. I didn't know vampires could get depressed.

I left her chamber and wandered around a bit until I smelled the Ladies-in-Waiting. I followed their scent trail to a richly appointed living room where they were watching a DVR'ed recording of a soap opera - "The Young and the Pulseless" - on a 70 inch flat screen HDTV.

One of the Ladies had removed her empathy belly and had her skirt hiked up to her waist, legs askew, itching her stomach. When she saw me she didn't make a move to cover her thatch of pubic hair.

"Can we help you?" another Lady asked.

She stood up nimbly then her eyes flicked to the door. She instantly sat down and stood up again, this time struggling to her feet like a woman heavy with child.

"What is this all about?" I asked her, indicating her artificially swollen abdomen. I spoke in a very quiet confidential voice.

" 'Tis the fashion here for the time being," a red haired Lady said. She had a lovely Irish lilt.

"You all walk around looking pregnant?" I asked her.

"And acting the part too," the red haired lady said in a much-put-upon voice.

"But why?" I asked.

"That's not for me to say," she replied. "Come, I'll take you to your husband."

She waddled ahead of me for about half a mile of fabulously decorated palace corridors until we came to the King's chambers.

I heard Eric's laugh coming from inside the room.

The King said, "You know how they are."

He had that affectionate yet superior tone of voice men use when they privately discuss the erratic behavior of women.

"I do indeed," Eric said, still laughing.

Did he really agree with the King or was he going along to get along? I couldn't tell.

The Lady knocked lightly on the door. In a second the King said, "Enter."

I opened the door and saw Eric and King de Castro sitting across from each other in a modern and elegant sitting room with many shiny black surfaces. They each held a goblet of blood.

Both men politely rose as I entered the room.


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more to come .....(Thank you so very very much for stopping by when you can. Your visit and comments are always much appreciated. I'm sending good thoughts to you all for your health and the health of your loved ones.)


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