"I am Asharin," I say quietly. "Queen heir of Alarna. Princess of Veynar." Another wave hits, harder. "We were heading to Shalvar. It is heavily warded. The children are powerful. Anyone loyal to us will protect them, but many will want to harm?—"
The pain tears through me so violently it breaks the words apart.
I scream.
Blood fills my mouth and spills forward as I choke on it, my body folding into itself as the force of it rips through my abdomen and deeper. It is everywhere now, the wound, the blood, the heat and the cold fighting through me at once.
At the stair the Morrak hisses, the sound cutting through everything.
I lose myself for a moment. The world goes dark.
"Asharin. Asharin?—"
Saurin's voice pulls me back. She is above me, her hands shaking as she tries to hold me in place.
I smile. It takes more effort than anything else.
"I know you will do it right," I say.
She shakes her head, panic breaking through what little control she had left. "I cannot?—"
"You can," I say. "Do it. Please. Before it is too late."
My hand lifts weakly to my neck and I find them by touch. "The pendant," I say, my fingers brushing it. "For the first child." I move lower. "The ring. For the second."
She nods, her lips moving as she tries to steady herself. Then she closes her eyes, murmurs something under her breath, and her hands move to my abdomen.
The magic begins slowly. It pulls at me first, and then it opens.
The sensation goes deeper than pain alone, stretching into something that forces a sound from me before I can stop it, my body arching against it as it tears through with a precision that does not lessen what it does. I cannot hold still. I cannot stop it.
Through blurred vision I see movement. Something small. Pink. A hand.
I try to speak. Nothing comes.
There is blood everywhere. Saurin is saying something but I cannot follow it, her voice breaking between words as she works, her hands moving faster, the magic pulling deeper, wider.
A sound cuts through it all, high and clear.
The wail of a child. I hold onto it with everything I have left. Just hold on, I tell myself. Just hold on for the second cry.
The pain comes again, stronger and deeper. I feel movement, more than before, another presence, another shift, though there is no cry that follows it. I see something through the blur. A foot, and this one is not pink.
The world begins to fade.
Everything pulls away at once, the sound, the pain, the heat, the blood, and I let it, just for a moment, just long enough.
Then everything disappears.
The Broken Door
COLSAR
The fight does not end. The dead keep coming, and he moves because he has to, because stopping means being taken under the weight of them. His body answers before thought can, claws catching and tearing and breaking, moving again before the next one can close fully.
They press in harder. More rise behind the ones he drops, forcing their way up through the snow and the ground itself, dragging themselves forward in numbers that no longer make sense.
He exhales and the fire comes, burning low and wide, catching the ones closest and dropping several at once, carving open a stretch of ground that lasts only long enough for him to move again before it fills again.
