“I’d wager he remembers the curve of your smile better than any healing you performed. I did the boy a kindness by letting him go. The dungeon would have been a mercy if your husband walked in on him gawking at you. He wouldn’t have lived to see the dawn.”
I suppose he’s right, but guilt pummels my conscience anyway. A man lost his livelihood because I wanted to heal.
“Stop that,” Sauzon mutters, frowning at me. “It’s not your fault. He’s found another job in the capital. That I may or may not have helped secure. You’ve done good here, Mayah. Real good.”
Relief sparks inside, threaded with the faintest shimmer of pride. The foreign emotion lodges awkwardly in my chest, unfamiliar and ill-fitting.
There’s a soft knock on the door where a heavily pregnant woman stands. She shifts her weight, and I rush over to her, helping her sit on a cot.
“Rinaya! How are you feeling this morning?” I ask brightly.
Her smile is dim. “Nervous, Princess. I—I trust you and Sauzon, but—”
“I completely understand. Everything will turn out just fine.”
Rinaya doesn’t look convinced, but she changes into a robe without further comment and lays back on the cot. I set my palms to her belly, sensing the growing life inside her.
Her baby is still turned the wrong way.
We’ve monitored her for weeks, hoping the baby would shift into the correct position. It hasn’t. So Sauzon and I will have to make an incision in her abdomen and remove the baby—something neither of us has ever done before.
Something,no onehas ever done. The diagrams in Sauzon’s medical texts are all theory.
“I’m going to give you valerian root now. It will put you into a deep sleep. When you wake, you’ll meet your baby.”
The woman nods, eyes glistening with tears. She downs the entire cup, and within the next fifteen minutes, she drifts to sleep.
Silence blankets the room as Sauzon makes the first incision. I press steadying hands to Rinaya’s belly, healing as he works—matching his rhythm, breath for breath. Power hums beneath my skin as blood beads, then stops, tissue knitting together beneath my touch. The baby emerges, slick and pink and impossibly alive.
It’s a girl.
I hold my breath.
Her first wail breaks the air, and every knot in my body loosens.
We did it.
She’s here.
I swaddle the beautiful, impossibly tiny baby in blankets and cradle her to my chest, rocking the little one until she falls asleep. Her mother should wake soon and feed her—hopefully we won’t need to summon a nursemaid.
“Sauzon,” I whisper, brushing a gentle finger against the baby’s soft cheek. “Can you send for a heartwielder? It’s Rinaya’s first baby—and she’s still grieving her husband. I’ve seen new mothers struggle with the adjustment.”
Sauzon gives me a strange look. “There are none in Arbinj,” he says slowly. “Heart- and truthwielders are put to death as soon as they’re discovered.”
I can’t hide my jolt of horror. It’s barbaric. Inhumane.
In Tundrayn, heart- and truthwielders are bound early—branded with facial tattoos the moments their gifts emerge. Children, marked before they’ve even grown into their powers. I’ve never liked the practice, but I understand it. Their abilities are dangerous. An unmarked heartwielder could bend another’s will, make them believe they consented when they hadn’t. A truthwielder could easily learn truths they have no right to.
So yes, we draw boundaries back home, too.
But we don’tkillthem.
My fingers still. The baby fusses, but my arms are frozen, unable to even rock her.
“Children, too?” I whisper.
“Especially children,” Sauzon says gravely. The way he says it—heavy, resigned—makes something splinter inside me.
