As I feel a kick in Sapphire’s belly, she watches me thoughtfully, mouth pulling down at the corners.
“What is it?” I ask.
She taps her belly. “Bringing a baby into this world…it’s not as scary.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m having a little girl,” she says thick with so much feeling behind it. “If I were to have her a few decades ago…I would have been sick over it. Thank you for changing this world to be a better place for my daughter, Mom. For me. I still get nightmares over how it used to be. I can’t imagine my daughter having to grow up in that fucked up society.”
I hold her hand and smile.
“One day, you’ll make it an even better place before you leave it too.”
Sapphire and Niklaus run Demechnef together. They’ve built a golden lamp post in front of the new women’s sanctuary in memory of Niles. They’ve funded housing for older women who have been trapped in abusive marriages with their husbands.
They’ve already done so much, and they’re only getting started.
As much as it still guts me that my daughter had to travel to the most horrific moments in history, it’s made her and her husband better people with fuller hearts.
“Are Aunt Ruth and Uncle Warrose still coming next week?” she asks.
“And Renly.”
“Still apprenticing her?”
I smile. “She actually decided to name him her successor.”
Her brows lift. “To the Mazonist throne?!”
“Ruth doesn’t believe in bloodlines leading a lineage. She wants a well-deserving, pure of heart leader to take her place when she’s gone. And she couldn’t think of anyone better than the man Niles gave his life to save.”
As my children leave and the house grows quiet, Dessin reads to me on the couch. It’s two in the morning, and he ends up carrying me to bed. DaiSzek is already lying in his own cot on the other end of the room—never missing his bedtime.
“Want to stay up all night and talk again?” Dessin asks.
I chuckle. “No.”
“Final answer?”
The humor quickly turns sour in my stomach. He sits up in bed, caressing my hip. Dessin is usually unreadable, but this is his give away. Something is bothering him, and he’d rather stay awake all night than go to bed and see it in his nightmares.
“Is it the children?” I ask.
He glances down at my worried expression, then shakes his head.
“Has something happened?”Please, don’t make me dig for it.
“You and I have had a lifetime of loss,” he whispers into the dark bedroom, voice a low baritone of rough bark and the tremor of an earthquake.
“We have…”
“I don’t know how much more we can take.”
“Why would you say that?” He’s getting to a point. It’s like watching a tsunami build into a tidal wave over your head, a breath before it wipes out all life around you.
His throat elongates as he swallows. “It’s Chekiss, baby.”
I sit up. My breath catching like a butterfly in a net.
