Page 136 of 10 Days to Surrender

I nod, shifting position. Ariel’s thighs tremble against my palms as I brace her legs wider. The intimacy of it strikes me—how many times have I touched her like this in passion?

But never in pain. Never in fear.

“Ready?” Zoya asks as Ariel’s body tenses. She grabs my wrist, shoving it into the wet heat. “Find the heel. Gently.”

My fingers brush something—knobbed ankle, petal-soft skin. Ariel jerks, a wounded sound tearing from her throat.

“Hold her still,” Zoya barks at Pavel.

He pins Ariel’s shoulders as I work. Muscle memory from field dressings and snapped bones means nothing here. The child’s foot slips through my grip like smoke.

“Clockwise,” Zoya snaps. “Now.”

Ariel’s scream shreds the storm. “You’re killing him?—”

“Push,” Zoya commands. “Now!”

Ariel bears down. Her teeth sink into my forearm. I’m grateful for it—the pain is clean. Honest. A penance I’ll wear forever. I feel the exact moment the baby turns, life itself rotating beneath my hands. Then suddenly, incredibly, a head emerges.

The child comes free, pearl-white in the flashlight’s dying beam. Zoya’s hands dart in to catch the mewling bundle. “Boy.”

She passes the child to Belle, who swaddles him in fresh blankets and begins to clean him. Then Zoya looks back to me with a grim nod.

“One more,” I say roughly. “One more, Ariel. You can do this.”

Ariel clutches me tighter. “No—I can’t?—”

“You can.”

We do it all again. Screams soaking into the ground, along with the rain, with the roots of the plants we put there together. Heaven is cracking wide open above us as Ariel pushes and pushes—and at last, our daughter slides into the world.

Her first cry splits the night like lightning. Strong. Defiant.Alive.

Ariel reaches, but I’m already transferring the girl to her chest. Belle does the same. Her arms close around both infants, a fortress of tangled limbs and milk-scent.

“They’re perfect,” she says, voice thick with tears. “So perfect.”

Zoya makes quick work of the umbilical cords. Ariel is cradling both children. The boy is still loud as can be.

But my girl…

My daughter isn’t breathing right.

Her lips are dusky blue, chest barely rising. Not the healthy pink of her brother, who continues to cry.

“Something’s wrong,” Ariel whispers, voice cracking. Her fingers clutch our son tighter as she stares at our daughter’s limp form. “Sasha something’s?—”

I’m already moving, my notes from the Italian Lamaze class seared on the backs of my eyelids. “Give me a towel,” I bark at Lora. She scrambles to comply.

Laying our daughter on the clean cloth, I tilt her head back slightly—God, she’s so small, like a broken bird in my hands. Two fingers on her chest. Gentle puffs of air into her mouth and nose. One. Two.

“Come on,malyshka,” I murmur. “Breathe for Papa.”

Nothing.

Ariel’s sobbing now, fumbling for our daughter with her free hand. I block her view with my shoulder. She doesn’t need to see this. Doesn’t need another reason to hate me if I fail.

More compressions. More breath.

---