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This was the first light of the future.

An urgent voice echoed on the surface of my awareness. I reached for it, tried to feel it, embrace it, and crashed back to the concrete floor in the garden.

My body was a block of ice, freezing my nerve-endings and weighing down my limbs. No energy. No strength. The garden was losing its vibrancy, the edges swallowed by thickening shadows.

“Evie.” Jesse’s agonized face filled my view, tears sheening his eyes, and his voice so strained his words garbled. “Keep your eyes open. Look at me.”

“The baby?” I whispered, or at least I thought I did. I tried to see around him, couldn’t lift my head.

“Her airway is cleared.” A weighted moment clung to Michio’s words, then…

A high-pitched wail hit my ears. My breath hitched, and my chest swelled. The sound of her beautiful voice filled my entire being, and I heard myself crying, my vision flooding in red.

I blinked, clearing my eyes, as Michio leaned over me and placed her tiny body on my chest. Oh my God, she was real. She was here, breathing, warm, mine. Theirs.

I tried uselessly to raise my arms, desperate to hold her. A second later, my arms lifted, guided by Jesse and Roark, their hands adjusting mine into an embrace around her body. Their arms wrapped around me as I peered down at her for the first time.

Pink skin, eyes closed, a tuft of coppery hair, her little fist nuzzled against her mouth. She took my breath away.

“Perfect,” I choked and smiled at her fathers.

They didn’t return my smile. Michio had already moved back my legs, his face a sheet of white and taut with distress. I couldn’t feel pain or pressure anymore, and it became harder to fill my lungs with air. He knew… My heart shattered into thousands of jagged shards. He knew I was fading. Oh God, I was dying, and I needed more time with him.

“Michio, stop. Come here.”

“No, goddammit!” His shout scraped over my skin, his face sculpted in stone. “I can fix this.”

He bent between my legs, blood up to his elbows, his hand inside me, his other pressed on my belly, compressing my uterus between his palms. Jesse’s hard glare fixed on Michio, his arm wrapped around me and the baby. Roark, a gorgeous mirage with tears dripping off his cheeks like water, stroked a finger across my brow and pulled me closer, as if trying to draw me into his despair.

I didn’t have to see their faces to know what was happening. I smelled the blood, tasted Roark’s tears as they fell upon my lips, and heard Michio’s frantic breaths. My life was seeping from my body in shivering waves, and an approaching hush rang in my ears. Pitch-black smothered me, and my muscles twitched to escape it.

Evie, don’t listen to them. Don’t follow them. A weak plea, calling from a distance. The voice grew louder, more demanding.

“You’re not leaving us, Evie!” Jesse shouted. Hands gripped my face. “Evie! Open your fucking eyes!”

Light bled in and with it came the buzz of wings. Red wings. Black spots. They danced like dust motes in the sparkle of the sun, hovering around Michio’s tear-streaked face, climbing through the blond halo of Roark’s hair, and fluttering past Jesse, following the path of his stricken gaze.

Their flight took them to the far side of the garden, and there, hovering at the edge of my vision, was Annie and Aaron. Preserved forever at the sweet ages of seven and six, they held hands between their transparent forms, watching us.

I whimpered, both longing to hold them and fighting to stay.

“No!” Jesse screamed at them, his arms pulling me against him. “You’re not taking her!”

The swarm of ladybirds circled around them, pulling on my breaths, waiting.

“I can’t get her uterus to tighten.” Michio was sobbing now, his shoulders jerking through each violent shudder. “Her blood’s not clotting.”

“Please, come here.” I wheezed, my skin trembling. So cold. Numb. I couldn’t move. Every breath was a tremendous effort.

He climbed up my body and straddled my hips, bracing over me and the baby. Defeat twisted his face. “The doctors are coming. They’ll be able to help.”

But I knew they couldn’t. Machines and surgeries and blood transfusions wouldn’t stop this. Fate was inevitable, and this baby needed my energy, my power. I wouldn’t take it back.

Jesse and Roark wrapped around my sides, enveloping me in the heat of their bodies, their hands soothing, their breaths fast and wet.

“Evie.” Jesse cupped my face. “Stay with us. Listen to my voice.”

I forced my heavy eyelids open and concentrated, not on the apparitions and ladybirds that beckoned me, but on the familiarity of his timbre, on Michio’s eyes begging me to fight, and on the love radiating from Roark’s soft touches.

A tear skipped down Jesse’s cheek. “We’re going to find a boat. A really big, fancy yacht. Even bigger than the one in Italy. You remember it?”