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Phineas cursed loudly. His presence was too big for the shelter, too imposing. His very width threatened to knock the walls of Annika’s home to the ground. “And if there was a way to save you…” he growled, the tension apparent in his neck, in the quake of his wings. “Would you accept its course?”

“What?” Farra blurted, brow furrowed.

“If there was awayto… tomendyou afterward,” Phineas bit out, his eyes filled with malice. “Would you bewilling?” This last seemed to pain him, as though he were reticent to heed the will of a human.

Farra fell silent. She stared at the Glacian with nothing short of blatant suspicion. “And why would you go to any lengths to help me?”

“It is notyouI wish to help.” There could be no arguing the callousness with which he said it. “Thaddius is my brother. I will not see his life squandered by some human he professes to love. If he insists on this insanity –” Phineas paused, readying his words. “Then I will do what is necessary to save him. Even if it means savingyou.” He said it as though the entire idea was absurd – that a Glacian could love a human, or that a human could be worth saving.

“By what means?” Annika said, still stricken in her place. She watched Phineas as though he might tear her to pieces at any moment, a complete contrast to the way she regarded Thaddius.

“When will the child come?” he asked.

“Such things aren’t certain,” Annika answered. “I expect by next moon.”

“You will send word when it begins,” Phineas told her. “Send someone you trust. I will be waiting by the East gate.”

“And then what?” Farra demanded, clutching her stomach with her hands.

“Then Mother help you,” he said giving her one last look of exasperation before leaving. Farra was left with her heart in her throat and a rapidly intensifying sense of foreboding.

CHAPTERTHIRTY-NINE

Annika had prepared her as best she could. With failing delicacy she’d described the tight cramps that would come in her lower stomach and intensify with the passing of time. She’d described the waves of pain, building until she would be blinded by them, until she would become nonsensical, and then she described the blood, the broken bones, the last moments of Farra’s life, spent in agony.

“Will you care for the baby after I’m gone?” Farra whispered to her one evening, back when the swell of her stomach still seemed innocuous. “They will belong here, after all. Among your kind.”

Annika had sighed and patted Farra’s hand. “Of course, Yennes,” she said, but her expression clearly told Farra what she already knew – the female was advanced in years. She would not survive to see this baby grow to maturity. Annika shook herself from her reverie and laid her hand reassuringly along Farra’s cheek. “He will be raised in our village and this village protects its own. If there’s one thing I’m sure of, it is that there will be many a hand to help guide this young one. Just as I was raised. Just as my Ryon was raised.”

“Tell me what he was like,” Farra asked suddenly. Annika gladly told her tale after tale of a boy running through the Colony with his wings following, making mischief from nothing, his heart too free to heed the dangers that surrounded him.

“He was fiercely brave,” she told Farra, a sad smile appearing. “Too brave for one such as us. Too confined for his wild spirit.”

The shelter filled with Annika’s palpable grief. Farra could almost see the boy running through the drapes, launching himself out into the open air. She felt the heaviness of his absence, and clutched Annika’s hands. The female’s tears had begun to slip down her face. How must it feel to have the ghosts of your family living within you? The sounds of their laughter, their chatter. The smell of their skin and the feel of their hands, their expressions and tenor, and the exact sound their footsteps made when they came home. How heavy the weight of their memory must be.

“I pray this child grows to be just as fierce,” Farra told her. “And his spirit as strong.”

Hours later, in the dead of night, Farra awakened to a telling clench at the bottom of her stomach, and she prayed for the same once more.

She waited until dawn broke to wake Annika. By then, the tightening of her stomach had begun to force beads of sweat to coat her forehead and chest. Her back ached terribly, and she found she could not lie down.

“Mercy be with us,” Annika murmured, going still and pale. Then she disappeared out into the morning air.

There was a blizzard coming – of that Farra was sure. She could smell it. The stillness of the wind outside, the biting smell of frost, the charge in the atmosphere. As though the mountain knew something of consequence was imminent, that fate would bring this day a being of great magnitude – an existence immense enough to move it.

Farra curled over her stomach and howled.

Annika stayed with her through each shuddering wave. It was not long before they began to eclipse her – blocking sight and sound and sense so she was nothing but agony. When the iron-like clenching of her belly released and the pain ebbed, she heard the words Annika tried desperately to fill her with. Reassurances, encouragement, prayer. Farra could only nod, her breaths ragged and hitched. The wind outside whistled through the cracks of the shelter, finding the exposed parts of her skin, but she found the cold could not touch her. She was aflame. She was combusting.

“Malishka?”

A face appeared above hers. She blinked away the sting of sweat to bring it into focus. It had been months since she had seen it last. “Thaddius,” she breathed, feeling his fingers wiping the hair from her face. His own crumpled. She saw his eyes well, his lips shudder. He whispered, “This is my doing. My selfishness.”

Farra could not tell if he spoke to her or to himself.

For a moment, while sense was suspended, she could only feel relief that he was there, running his fingers over her cheek, leaning to press his lips to her forehead. She forgot to summon the anger she had carefully harboured these past weeks. Farra clasped his wrist and relished the feel of his forehead pressed to hers.

“You will be well,” he told her, as though it were a command. “I’m going to make sure of it.”