I STARED AT HIM AND CROSSED MY ARMS AS THOUGH I might be able to hold back the feelings of hurt and confusion that swam in my breast. How could he be the one to fetch me, and how could Ina possibly be asking for me to help her?
“This feels like a trap,” I said. There was no upside for me in this situation. If Hal was back on their side, they were surely using him to lead me straight to Nismae. She’d drain the rest of my blood to keep me from helping the king. And if Ina’s baby was about to be born, that meant my time to find the Fatestone was dwindling.
“It’s not a trap.” He looked at me with troubled eyes, a mirror of everything I felt.
“I know what your word is worth,” I said. A stab of guilt followed.
He looked at me as though I’d struck him, then took a slow breath and tried to pull himself together.
“This isn’t about me and you,” Hal said. “There’s a baby about to be born, and nobody down there knows what to do.”
Unbelievable.
“Nismae couldn’t possibly find a competent midwife in the entire city of Corovja?” I gestured broadly. “She couldn’t just let nature run its course and leave me out of it?”
“Nismae wants what Ina wants, and Ina wants you.” He held out a pair of objects that glinted in the moonlight.
Nismae’s cuffs.
“She gave me these to lend you as a promise of her intent,” he said. “Without them, she’s as vulnerable as any other mortal. You’re more powerful than her and you know it.”
“And what about Ina? How do I know she’s not waiting for me in dragon form, ready to tear off my head because I refused to join her?” I challenged him.
“She gave me this,” he said, pulling the dragon charm from my wrap bracelet from his pocket.
I took a sharp breath. She’d saved it. Why? Because it was from Garen, or because she’d given it to me? My resolve faltered the slightest bit. Maybe they really did need help. What if I turned my back on them and something terrible happened to the baby? It would certainly make things easier for the king if something befell Ina, but I couldn’t handle being the one responsible for it.
“Then what about you?” I couldn’t follow him anywhere with things like this between us. Hurt sparked between us the same way love once had.
“I’m still sorry for everything,” he said. “I know you can’t forgive me right now, and that’s all right. For what it’s worth, I haven’t forgiven myself yet, either.”
He was right. I couldn’t forgive him, not now.
He waited for my answer, not pushing.
I still loved that about him, even though I didn’t want to feel anything but anger.
Resigned, I held out my hand for the cuffs and the charm. “Show me the way.”
We raced down the mountain through alleyways and staircases, shortcuts and back roads, until we reached an old mining area where the Nightswifts had apparently set up camp. Lights winked amidst the trees, and when the wind shifted, I smelled cook fires.
As we drew closer, I pulled my knife from my belt with my uninjured hand. Nismae needed to know that I wasn’t going to be toyed with, regardless of any supposed promises she’d made. With my injured hand, I drew my cloak of shadows more tightly around my shoulders, ready to disappear at the slightest provocation.
Nismae broke through the tree line to greet us, alone. It was strange to see her without her cuffs—I’d come to think of them as a part of her, as much as her strong stature and the keen intelligence in her hazel-brown eyes.
I held up my knife.
“I still don’t trust you,” I said.
She nodded, accepting that without argument. “You don’t have to. Ina just needs your help. We may be on opposite sides of the battle to come, but that doesn’t have to matter tonight.”
“How do I know you aren’t just trying to get more of my blood?” I asked.
“Because I swear on my own blood and life that all we need is help delivering this baby,” she said.
I edged closer, trying to get a better look at her expression. She held herself as proudly as usual, but I could sense the fatigue in her now that the bracelets weren’t muddying her aura in my Sight.
“Promise me,” I said. “Promise me that you will not hurt me, that I will be free to go as soon as the baby is born. Promise me you won’t reach out to me after this or send Hal for me like some kind of errand boy.”
Hal looked at the ground, not meeting either of our eyes.
“I promise,” she said. “Please help us.”
I hesitated a moment longer, but it was the please that broke me. Nismae didn’t seem like the kind of person who used that word often.
“All right. Show me where Ina is. I don’t want to spend any longer with you than I have to.”
“Thank you,” Nismae said. “Come this way.” She turned and led us toward the Nightswifts’ camp.
Hal followed us, wisely keeping his mouth shut.
Nismae led us through the camp to a cave. Warmth enveloped me when we stepped in; it must have originally been a bathhouse for miners. My eyes slowly adjusted to the dim lantern light as Ina let out an agonized—and quite human—moan from the back. As I’d warned her, she had to labor in human form. Poe crouched near the fire, anxiously folding and refolding blankets and minding a kettle of boiling water.
“What have you given her?” I asked Poe.
“Nothing,” the mousy girl said. “She won’t take anything from me. She shouts if I go near.”
“Is there anything in this that will help?” Nismae asked, flinging my satchel into my arms.
“Yes,” I said, hugging it to my chest and feeling a quick burst of gladness. I never thought I would see it again. I dropped to the floor and started rummaging through it. “How long has she been in labor?”
“Since early this morning,” Nismae said. “Is this normal? Should she be like this?”
“She should be all right unless the baby is breech or something else has gone wrong,” I said. “I’ll have to examine her.”
Ina moaned again from the back of the cave, where she was submerged in a pool of water. I hurried to her side and tested it with my hand. Not too warm. At least they’d had the sense not to let her get into one of the hotter pools.
“Hal, set aside some of that boiling water and let it cool a little so I can wash my hands.”
