I turn away from their tender moment and close my eyes as a fire threatens to choke me from the inside with its fierce smoke, recognizing the feeling for what it is. Destruction. The desire to tear apart those who will likely take that baby boy straight from my sister’s arms. To tear apart the men who have turned their gaze from the howling and hollow mothers they take from.
I hear a breath sucked in through clenched teeth and my attention whips back to my sister. Her face is pinching and she hands the baby back to our mother.
“It’s time,” one of the nursemaids declares, and I take my sister back into my arms. It’s not long before the sharp cry of a new child fills the chamber, the sound echoing, loud, and furious.
“A girl,” Ninon announces, sighing with relief. I feel like I can breathe again. Even if the boy is a shifter, at least she will get to keep one. At least she will have something.
Kalixta leans her forehead against mine, a few strands of our straight, near black hair twining together. This close, I study her face. It’s not an exact copy of mine, but close enough. Heavy hooded lids close to cover the same dark honey brown eyes as mine, my jaw and face a touch wider than hers, her cheeks softer in the hollows where mine dip in, my full upper and lower lip making me look perpetually sullen while hers hold a softer, sensual curve. Our noses are the same, though, except mine is adorned with a gold hoop pierced at my septum. A gift to myself after my eighteenth year selection ceremony.
“You did it,” I whisper.
Kalixta smiles, and she opens her eyes to meet my matching ones. I back away to let the nursemaids do their work and once my sister is arranged and settled on a set of clean mats and collection of lush pillows, the babies are placed in her arms.
I stand back with Ninon, fanning my loose cropped shirt against my sticky skin. The two of us came straight from our patrol, called in as soon as my sister went into labor, only an hour after we left for the evening. I’m still in my riding trousers, loose pants cinched tight at the ankles.My riding wrap I discarded somewhere long ago. My sister smiles down at her two babies, face glowing and serene.
My mother sidles up next to me and places her hand on my shoulder, which I loosen, trying not to bristle at her touch. “I’m so glad she’s happy,” my mother says.
“She certainly looks so,” I say, but I wonder how she truly feels. I could ask her, but I don’t want to risk her shutting me out. Not again. Not anymore.
“You will be there next,” she says, nodding to where Kalixta lies, holding her children. “I’m sure of it.”
I bite my tongue. “Alixor seems content to take his time,” I reply, passing a sidelong glance to Ninon that says,which is fine with me.
If there were a god of luck, it would be against me. Four years after my presentation at eighteen, Alixor came to select a carremai. He saw me in the crowd, my face aglow post hunting victory and he wanted me. It didn’t matter that the Sar Dyeus had marked me as undesirable. Alixor was an elite, and elites get what they want. Even if it goes against the king’s decree, it would seem. The Sar Dyeus had only said; “If you wish to fail in your task to breed, then by all means, choose her.”
I can still recall the way those words wound around my spine, sealing my fate.
I could have refused, but banishment outside our protected lands, left to the mercy of the rogues, is a terrible way to die.
By the time Alixor chose me, I’d been a huntress for years, bringing game meat home to my people and shooting rogue dragons that slipped past Dyeus’s defenses. While I don’t enjoy killing, the freedom and seeing the open night sky fills some of the emptiness inside of me. I was content, despite the deep, unending yearning for something…more. So I refused to give up my role as huntress after being chosen, much to my mother’s great annoyance.
I slip out from under her hand. “She’ll need rest, so we’ll be going.” I spy my riding wrap on the ground nearby and lean over to grab it up by the tips of my fingers.
“Kaisa,” my mother hisses. “You can’t really mean togo out. When will all that end? You’re chosen now. A cohort of the gods.”
The dragons are no gods. The gods are silent and absent. My teeth hurt from how hard I’m clenching them to keep the words from spilling out. Such blasphemous speech has no place in our community. “Yes. And when I’ve fulfilled my duty as carremai, I will have the hunts to come back to.” I will not let them take more from me. And, if I have it my way, I will not have them take anything at all.
“The Sar Dyeus will be here yet. You need rest before Alixor comes with the hoard.” I don’t miss the displeasure in her tone.
Rest is for the cool quiet of peace and right now my heart is burning and riotous. I need to ride, to feel the wind on my face, but I don’t say so. I don’t give her that piece of my heart. She doesn’t deserve it and she wouldn’t understand it in any case. I have hope that maybe one day we can share the love I see other mothers offering their children, given time. For now though, there are wounds between the two of us that have not been tended and my hands are still not yet gentle enough to dig through the weeds without hurting the flowers. I don’t offer my mother another word. “Ninon?”
“I’m with you,” she says, offering my mother a small bow as we make our leave.
“Kaisa, wait,” my mother calls and I send up a silent thanks to the nursemaid who inadvertently intercepts her from coming after us to give her reassurance on Kalixta’s condition. I approach my sister, donning my riding wrap even though I’m still sweltering.
“Leaving so soon?” she asks, a sleepy smile on her face.
“We can stay.” I kneel beside her, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.
“I’ve kept you underground long enough.”
“It hasn’t been that long.” I don’t precisely know how long, but I know I’ve had longer nights than this out on hunts.
“No, no. Go. I don’t want to force you to stay around Mother. Besides, both of you being here will only exhaustme further.”
I don’t disagree. “I’ll be back by the time the hoard comes and I’ll stay with you at midday.”
“You sleep at midday. Come in the night so I can rest.”
