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Three weeks later, Margo’s got her feet up, drinking shitty Fillorian red alone in her room. She’s not one for drinking alone, but Eliot’s being groomzilla again and Quentin’s off doing some archery bullshit. When he’s finished she thinks she’ll go find him. In fact, she’s contemplating going down to his room right now and waiting for him, probaby naked, so he knows exactly what her intentions are. He’ll come in all sweaty, and he’ll smell good, and she can strip him and take his mind off the whole “I had to let my girlfriend out of my back thing.” He did say he was amenable to staying fuck buddies, after all, and it’s been a few days. Maybe a week. Definitely a week. There’s a voice behind her, suddenly. “I wouldn’t drink that, if I were you.” She whirls. Of course, it’s the fucking white walker of a Fairy Queen. Jesus Christ, she could at least announce herself before appearing in her fucking bathtub. “Why not, other than the fact that it’s shitty?” Margo snaps. “And what do you want now?”“I thought congratulations might be in order,” she says smoothly. She raises an arm languidly and pours water over it. Her bathtub floats with rose petals. Stupid cunt. Margo wishes she could replace that water with acid and end all her fucking problems. “Why, what did you do now? Decide to replace all the flowers in the fucking kingdom with stinging insects? Begin feasting on Fillorian children to keep down our population numbers?” “I hear it’s customary to congratulate one upon such a happy event as your own,” the queen says. She goes on pouring water on herself. Stupid enigmatic bitch. “And what would that be?” Margo says. “Since you seem so determined to make me drag it out of you bit by bit.” “Your impending arrival.” “Oh, great. Who’s on their way here? The fucking Lorians again? The floaters? Jesus Christ, tell me it’s not the floaters. Balls. It’s the floaters, isn’t it?” “Oh no, far much more of a blessed event for the kingdom. The Fillorians haven’t had a pregnant High Queen in so long.” She goes on pouring water over herself. “And who would the lucky father be, your majesty? King Quentin or High King Eliot?” For once, Margo can’t think of anything smart-ass to say. “You’re fucking with me,” she spits, which is the best she can manage. Then she does the math. She’s late. She’s two fucking weeks late. “Don’t think I don’t know what you all got up to a few weeks ago. Sending Fen away, that was very clever. Playing games the way you did, not so clever. And forgetting the contraception spell — not very clever at all, my dear. Not very clever at all.” Margo’s struck stupid. She cannot be pregnant. She simply cannot be fucking pregnant. This is like, the worst possible thing in the realm of worst possible things. She has a kingdom to run, she’s traded Fen’s daughter to the fucking fairy queen, she’s dealing with Quentin’s bullshit. And now she’s knocked up like some farmer’s daughter and she doesn’t even know who the father is. It could be either of them — Eliot came all over Quentin and they —Oh, Jesus. The fairy queen smiles, but it’s shark-like, cruel. “You don’t seem like the maternal type. Luckily you have nine months to figure it out. Or maybe you’ll decide to trade this one, too.” And she vanishes. Margo chugs the rest of the Fillorian red. Fuck the baby. She needs this shit. Because she’s got to tell Quentin, and she can only manage that if she’s fucking trashed. A baby. Jesus Christ on a motherfucking tricycle, a baby. She’d be, what — five weeks along. Five weeks. No google to help her out there. Then she realizes she’s got the fucking button. She needs confirmation of this bullshit. No sense in fucking around. A very earthly trip to CVS, three tests in the Cottage bathroom, three very double, very blue lines. Fuck. fuck, fuck, fuck.She contemplates just calling Planned Parenthood and dealing with this shit now, before anyone finds out. Not telling anyone. Just going, one pill, boom, done. Except Eliot’s going to lose one baby, though he doesn’t know it yet. And what if this is his? She doesn’t even know what Quentin would do, but she suspects it would be pretty awful. She’s got to tell them. She’s got to tell them both. And she’s got to do it soon. Like soon-soon. Like tonight soon. Julia wanders in. Margo knows