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“Fucking hell,” came Phineas’ voice, though Farra could not see him. “Of course it comes the night of a blizzard.”

“Say nothing, brother,” Thaddius rasped. “Or wait outside if you cannot restrain yourself.”

There was a snort of derision. “Nowyou speak of restraint?”

“Go!” Thaddius roared, and it aligned with Farra’s own as another wave overcame her, burying her. When she surfaced again, there was only Thaddius, and he looked at her as though the sight of her pain might split him in two.

“Forgive me,” he said brokenly. “Forgive me.” He said it over and over as the day wore on, as her body revolted, threatening to break her apart.

“I should have come,” he said aloud. “I should have come sooner.”

“No,” Annika answered. “You shouldn’t have.”

“I could have been with her. Comforted her–”

“Comfortedyourself,you mean,” Annika quipped. “The damage was done, Thaddius. Returning to this shelter only risked exposing her. Exposing yourself.”

“I could have–”

“There is nothing you could have done, Glacian. Stop pitying yourself. There is little time remaining. What exactly do you and the moron have planned for her?”

Farra lifted her eyelids long enough to see Thaddius become taut with worry, with dread. “We will take her to the pool,” he said. “And she will drink from it.”

Farra’s strength was waning, but her repulsion was fierce enough to lift her shoulders from her pallet. “No,” she bit out, and was then seized by the grip of pain. She grit her teeth, her vision blurring until it subsided. He wrapped his arms around her, and she gasped into his chest. “No,” she repeated into the fabric of his tunic. “No. I’d sooner… sooner die.” She crumpled again, the pressure strengthening around her middle. She was sure she would snap soon. Her bones would break and there would be no need to speak of her drinking from the pool in some absurd attempt to keep her alive. She would already be at the Mother’s Gate.

Thaddius begged her, pleaded with her, but she heeded none of it. Eventually Annika pushed his hands aside, and Farra heard no one, nothing. She was being sliced from within. A fire scorched through her, starting from her middle. She tilted her head back and screamed.

Then all became black.

Was this death?

Farra dearly hoped so. Death was quiet. It was sightless. Voiceless. There was no sensation. Just the tender suspension of thought, her mind ambling to make meaning of this oblivion, fighting backward to remember. Remember what? How had she found this place? How to escape from it?

But what could possibly compel her to flee its embrace?

“Yennes!”

How out of place it was, the sound of panic amid the peace.

“YENNES!”

Yennes. It meant survivor. Annika had given her the name.

“Yennes! The baby!”

The baby.

The baby. Her baby. The one made of Glacian and Ledge blood, both.

She found her heavy limbs, her heavy eyelids, and forced them open. It took the strength of a titan. The strength of a mountain, but she opened her eyes. The darkness fled and pain gripped her anew.

A terrible roar left her, but it was cut short when her throat closed, her lungs empty of breath.

“Yennes, you must push. Now!”

And this was all that was left. This last thing she would have to endure. She would accept the pain and gift the world this life that never should have been, and then she could rest forever. She need only suffer a while longer.

She was well-versed in suffering. In surviving. She was Ledge-born.