Page 10

RONNIE

T he pain rips through my body, white-hot and merciless. I arch my back against my bed, fingers clawing the sheets as another contraction crashes over me. My hair plasters to my forehead, drenched in sweat.

"I can't—" The words choke in my throat as the pain recedes momentarily, leaving me gasping. "I can't do this."

Harmony's face hovers above mine, her features calm despite the chaos unfolding. Those hazel-green eyes hold mine steady, refusing to let me drift away on waves of panic.

"You can. You are." Her calloused hands wipe my brow with a cool cloth. "Women have been doing this since the dawn of time. Your body knows what to do, Ronnie."

"What does my body know about birthing a—" I bite back the words as another contraction builds. Xaphan baby. Half-xaphan baby. Araton's baby. The image of golden eyes flashes unbidden through my mind, and I want to scream at myself for thinking of him now.

The pain crests again, and this time I don't hold back. My cry echoes through the small cottage I've been staying in, raw and primal.

"That's it," Harmony encourages, moving to check between my legs. "The baby's close. I can see the head. On the next one, you push with everything you've got."

Terror twists inside me, sharper than even the physical agony. What if the baby looks just like him? What if it has full wings, not just the tiny ones of mixed children? What if it has his smile, his laugh, his infuriating confidence?

What if I can't love it?

"Ronnie!" Harmony's voice snaps me back. "Focus. Push now!"

My body takes over. I bear down, gritting my teeth against the searing pressure. Something inside me tears and stretches beyond what I thought possible. The pain becomes my entire world—concentrated, impossible.

"Again!" Harmony commands.

I push, a guttural sound wrenching from somewhere deep in my chest. Through the haze, I glimpse Harmony's steady hands positioned to receive my child.

"Head's out. One more big push for the shoulders."

My strength wavers. I shake my head, tears mingling with sweat. "I can't."

Harmony's eyes flash. "You didn't cross half the continent, fight through this pregnancy alone, just to give up now. This baby needs you to finish what you started. Push!"

The rebuke lands like a slap. With the last of my reserves, I bear down once more.

The release is sudden—a slippery, sliding sensation followed by an absence of pressure so profound I nearly sob with relief. For one breath-stopping moment, silence fills the room.

Then—a cry. High and indignant, declaring its arrival to the world.

"A girl," Harmony announces, her voice thick with emotion. "You have a daughter, Ronnie."

My heart stutters. A daughter. Not an it. Not a reminder. A daughter.

Harmony works quickly, wiping the baby clean before placing the tiny, squirming bundle on my chest. I look down, afraid of what I'll see, afraid of what I'll feel.

Wide golden eyes—Araton's eyes—stare up at me from a round face. Her skin is several shades lighter than mine, with a warm, buttery glow that seems to come from within. Thick black curls, still damp, spiral wildly from her head.

And from her shoulder blades protrude two tiny, downy nubs—the beginnings of wings.

"They're just starting to form," Harmony murmurs, noticing my fixed stare. "They'll grow slowly. Half-xaphan children usually develop their wings over years, not months like full-blooded ones."

My fingers hover over the tiny protrusions, trembling. I expected to feel revulsion or fear. Instead, something fierce and protective surges through me.

"She's perfect," I whisper, surprising myself with the truth of it.

The baby's face scrunches, and she lets out another indignant cry. Without thinking, I shift her to my breast. She latches immediately, her tiny fingers splaying across my skin.

"What will you call her?" Harmony asks, watching us with a soft smile as she cleans up.

Names dance through my mind—my mother's, my grandmother's, names from stories I'd heard as a child. But looking at this fierce little creature, only one fits.

"Camille Wynn," I say. "Millie."

As if approving, Millie's grip tightens on my finger.

In that moment, the world narrows to just us two—her tiny, perfect form and my battered body cradling her.

The months of fear and running, the constant dread of being found, the uncertainty of what I'd feel when I finally saw her—it all fades against this single truth: she is mine.

And gods help anyone who tries to take her from me.

The first morning I wake to Millie's soft cries instead of her piercing wails feels like a victory. I scoop her from the cradle Joss carved—a delicate thing with thalivern etched along the edges—and cradle her against my chest.