she’s a little wild-eyed. “What’s up?” she asks. “Nothing,” Margo says. “Just had to run and get some things for Groomzilla again.” The CVS bag falls out of her purse. Oh fuck me, Margo thinks. Just fuck me. This could not get any worse. She fucking hates Julia and this is the worst fucking timing of all the worst fucking timing in the history of the universe. Julia raises an eyebrow. “Groomzilla needed pregnancy tests?” Margo stares her down. Julia stares back, calmly. “So? Positive or negative?” “Wouldn’t you like to know?” “Simple enough.” Julia puts her hands on the sides of Margo’s stomach. Julia breaks into a gentle smile. “Oh, Margo,” she says. “What?” Margo demands. “Two.” “What the fuck?!” Margo says. “Oh my god. I need a fucking drink.” Julia looks at her, puzzled. “Can’t you feel them?” “No,” Margo says. “Hey, Penny!” Julia calls. “We need you!” “What the fuck is this?” Margo demands. “This isn’t public —” Julia looks her levelly. “Straight out, no bullshit. You don’t know who the father is, do you?” Margo collapses on the denim chair. “Okay, there was my answer. Penny!” she calls again. Penny ambles in. “‘Sup?” he asks. “Long story. We need to know who the father of Margo’s babies are. So do your psychic thing and figure it the fuck out.” “What the fuck?” Penny says. “You and me both,” Margo says. “Can someone get me a fucking drink?” “No,” Julia says. “You’re cut off. And Penny, just fucking do it. And keep your mouth shut about it.” “I’ll fucking try, but I can’t guarantee anything.” Penny comes over and puts his hands on the sides of Margo’s stomach. Is this what being pregnant is going to be, everyone fucking touching her stomach all the goddamn time? Jesus fucking Christ, what a nightmare. He closes his eyes and starts laughing almost immediately. “Okay, that boy is definitely Eliot’s,” he says. “And that boy is Quentin’s. Damn, girl. Y’all did some kinda fucking crime one night, didn’t you?” Margo resists the urge to slap him across the face. “I need to go back,” she says. “And if either of you breathe a word to anyone, I will eat your fucking hearts with a side salad and a decent remoulade.” She touches the button and disappears. And reappears in Fillory. “Did you get confirmation, my dear?” the Fairy Queen asks. “Fuck you and your fucking — howeverthefuck you know,” Margo spits. “Have fun telling your respective, shall we say, partners? About the whole affair.” She disappears. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck. She decides to tell Quentin first. She gets drunk again. This probably isn’t a good idea, fetal alcohol syndrome and all, but it’s the only way she can get through it. One more time for Eliot and I’m done, babies, she thinks. One more and done, okay? Now she’s talking to them. They’re fucking real. Oh my god, they’re fucking real.Quentin’s in his room. It’s near midnight, though she’s only been on Earth about forty-five minutes. She doesn’t knock. He raises an eyebrow. “Hey,” he says. “Trouble sleeping?” He’s across the room in about two paces. It’s still echo-y in here, not enough furniture. “You wanted something this late at night?” Margo looks him straight in the eye. This is the best way to do this, she knows. Show absolutely no fear. “Yeah. To tell you I’m fucking pregnant.” If Quentin had been drinking, he would have spit it out. “WHAT?” he manages. “Two of them. One is yours. Penny did this psychic thing and figured it out. I’m hazy on the details. I forgot to cast the contraception spell when we all —” “Oh my fucking god.” Quentin collapses into a chair. “I’m going to be —” “Don’t remind me.” “And you’re going to be —” “Do not fucking remind me.” “Can’t we just go Earthside and just —” “No,” Margo says. And it’s one of the hardest things she’s ever fucking done and she hates herself for it as much as she hates herself for making this giant goddamn mess in the first place. But she made her fucking bed and she gets to lie in it. “We fucking can’t.” “Why the fuck not?” Quentin demands. “It’s the only reasonable —”“Because I traded Eliot’s baby to the fairies in return for them cleaning up the wellspring during his duel with Idri,” Margo says in a rush. “They fixed magic, Eliot lived. We either got a dead Eliot or a lost baby and I made the hard fucking call. Don’t think I don’t hate myself every fucking minute of every