My cheeks heat at the sight of her bloody shift clinging to the lower half of her body. Nowhere near enough modesty.
Despite it, I step closer.
The birthing maids dip their heads as they shuffle aside for me to move around the pallet, though I stop cold at the sight of Mah’s wide, bloodshot eyes. Flat.
Empty.
I look around the room, waiting for someone to explain. To tell me there’s a reason she’s acting like this. The pain relief? Exhaustion?
Something.
My sister continues to scream while I stare, waiting for a blink. For Mah to shift her beautiful green eyes and look at me, gift me one of her sunshine smiles, then open her arms to accept her daughter.
But she doesn’t. Nor does her chest rise and fall.
Nor does she say goodbye.
I look down at my sister’s screwed-up face and realize I’m the lucky one. I know the warm shape of Mah’s love, her lullberry scent, the sweet softness of her voice. But she doesn’t … and—
She never will.
A pained sound breaks past my trembling lips as I use the pad of my thumb and smooth the sad creases from between my sister’s brows, suppressing the choking ache in my throat.
The sting flaring across the backs of my eyes.
I force myself to smile and lower onto the pallet beside my beautiful mah, nudging so close I feel her fading warmth along my side. “Your daughter,” I whisper, easing her against Mah’s too-still chest. Gently, I shift her arms so they’re tucked around my sister, cradling her with the support of my hands.
The youngling stops screaming, while internally, I clamor.
“She’s so beautiful,” I choke out, pressing a kiss between Mah’s brows as the splitting ache in my heart threatens to spread outward and rip across my features.
Crumble me.
I recompose myself, pulling back. “She looks so much like you.” I pass Mah a smile I wish she could see. “But her voice is a bit pitchy. Maybe it’ll improve …”
I imagine her smiling back. Telling me she was hoping for a daughter, but that she never thought she’d be gifted one to offer the name of her long-passed mah.
Veya.
I imagine the smile fading as she looks up at me with wide, very serious eyes and asks me to love this youngling with my whole heart.
“Always,” I whisper, then take Mah’s hand and curl it against Veya’s cheek, offering her fading warmth. Knowing this will be the first and only time she feels it—
With a snarl, I dash Borg away.“Enough.”
“Why do you always cut me off there?” He sighs, heaving back like a petulant child. “I wassoooenjoying myself.”
“That makes one of us,” I growl, reaching down to grab the bottle I must’ve kicked over while Borg was feasting. I tip the remnants into my mouth, choke it back.
“That’s no way to speak to afriend,” he drawls, twirling into a foggy knot of satiated glee. “Though I shouldn’t be surprised, given your lack of desire to beautify my jar. Maybe we discern the word differently.”
“Answers. Now.”
“Your patience isequallylacking,” he drones like the slow glug of a leaky spigot.
I growl.
He tuts, does another full twirl, then says, “There’s a nest in Bhoggith that contains a sterile egg, roosted on by a broody pink Moltenmaw who lost her mate. The orange buck chose to rest in the sky directly above her.”
