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I wait for the woman’s contraction to ease before whispering, though our voices go undetected with all the sounds of labor. “Are you sure Elivander is okay?”

My stomach tightens against the cold marble floor, and I see Eli again, telling me to go, to escape…without him. I should begrateful he stopped me from making the mistake of kissing him, grateful for the rejection, but I hurt.

Milo puts his hand on mine. “I’m positive. Eli survives everything.”

“Will he come for us?”

“He won’t stop looking,” he says, resting his head on his folded arms. “But he has no idea we’re at the Ring.”

“Do you think Kelter is here?”

“Your friend? I’m not sure.”

I turn my attention back to the grate. An overly tall woman in a gray jumpsuit speedwalks across the atrium, rounding the many winding turns of the stone pathway that lead her to the door of the moaning woman. She wears her light brown hair in a neat bun on the back of her head, and her legs seem too thin to hold up her voluptuous upper half, but she manages.

“Only a while longer now,” the woman in the jumpsuit says from the doorway.

A woman lies on the bed, wrists and ankles chained to the metal rails, her pregnant belly exposed and her bare knees spread. A gray shirt covers her breasts.

“Ash, don’t leave me, please. I can’t lose this one too,” she says through heavy breaths. The worker she called Ash enters, hushing her cries and holding her chained hand.

This is at least the tenth woman we’ve watched go through labor. Milo explained that Ash is part of the Life Cycle Sphere, which handles life, death and any injuries or illnesses in between, like nurses in Caldera, but they do it all.

“Why are they chained to the beds?” I ask. I hadn’t actually seen a woman go through labor before today, but of the few home births I heard through the walls over the years, none included the clink and chink of chains between the guttural groans and excessive cursing. I knew I’d be seeing Cam soonafter. No one ever wantedmearound a baby, not with my “episodes.”

“I don’t know. It’s not like I’ve been here before or donethat. But with that much pain, I’d expect punching is common,” Milo muses.

Minutes later, Ash is positioned between the woman’s raised knees. Somehow the sight of her trembling legs makes it real. The raw screams coming from that little room cut right through me. After the most jarring wail of them all, a silence spills into the moment, and the high-pitched cry of a newborn sends it on its way.

“This is excellent contraception,” I say to Milo, shoving my shoulder into his and swallowing down the rising nausea.

“I’m never sleeping with anyone after I link.” Milo stares at the wall, dead-eyed.

I scoff. “But now you would?”

“It doesn’t matternow. It won’t end up with someone screaming like that and blaming me after.”

“It only takes one time,” I remind him.

“Yeah,afterlinking. We’re infertile until then.” His head rolls to the side to meet my stare. “When do Hollows become fertile since they don’t link?”

“Usually around thirteen years.” I don’t tell him that wasn’t the case for me, especially with his gaping stare. How could we look so similar, but have such differences on the inside?

Like after the other births, Ash scuttles out of the room holding a blanketed bundle.

“Where are you taking him? Is something wrong?” The new mother’s desperation slashes through my heart. Chained and alone.

“Why don’t they leave the babies with the mothers?” I ask.

“There’s probably something wrong with him,” Milo says. “He’s not one of the one in three that survive. Most of these women will leave the Ring without a baby once they recover.”

Hearing it was one thing, but seeing the loss in action—that’s something else, something much too painful for words.

Over the next hour, the women who gave birth earlier in the day begin to stir with worry as they wait for the return of their baby, fearing that their newborn isn’t a survivor.

Ash attends to a red-haired woman jangling her chains. Blood cakes her legs, a red puddle on the floor. “When can I see her? It’s been hours. Is she alright?”

With one leg out the door, Ash calls out, “Tea, suite four.”