Page 80 of Triplets for the Barbarians

Epilogue I

Jewel

The deep darkness begins to subside.

I can’t remember anything—not who I am, what I am, or what happened. I only know that I feel exhausted yet lighter—empty, even. Something doesn’t feel right. As my eyes peel open to find a familiar spotlight on the pristine white ceiling, it’s as if my brain suddenly switches back on.

Thousands of moments come flooding back in, and I can barely breathe as I live through an entire life in the span of a few seconds.

My earliest memory as a kid is giggling on my daddy’s shoulders. His face slowly fading away. My mom’s, too. It’s been so long since I’ve seen either of them, my family, my friends, my planet.

Umok’s grin comes into focus. The starship. The strange fluid he made us take unlocked our brains’ ability to understand their language. The disaster we crash-landed into. The civil war on Sunna. The plague and the horrible death it inflicted upon its victims. The turmoil. The fear.

The fighting. Oh, the endless fighting.

And Yossul. Fadai. The looks on their faces when they first saw us, human women, foreigners in their land. Creatures from outer space. They were stunned but not scared. Curious but not greedy. They weren’t heathens like Umok and his men. They took care of us. They sheltered us. Me. They loved me, and I grew to love them.

My heart starts racing.

“Wait,” I mumble. “My water broke.”

I remember that now: the pregnancy, the peace that followed the war, the Sky Tribe’s last starship exploding, Shaytan Hull breathing his last breath.

I look around, a sense of alarm coming over me. Blood turns to ice in my veins as I glance down and see my wrist punctured with an IV drip. My belly is flatter than I remember it. My legs feel soft, like boiled spaghetti. My lips dry.

“My babies,” I manage, my voice barely audible.

The door opens. Cynthia comes in, wearing a white robe. Relief washes over me at the sight of her. My anchor. My doctor. My best friend. She smiles softly as she rushes to my bedside.

“Hey, hey, it’s okay, Jewel,” she says. “You’re okay. You’re awake.”

“What happened? My water broke.”

I was in the middle of a briefing. Yossul and Fadai had arranged for Sunna’s highest-ranking generals to meet us in the dining room of our house one morning since I was too heavy to travel even across the street at that point.

I remember the generals' stunned looks when they realized what was happening. Yossul and Fadai, too, were wide-eyed and paralyzed for the first few seconds.

“Yes, it did,” Cynthia says, gently caressing my cheek. “There were some complications, honey. I had to put you under so I could perform a c-section.”

“My babies,” I reply, panic gripping me by the throat.

“They’re okay, Jewel. Three healthy baby girls, each the size of a torpedo,” she says, half-joking. “You wouldn’t have been able to deliver them naturally. I had to cut you open.”

“Where are they?”

“I’ll have them brought in,” she says. “But you need to be aware…” Her humor fades as she stares at me for a moment too long.

“What? What is it?”

“You gave us quite the scare. It’s been three weeks since the girls were born. I gave you a mild anesthetic, but you reacted poorly to it. We’ve been waiting for you to wake up for so long.”

It’s as if the whole sky of Sunna has just dropped on my head. “What do you mean?”

“I’m not sure what happened, but you were in a deep coma. Your vitals were slow, way too slow. I pumped you full of Sunna’s inner fire, as well, and nothing,” Cynthia replies. “For a minute there, I wasn’t sure you were going to pull through.”

My worst fear would’ve come true, then. I would’ve died, and I never would’ve had a chance to be with my babies and my men, to watch my daughters grow into beautiful, fierce hybrid women. I would’ve missed out on so much on everything, and I wouldn’t have been the wiser, either.

It’s funny how death can put things into such a clear and striking perspective. And all I did was brush right past it.

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