Tess
She read the note twice.Then a third time.
“She’s all right,” she whispered.
“She’s getting there,” Izzie said, and maybe that was better.
She touched one of the pieces of blue glass. “I’m going to make her something.”
“I assumed you would.”
“I’ll send it with Glasach the next time she comes through.”
Baralt lowered himself onto the bench opposite them. “There may be more news by then.”
“News about what?” she asked.
“I turned over copies of everything we’ve gathered about the ships, and the false manifests, and the males Tess identified to an Imperial representative I trust. Not everything—not enough to endanger anyone here—but enough to start pulling at the network from the other end.”
“Will they do anything?”
“I wouldn’t have given it to him if I didn’t believe he would act. The Empire is really trying to crack down on illegal slavery, and the scope of the operation is outside of anything we can handle.”
Njkall nodded once, and that seemed to settle the matter between the two males, but it didn’t settle it for her. Not completely. There were still ships with dark holds and false manifests and females in cages. But at least someone was looking. It wasn’t enough, but it was a beginning.
They talked a while longer with Izzie complaining cheerfully about her feet and Njkall and Baralt discussing patrols, but she barely heard any of it over the strange bright roaring in her own head.
She didn’t say anything on the ride back to the caves, leaning against Njkall’s side, and watching the frozen landscape slide past, the lavender sky beginning to darken toward true dusk. He let her be, which was another thing she loved about him. He never felt the need to fill her silences. He just drove, warm andhuge and patient beside her, and let her thoughts run wherever they needed to run, and this time they ran straight to one place and stayed there and would not leave.
When she saw the entrances to the caves glowing gold ahead, warm against the blue dusk, the wind singing off the peaks, she put her hand over his on the reins, and he brought the sleigh to a halt and looked over at her.
“Njkall,” she said, her voice steady. She was a little amazed by how steady. There was a time she couldn’t have said her own name without her heart climbing into her throat, and here she was about to say the biggest thing she’d ever said, and it came out sure and steady. “I want a baby.”
He froze, his deep blue eyes gone wide and stunned and blazing all at once.
“You want a baby?”
“I felt it kick,” she said. “Izzie’s baby. It kicked against my hand and I looked at you standing there and I thought—” She had to stop. She pressed her lips together and pressed his hand between both of hers and made herself look up into his astonished face. “I thought, I want that. I want ours. I want a little one that’s yours and mine, with your patience and my stubbornness, god help us all.”
Something changed in his face. Joy came first, so naked and enormous that it made her chest ache. Then, almost immediately, something else crowded in beside it. Worry.
“Polly…”
“I know.”
“I am trying very hard not to imagine every possible thing that could go wrong.”
“Of course you are.”
“Yasmin had a difficult pregnancy. Izzie’s pregnancy has been uncomplicated so far, but that does not mean?—”
“I know. But I’ve been thinking about it for a while. I wasn’t ready. I wasn’t sure if I ever would be—” She stopped, swallowed hard. “But I watched Izzie today. And Baralt. And I realized that nobody’s ever really ready. They just... choose. And then they figure it out together.”
“Polly—” His voice cracked.
“I want to figure it out with you.” She squeezed his hands, looked up into his face, saw the raw desperate hope fighting with the worry. “I want our child, Njkall. I want to watch you hold them the way you hold everything precious and I want to tell them stories about how their father was so patient with their mother that he almost drove her crazy, and I want?—”
He kissed her, and it was fierce and desperate and tasted like salt because she was crying, and when he pulled back his blue eyes were bright and his voice shook in a way she’d never heard before.
