Page 108 of Rogue's Paradise (Covenant of Thorns 3)

There, deep in some internal dimension, something remained. An echo that connected forward in time instead of repeating the voices long past. As if the essence of Cecily, the mitochondrial-powered vestiges of her DNA, lingered on in some pool of racial memory, feeding forward to something else. No, to someoneelse. Someone who yet lived.

Her child.

Fafnir’s child.

Lit with excitement, I followed the trail down a tunnel that blazed with light at the end, to something familiar. As I moved, though, my steps slowed, my mind tugging me back. Rogue pulling on me, mental hand firmly in mine. Keeping me from going over the edge of the cliff.

Right. Don’t go into the light.

I withdrew from Cecily’s corpse and leaned back against Rogue, soaking in his relieved gratitude that I remained with him. I would, I let him know, as long as I could humanly manage.

Fafnir watched me with guarded hope.

“Cecily—the woman you knew—is beyond reach,” I told him, as gently and firmly as I could. “She is gone. I’m sorry for it.”

His face crumpled, the hope fleeing and leaving dust behind. “I felt so sure. There’s still a connection…”

“There is,” I confirmed. Rogue’s hands stilled, every cell of him listening. “I think the connection is to—” Now his fingers flexed in definite warning. How to say it without speaking the words?

But I didn’t need to. Fafnir’s gaze sharpened, gray dust forging into steel. “Where?”

“I don’t know. No.” I put up a hand to stop whatever he might be about to harangue me with. “I have an idea. And that’s what we’ll work on next.” A wave of dizziness washed over me. The cat purred as I drew on Mother Earth’s font through the dirt beneath my feet. The baby kicked, hard, and I gasped, abruptly breaking out into a sweat. “Though I think I may have been standing too long.”

A wash of fluid poured down my legs. Oh, dammit all to hell and gone.

“Or not.” I looked up at Rogue. “Time to pay the piper.”

Chapter 27

In Which Things Proceed Exactly As I Should Have Seen They Would

‡

Be careful what you wishfor.

~Big Book of Fairyland, “Rules ofMagic”

Iprotested whenRogue swept me up into his arms, hating that my skirts were soaked through with amniotic fluids. Then I wised up and wished them clean and dry. Not like the dress could be ruined more and I figured Starling would forgive me in this extremity.

“Not that I care for such things anyway,” Rogue reproved me, carrying me with his long, ground-eating strides toward our tower.

“I can walk. It’s probably better for me, from what I hear.”

“Indulge me,” he gritted.

Coming as we did from the gruesome great cautionary tale of Cecily’s corpse, I figured I could give him this. Still. “We don’t need to hurry,” I pointed out. “This will likely take hours and hours.” If not days, but no use contemplating that possibility. On the tail end of my words, as if to put lie to them, a major contraction seized me, squeezing the breath out of me on a long wheeze of surprised pain.

I sent a mental note of apology to all the women I’d thought had been exaggerating with their labor war stories.

“This is why you can’t walk,” Rogue informed me and I realized I’d rather convulsively grabbed on to him, my face buried in his chest.

“We would have stopped walking and waited it out.” I had to measure the words around my breaths, since the contraction had left me panting. No Lamaze classes for me. Was I supposed to pant or not? Seemed like the movies showed people breathing deep during contractions and panting between. Or vice versa—I hadn’t really paid attention.

“I suspect that, as long as you continue to breathe, that will suffice,” Rogue said, beginning the circular ascent up our stairs. I’d be happy when this was over and I could stay weakness-free long enough to climb the steps myself. If I lived through this.

I gazed up at Rogue, his perfectly carved face set in sharp lines like porcelain. A long lock of his still-loose hair was wound around my hand, where I’d reflexively grabbed hold of him. This was it. The moment of destiny. What I’d been rocketing toward all along, knowingly or not.

“I’ve really loved you, you know,” I told him.

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