fucking day for it. This is his second chance and I won’t take it from it, no matter how fucking hard it is.” She swallows hard. “So I’m the collateral damage?” Quentin demands. “I don’t fucking know!” Margo bursts out. “You think I have a fucking plan for this? I just found out this morning when the goddamn Fairy Queen —” “Wait. The Fairy Queen?” “Oh yeah, the bitch has been hanging around since we made the fucking deal, being creepy as shit. You can’t see fairies until you make a deal with them, and believe me, the palace is crawling with the pale-skinned fucks. The Fairy Queen decided to take the opportunity to congratulate me this morning. Some CVS tests and some magic from Julia and Penny and congratulations Quentin, you have a son.” “I cannot fucking believe this, Margo.” “The proper answer is thank you for fucking me, Margo.” “You forgot the fucking spell!” “You know, there’s spells you can fucking cast too! You guys just choose not to and leave it up to women to bother with it! Your second answer is, Thank you for offering to carry my child through the miserable hell that will be pregnancy, Margo.” “I need a fucking drink.” “No, you need to come with me. Because now we need to go tell Eliot.”They find him in his enormous suite of rooms. He’s drinking a glass of Fillorian red — they’ve long since killed the decent bar — and watching the sunset. Thank god Fen is elsewhere. “We need to talk,” Quentin says tersely. “Now. The High Queen has something to share with you.” He sweeps his hand in front of him like, go for it, bitch. Margo casts a silencing bubble around them. Because she’s not only going to have to tell El about this baby. She’s going to have to tell El about his other baby. This is going to be very, very, very bad. “Eliot,” she says tentatively. “You know when we all hooked up? The other —” “Yeah,” he says warily. “What about it?” “I forgot to cast a certain spell.” His face drops. “Oh fucking no, Bambi.” “You never touched me. But you came on Q’s hands and Q —” “Oh my fucking god.” He collapses into a chair. There’s been a lot of collapsing into chairs today.“So, um, Penny and Julia did some magic-y stuff, and there are two of them. Both boys. And, um, one of them is yours.”“Oh my fucking god,” Eliot says again. “So we go to Earth. We get this taken care of, Bambi.” “Um, there’s a big fucking problem with that, El. And you’re going to really, really, really hate me for this and I don’t blame you but it was you or your baby and I picked you, all right? When you had that duel with Idri? I cleaned up the wellspring. By making a deal with the fairies. The deal was that they cleaned up the wellspring and they got you and Fen’s baby in return.” Eliot doesn’t speak for a second. “What the fuck, Bambi?” he demands. “What the fuck did you do?” “El, it was lose you or lose the baby. A fatherless baby or a country without a leader. And I made a call. It was a shitty call and it was a miserable call and don’t think that I don’t regret it every fucking second of every fucking day, and —” “So this is why Fen has been acting weird, and this is why you have been acting weird.” “Yes?” she says, and she knows she’s about to cry. She wonders idly if this is hormones. “Because we made a deal — because I made a deal for her on behalf of the fairies, we can both see them. But I swear I will get them out of this, El, if I have to trade my own baby both babies, I will, I’ll end it, I’ll fix it —” Eliot breaks the silence bubble. “Guards,” he calls. “Take the High Queen to the dungeon. Lock her up there. In the nicest cell possible. And make sure she has her coconut oil.” ****Margo begs. Margo pleads. Margo offers up both of her babies in exchange for Fen’s. But the Queen is immovable. They made a deal for Fen’s baby and Fen’s baby it is. Margo can keep her bastard spawn, the queen says. She wants a prince or princess of the blood. “Mine are of the blood, more than hers!” Margo snaps. The queen smiles lazily. “And yours are not legitimate,” she says. “In the eyes of Fillory, they’re the children of a whore.” Margo can’t slap the creamy slut across the face. But she never fucking wishes she could more than in that moment. *****Eliot eventually lets her out. She is pregnant, after all. But neither he nor Quentin is talking to her. Quentin sinks deeper and deeper into drink