"Good morning, my pretty girl," I whisper as her golden eyes blinking up at me.

Those eyes. So like his it makes my chest ache. When she fixes them on me with that intense, unblinking stare, I see him completely. The same way her tiny fingers curl with surprising strength around mine reminds me of how his hands would grasp mine in those rare moments of tenderness.

"You hungry?" I stroke the downy nubs on her back. They've grown in the three months since her birth—soft silver-tinged down now covering what will someday be proper wings. Not as large as a full-blooded xaphan's would be, but wings nonetheless.

Marda arrives with fresh bread and a pot of broth before I've even finished feeding Millie.

"Don't get up," she commands, bustling in with all the authority of her ample frame. Her silver-streaked dark hair is tied back in a practical knot, and flour still dusts her forearms. "You look like you actually slept last night."

"Almost four hours straight," I confirm, adjusting Millie against my shoulder.

Marda sets down her basket and immediately reaches for my daughter. I hand her over, watching how naturally the older woman cradles her, cooing nonsense that makes Millie's face light up.

"Look at those curls getting wilder by the day." Marda twirls one of Millie's black ringlets around her finger. "Just like her mama's, but darker."

Her father's color, my texture. I swallow hard.

"Has she been moving her wings more?" Marda asks, peering at the tiny protrusions.

"She flexes them when she's excited. It's... cute." The admission feels like a betrayal of my former self—the woman who would have sneered at anything xaphan.

Marda gives me a knowing look over Millie's head. "Children have a way of changing what we think we know."

A knock at the door interrupts my response. Harmony enters, Brooke darting past her legs to reach Millie first.

"Gentle," Harmony reminds her daughter as Brooke leans over Marda's arms to inspect the baby.

"She's bigger," Brooke announces, her silver eyes—so like Adellum's—wide with wonder. "Can I touch her wings?"

"Carefully," I find myself saying, when once I might have snapped at such a request.

Brooke's tiny fingers brush over the silvery down with reverence. "They're softer than Papa's."

"Baby feathers," Harmony explains, setting a basket of fresh vegetables on my table. "Like how your hair was different when you were tiny."

Brooke nods solemnly, accepting this wisdom, then reaches into her pocket. "I made this for Millie." She produces a small clay figure—crude but recognizably a winged baby.

My throat tightens unexpectedly. "It's beautiful, Brooke. Thank you."

"Uncle Joss helped with the wings," she admits, but beams at the praise.

Later, after they've gone, I sit by the window watching Millie sleep. The clay figure rests beside her on the table. The afternoon sun catches on her curls, turning them almost blue-black. Araton's exact shade.

"She deserves to know you," I whisper, tracing the perfect curve of her cheek. "And you deserve to know her."

The thought terrifies me—imagining Araton's face when he sees her, imagining him wanting to take her away. Would he? The Araton I knew was enigmatic, impossible to read beneath his charm. We never spoke of anything real, anything that mattered. Just bodies moving together, desire without substance.

But these wings on our daughter make it impossible to pretend he doesn't matter. And her eyes… They nearly undo me every time.

"She has your smile," Adellum says one evening, weeks later, when he stops by with a rattle he's carved for Millie. I'm startled—not by his presence, which has become commonplace as Harmony brings him along to check on us—but by his observation.

"You think?" I watch as Millie gurgles up at him, fascinated by his massive gray wings.

"Definitely. That little curl at the corner when she's about to laugh—pure Ronnie." He demonstrates, mimicking what he means, and I'm struck by the easy fondness in this xaphan's expression as he gazes at my half-xaphan child.

"I think she looks like her father," I manage, the words sticking in my throat.

Adellum shrugs those powerful shoulders. "She has parts of both of you."

I don't know why, but his simple acceptance cracks something open in me. "I don't know what I'm doing," I confess abruptly. "I hated xaphan my entire life, and now I'm raising one."

"Half," he corrects mildly. "And you're doing just fine."

"How can you know that?"

Adellum's silver eyes—so like Brooke's—settle on me. "Because you look at her the way I look at my daughter. Like she's the universe condensed into something you can hold."

His words are so true that they settle in my chest, healing a part of me that was so broken and afraid. I didn't know if I would hate her because of her father…

But I could never love anyone more than my little girl.