A sudden loss of warmth drew Gwen out of her dreams back to reality. The thick comforter she always insisted on even in the middle of summer did little to warm her after Ivan left her alone in the bed. She opened her eyes to locate her husband only to find him pulling on clothing at the edge of the bed. The window showed the sky glowing pink with the dawn.

"Why are you getting dressed?" She demanded, wanting him back under the covers with her so she could sleep some more. Even with Maggur gone she still had nightmares of what he had done and all he had threatened to do. And Ivan chased those nightmares away each night. He turned to glance at her, flashing her an apologetic smile.

"Some of us need to get up and make appearances while you are bound to these rooms," Ivan teased her. She sat up and crossed her arms at his pointing out she was bound to their suite. Indulging her briefly, Ivan sat back down and kissed her thoroughly before moving his hand to caress the growing swell in her belly. "We have to ensure your mother gets enough rest so you can grow big and strong."

"You know I did just fine with Daniel and this one will be no different," Gwen mentioned their three year old son in hopes that it would calm Ivan down. He only raised his eyebrows at her. She had miscarried twice in between Daniel and her current pregnancy. But now she was six months along and all threats of a miscarriage were long gone. Now he was just being overly cautious with her, as were all of her guards. Not that she needed guards anymore. It was more of an honorary station at this point that paid well and required very little other than being parade ready at any time. Gwen herself and Ivan had given up on being parade ready once they had had their first child. Gwen had abandoned the face paints and customary mask she had created the moment it had been announced she had come back from killing Maggur. Privately she referred to it as "Godssent 2.0, less flash and more function" but never explained the origin of the joke.

"Ivan?" A small voice from the door made both Gwen and Ivan look. It was Kai, now nine years old and almost the spitting image of his father except for the almond shape to his dark eyes. "Father said you need to hurry up. You've got meetings, meetings, and more meetings."

"As soon as my wife lets me go," Ivan informed the boy solemnly. Roald had discovered almost as soon as Kai was old enough to carry messages reliably that using him as a messenger back to their bedroom would have more positive results than sending anyone else. Kai gave them a rare grin and then left to tell his father exactly what had been said.

"He'll be a page next year. I wonder who Roald will send out to get us then," Gwen mused knowing that Roald did not dare use their little boy Daniel because he would come back to their room and not come back out. He always sided with Gwen and Ivan over anyone else. Not even Dom, the boy's godsfather, could get him to shake his loyalty. Sending Dom and Kel's son and daughter would not do them well either. Gwen could easily distract the two of them with stories and songs. Karin, Jadelyn, and Karin's little brother Gramm, could all be bribed off with Ivan offering to show them more combat moves. Karin would be going into page training in the next year too though it caused her father a heart attack and left him unable to make coherent sentences for a week when she announced it.

"To get me. You, my love, are supposed to be resting. No running around." He kissed her lips and then kissed her belly once before he got up to finish getting dressed and went to do his meetings. But with Ivan gone from the bed, she wouldn't sleep anymore so she got up as well, dressed in loose skirt and a loose shirt that allowed for her belly before going out to the sitting room. With the potential birth of a second child, more remodeling had been done to her wing of the castle. Their rooms now encompassed the entire end of the hallway since Dom and Kel had moved out with the birth of their second child. With the addition of an entire second suite Gwen had turned one sitting room into a formal dining room that could easily seat up to twenty, had converted one bedroom into a full nursery open to all of her guards' children as well as her own, and multiple other bedrooms because Ivan informed her two children would simply just not be enough to carry on her teachings. She had not the heart to tell him that Baird and Neal had both told her it was more than likely she was carrying twins with the size she was for as far along as she was. She didn't get to surprise Ivan often and it would be a lovely shock for the poor man.

Ivan stopped at the door when he saw her come out to the sitting room. He gave her one long look that told her once again to not push herself. She did hate worrying him so she made a point for him to see she was heading to the dining room where she would eat breakfast and she held up a book for him to see as she passed: her book of fairy tales. It was a clear sign she meant to spend the day in the nursery. He came back to kiss her once more and then left following Roald down the hall. While she was weighed down with pregnancy it was nice to at least be free of meetings. Somehow she was always less patient with diplomats while she had another human growing inside of her.

As Gwen moved to the nursery after breakfast she looked around at the sheer number of children running around. While Kai and Karin did not need to be in a nursery anymore they were frequent visitors, often instigating games and telling stories to the younger children. Kel and Dom's two were frequent visitors as well. Jadelyn, Gramm, and several two year olds belonging to Owen, Faleron, and Esmond were also added to her collection. Jadelyn and Kai's younger siblings stuck to their own nursery though Roald assured Gwen she would be their tutor when they were old enough to understand what she was saying. No, she didn't need to have a brood of her own children like Ivan threatened, to carry her messages out into the world and throughout time. She was doing just fine where she was.

"How about a story?" She asked drawing the attention of the children to her. They flocked over to the rocking chair she always sat on when she was reading. "Now where were we?" She asked.

"Where the Godssent's Hero rescues her from the evil king!" Kai cried out. She smiled at him and opened the story book to the page of a man in glittering golden armor. The likeness wasn't too far from Ivan but the artist had been a bit imaginative in both his depiction of the Godssent's Hero and the Godssent herself. She had coauthored the book with Sir Myles knowing that the best way to change the future was with things that children would remember. And children certainly remembered stories. So her lessons were taught as stories that involved the Godssent and her Hero as they encountered many struggles. Each small story had a lesson that she wanted to teach.

She knew this story by heart. It was one of the few that were mostly true. The real details of the story were masked to barely violent actions. Where Maggur had whipped her, she said he beat her and kept the details of the welts and wounds to herself. She kept details like rape and the gruesome details of dying from infection from the story altogether. One day when the children were older they would ask what had really happened, and maybe someone would tell them.

As she read the story she met Kai's warm, dark eyes. At nine he already knew the full details of the story, why his loving tutor as a child had so often been missing, why he had been guarded so closely for half a year. She knew his father had told him everything he asked about and more about the woman the world worshipped as a walking goddess of change but had always been just Gwen to him. Kai knew about her ever fading father who couldn't remember even her birthday or middle name by the time she left. He knew about her mother and the terrible fights that had marred her childhood. He knew about her brother and the violent physical and mental abuse he pushed on her and her sister. He knew about her sister and how she had broken without a hero of her own or a place to retreat to like she herself had found in the books of Tortall.

He did not know, just like not even Ivan knew, that she had stepped into this world knowing it was a fictional story in her world. That particular fact was a secret she would never tell. Not because it would be deeply upsetting to discover you were nothing more than a character dreamed up by strange far away person, but because this world was more real to her than her own and always had been. She had experienced far more love in the family she had gathered here. She had a true companion in Ivan who she still loved deeply after all of these years.

She looked up from the pages as the story ended to meet her own son's light blue eyes not unlike Ivan's but very much a match to her own sister's. "Because everyone needs a hero."

A/N: And that's all folks. I appreciate you all sticking with me through the story. It's taken a lot of twists and turns and many of them have alternate story lines attached to them in what I'd like to call the "alternative godssent files". I'm not sure if I'll pick up Gwen and Ivan as characters again (though all of my main original female characters in my writing are named Gwen) so don't be alarmed if my next writing is about a Gwen and it sounds nothing like this one. You all have been great!