until she makes him deal with Eliot and his Earth errands. She’s starting to feel like shit now. By six weeks she’s tired all the fucking time. All the fucking time. She just wants to sleep and sleep and sleep. She also doesn’t want to eat a motherfucking thing, and when she does it comes back up. Eliot finally notices. “Bambi,” he says. “I’m not happy about all this but you’ve got to eat something.” “I fucking can’t,” she says, coming up for air from the chamber pot she’s been barfing into. He has some witch concoct some potion for her. It tastes like ass but it keeps the food down. She’s terrified of gaining weight but it’s inevitable. She’ll never look the same again. Fuck it. This is for Eliot. *****She keeps begging the fairy queen. She finally gets sick of it and takes Fen to the fairy realm. Margo demands to know if there’s any way to go and get her. “Yes,” says Rafe. “But very few return.” Margo prays the potion won’t hurt the babies and downs it. She’s in the fairy realm, a messed up mixture of castle Whitespire. She finds Fen, who refuses to leave without the baby, who’s already been born and taken away. Margo feels a terrible pang for her: not only for her loss, but for the terror she must have felt at giving birth alone. Margo’s been thinking about that part lately and it scares the living shit out of her. Fen won’t go. Josh has come to rescue them. The fairy queen gives them a plant to attract Ember, then demands payment to let them leave. Margo’s shocked that she’s terrified the queen will take the babies. She takes Margo’s eye instead. *****Then Ember kills Umber, Quentin kills Ember, magic goes off, and the fairies are suddenly an occupying force. Everyone can see them. Fen’s back, carrying a log instead of a baby. Margo is constantly exhausted. She’s visibly pregnant, now that there’s no illusion magic to hide it, and the entire court is buzzing about their knocked-up High Queen without a husband. They contemplate marrying her off to Quentin. The wedding between Eliot and Idri is off. She’s knocked up and exhausted. Quentin and Eliot are still talking about it like a problem to be managed. Alice is in some kind of post-niffin bitchfest. Fen stares at her pregnant belly and you can feel the hatred radiating off her, especially since Margo knows she suspects something. No one knows one of the babies is Eliot’s, but it’s obvious, even this early on, that there’s two of them in there; the rest of her frame is too small for this beach ball she’s carting around. Quentin’s the main suspect. He hates her for it. They are not on speaking terms, especially after magic vanishes. Looks like she’s walking straight into single motherhood, which is not something she ever contemplated. She should have ended this when she had the motherfucking chance. It’s too late now. She wonders if she could engineer a miscarriage; she knows she’s too late for Planned Parenthood. She actually brings it up to Eliot. “Would it be easier?” she asks him.“Bambi,” he says, in a voice too tired for snark, “you already made your motherfucking choice. And you made my choice for me, and you made Quentin’s, too. It’s too fucking late.” At least the Fairy Queen lays off her. They must have some kind of respect for pregnant women. One evening, she’s sitting down to eat dinner in her room, alone, as usual. She tries to stay out of the public eye as much as possible, only coming out to help Eliot deal with the latest fucking fairy crisis, when she feels something. A flutter. She thinks it’s her stomach but then there’s another. And another. When she lies down to sleep (on her side now, she can only bear to sleep on her side with a pillow under her stomach), she feels it again. She puts her hand to her stomach. Holy fucking shit. They’re fucking moving. They’re Quentin’s and Eliot’s babies, and they are inside her, and they are moving. She wants to hate them. They have ruined her motherfucking life. She is alone, she is miserable, she is tired, her boobs hurt all the time, she’s starting to get stretch marks no matter what magic creams she puts on her belly — which horrifies her — and she still has a kingdom to run. A kingdom that’s been taken over by a hostile force. Which seems intent on starving her people. But they babies are moving, and they are hers. More than hers. They’re Quentin and Eliot’s.