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Isat in a squashy couch, smiling as I watched Lily bug Revik to color with her.

She wanted me to color with her, too, but I was a little too entertained watching the two of them, so my paper and crayons sat on the couch next to me, pretty much untouched.

Something about watching the two of them argue about what color a rabbit should be brought my mind back to the first time Revik and I walked into this room.

We’d both been so damned nervous.

It was weeks before they let us in to see her.

Even then, I pretty much had to throw a fit. Then Revik threw a fit. Then I threw another fit… until finally Balidor and the other Adhipan seers cleared us. They still didn’t know everything Menlim had done to her light. She had high-ranked seers looking at it pretty much every day, but no one trusted they’d found all of what Menlim put there.

By the time they finally let us in, we were both acting a bit nuts.

Revik and I stood outside the tank compartment together, stuck between anticipation, excitement, nerves, relief, and full-blown terror as we waited for them to let us in.

Neither of us moved while Chinja and Tenzi opened the outside door

I clutched Revik’s hand so tightly it probably hurt.

They’d already given us a rundown on the rules.

While we stood there, Balidor listed them all out to us again.

Two hour stretches inside Lily’s tank for either of us, maximum. Nothing invasive with our lights, at least in terms of her higheraleimicstructures. Four-hour gaps between two-hour stints in the tank. No sleeping in there. No letting her resonate too much with Revik’s higher column, or even mine, although they were mostly worried about Revik, for obvious reasons. Report any anomalies we noticed to the infiltration team. Don’t try to do any infiltration work with her ourselves. Don’t try to map her light. Don’t try to follow any resonances.

We stood there, listening to all that crap, but only half-listening.

Revik held my fingers firmly, despite my death grip, but I’d felt every ounce of his attention focused on the other side of that door. When they finally got it open, a violent lurch of nerves hit my stomach.

I remember I got dizzy, and nauseated. My skin flushed hot.

More than any of that, I remember being terrified.

I was absolutely fuckingterrified.

I couldn’t wrap my head around seeing myself as her mother.

I couldn’t help feeling like I hadn’t earned that title. I mean, sure, half of Lily’s genetic material was mine. I carried her for the first few weeks of her existence. I wasn’t sure how either thing really made me her mom, though.

To Lily, Cass was her mom.

The person I’d nearly killed to get Lily away from her, the person who’d stolen her, who gave her to Menlim, who ripped her out of my body––thatwas who Lily saw as her mommy. Just thinking about that made me incredibly sad.

Revik must’ve been nervous, too.

If he was, he didn’t show it; he’d been the rock through all of that.

I told myself it was because he’d been alive longer. He’d wanted fatherhood for longer, and he had more time to think about what that meant. He also had Maygar, which maybe got him past some of the initial hang-ups. Anyway, he remembered how his own, real, biological parents had been, before Menlim had them murdered.

Revik knew what a healthy seer family was supposed to look like.

Whatever the exact set of reasons, he definitely seemed to have more confidence than me in his ability to parent a child without completely screwing them up. He’d been reassuring me on the motherhood thing for weeks, even though we rarely talked about what it would actuallybelike, us being parents.

Of course, a quieter, more nagging voice in the back of my head told me Revik was only less nervous because he’d never spent any time with small kids. Letting out a faintly-amused snort, he’d looked at me when I thought that, gripping my hand harder.

Stop being such a baby,he chided.

I knocked into him with my arm, without letting go of his hand.