When she arrives, she approaches me in her usual calm, insightful way, unflustered by the tower or the flight here on the back of a wolf-bird.
She asks me how I’m feeling and I’m honest with her.
“Powerfulandpowerless,” I say.
She inclines her head as she checks me over. “You’ve walked a path I never could have imagined, Asha.”
“So have you,” I murmur.
She becomes still for a moment.
And then, “Is he…?”
She presses her lips together, falling silent.
Even here, she won’t feel safe to ask about Thaden. The fact that she brought a Blacksmith child into the world… well… there are some who would kill her for it.
“My son will be a wolf,” I say, acting as if she’d been talking about him. “Erik and Galeia are certain of it. But I think I should also seek my sister’s opinion about it. She lives in the village known asMyrkur Fjallnow, did you know?”
Genova shakes her head. “I didn’t.”
“She’s very happy there,” I continue. “The leader of the village is a good man. He’s intelligent and honorable. He crafts metal limbs for those who have suffered terrible wounds. Tamra helps him. They look after the people who live there.”
Genova raises her eyes to mine with the barest whisper. “Thank you.”
Clearing her throat and wiping at her eyes, she steps back from me. “Everything seems fine. If you have any concerns, send Erik for me. Regardless, I’ll visit each month to check on you, and I’ll visit more often closer to the birth.”
After that, the days pass quickly.
Weeks turn into months, and the stairs become my enemy.
I eventually set up a bedroom on the first floor of the tower, and that’s where my son is born eight months later.
He is perfect and strong, his eyes already gray like his father’s, a matting of wolfish hair across his head, and oh, he has lungs!
His roar as he takes his first breath sounds like a challenge to the world.
Erik holds my hand as tightly as I squeeze his.
Genova has barely wrapped our son in a blanket before Galeia darts into the room, her eyes wide.
She was waiting outside with Gallium and Tamra, who appear in the doorway behind her, looking a little helpless because clearly, there was no keeping Galeia from her brother.
She crawls onto the blanket beside me while Genova hands me my bawling son, laying him carefully down on my chest.
He quiets at the contact, his eyes barely open beyond slits, but he sees me. And I see him.
Erik nudges in on the other side of me, and then I’m wedged between the people I love most in the world.
The family I will protect, no matter what.
I close my eyes and whisper to them, “You are loved.”
And so am I.
Epilogue
GALEIA - TWENTY-FIVE YEARS LATER