He obeyed as quickly as if we’d been back in our easy rhythm of setting up camp. My heart squeezed uncomfortably at the memories.
“What can I do?” Nismae trailed anxiously behind me.
“Get over here and help her out of the water. If she has another contraction, support her under her arms so she can squat,” I said. “You’ve got two working hands, unlike some of us.”
Nismae ignored the jab, seemingly grateful to have something to do. She helped Ina out of the pool and wrapped her in a blanket, then lowered her over the straw they’d laid beside the pool.
“You’re here,” Ina said. Tears sprang to the corners of her eyes. She grasped my hand, sending uncomfortable twinges up my injured arm thanks to the damaged nerves. For the first time since leaving Amalska, she looked like the Ina I remembered. One who relied on me, who had a sweet side to balance her ambition and fierceness.
I felt nothing.
The vulnerability in her eyes didn’t sway me as it once might have. I wanted to help her, but I wasn’t enslaved by that desire. I left the job of hovering and soothing to Nismae, who stroked Ina’s brow and whispered comforting things in her ear, only to earn a glare and a yell during the next contraction.
“These contractions are coming close together,” I said. “Poe, heat more water and make tea.” I flung several sachets of herbs at her and listed out the proportions of each. She rushed to do it, looking more confident now that someone else was in charge.
As soon as the contraction subsided, Nismae helped Ina lie down, propping her up with stuffed cushions and folded blankets to support her back while I washed my hands in the hot water Hal had prepared.
“Is it all right if I examine you and check on the baby?” I asked Ina.
She nodded, breathing heavily, strands of her sable hair sticking to her face.
I examined her, trying to ignore the strangeness of revisiting such an intimate part of her for such different reasons.
“Ina.” I returned to her side. “It’s time. Push when you feel ready.”
“All right,” she said, her voice a raspy whisper.
Poe rushed over with swaddling blankets and fresh rags. Nismae helped Ina into a squatting position again, even as Ina moaned and cursed and gnashed her teeth.
After fifteen minutes of Ina continuing to labor to no avail, Nismae spoke up. “Is this supposed to take so long?”
“Be quiet and hold her up,” I said, and Ina and I bestowed her with matching glares. “The baby will come when the time is right.”
Ina’s contractions continued to intensify until she couldn’t get comfortable. She alternately cursed us and demanded we do something about her situation. I stayed steady, familiar with this phase of childbirth, while Nismae looked half-panicked.
A few minutes later, I held Ina’s son.
“Look at you!” I said to the baby.
He let out a good healthy cry.
I couldn’t help but smile at the miracle of him—his tiny hands, his angry scrunched-up face, so unhappy to be out in the world. While I no longer felt anything for Ina, looking at this baby flooded me with emotions I didn’t entirely know how to manage. I wanted to hold him close and keep him safe, to tell him every day how perfect he was.
Instead I enjoyed the few minutes I had, humming him a lullaby as I carefully wiped him clean. I swaddled him, then moved to put him on Ina’s chest, where he could rest until she delivered the afterbirth.
Ina put up her arm. I thought she was reaching for the baby—until she spoke.
“No,” she croaked.
That one word cut me to the bone.
“What?” I asked. Stupefied, I knelt beside her with the baby in my arms, instinctively holding him closer to myself.
“I don’t want to touch him,” Ina said. “Get him away from me.”
This couldn’t be happening. She wouldn’t do this.
“You have to. He needs to nurse. He needs his mother!” I pleaded with her to understand, to look at how tiny and helpless he was. How could she not see how much he needed her? How could she deny him the comfort of resting on her chest, of hearing her familiar heartbeat to welcome him to the outside world?
“I’m not his mother.” She turned her head away.
“But—”
“No,” she said firmly. “I cannot be both a mother and a queen. Raise him as your son. You’ll be a far better mother than me.” She closed her eyes. Labor had exhausted her.
After everything we’d been through from Amalska to here, she expected me to keep him.
A wave of anguish hit me. I thought about setting him down on her chest anyway so that she could feel how soft and small he was. So that she could hear his cries and feel compelled to give him some nourishment, some love. How could she refuse him? How could a mother turn her back on her own helpless baby?
But I knew it was possible, because my own mother had done this—turned away from me the moment I was born, leaving me to be raised by someone else, abandoning me to never truly know who I was. I couldn’t let that happen to this little boy.
In the wake of my empathy for the baby, rage swiftly followed.
I hated her.
I looked for Hal, only to realize he was right behind me, peering over my shoulder at the baby. He looked just as horrified and dismayed by Ina’s words as I felt. We exchanged a look of understanding that temporarily bridged everything that was broken between us.
“Can you hold him for a minute while I gather my things?” I asked softly. I trusted him to do that much, at least.
He nodded, and I nestled the baby in his arms.
“He’s so tiny,” Hal said with wonder.
Moments later, he was already walking around having an animated one-sided conversation with the bundle in his arms. “Can you smell the cook fires? I can. But no rabbit for you. You don’t have any teeth yet!”
I slung my satchel over my shoulder. As angry as I was with Ina, she’d get what she wanted. If he couldn’t have his mother, he would at least have me.
As for the next time I saw her, it would be from the opposite side of a battlefield.
“Wait,” Ina said, weakly reaching out a hand.
I paused, wondering if the threat of my departure had finally changed her mind, but all she said was “Call him Iman.”
His name meant “faith.”
She’d chosen to put hers in me after all.