Each time, she gave him little.
A name.
The outline of a man she had fled.
Fragments of foster homes, loneliness, and years spent making herself small enough to survive.
No explanation for the heretic magic clinging to her blood.
No knowledge of the fog.
No memory of being marked.
Rhen wanted resistance.
He wanted her to curse him, challenge him, give him something external to confront.
She rarely did.
Her silence denied him an enemy.
Rebellion could be punished.
Violence could be answered.
Resignation gave him no target.
By the end of the second day, the fever finally broke.
The thirst began.
Chapter 10
Ten nights had passed since Leena’s screams echoed through the stone and the world split open to make room for new life.
The stronghold had shifted since then.
Even the brothers moved with greater restraint. Voices remained lower. Doors closed more carefully. The air itself felt altered, as though the fortress had learned reverence in the aftermath of blood and miracle.
Sule stood beside the bed and could not shake the feeling that the reverence concealed something rotten.
Leena lay beneath the covers, too pale, her skin nearly translucent in the muted light. Their newborn son slept against her chest, bundled and warm beneath Sule’s steadying hand. His tiny body curved naturally toward her, as though the safest place in the world was the rise and fall of her breathing.
But Leena’s breathing wasn’t right.
It wasn’t merely exhaustion or the hollowed-out fatigue of a woman whose body had been torn open and forced beyond its limits. Shadows beneath her eyes had deepened over the last forty-eight hours. A faint strain tightened the corners of her mouth, and her stillness bore no resemblance to the Leena who would normally force herself upright, make a joke, and insist she was fine simply to stop everyone worrying.
The birth medic had examined her twice since dawn.
No fever.
No fresh bleeding.
No obvious sign of infection.
Nothing visible enough to explain the chill beneath her skin or the exhaustion that seemed to deepen by the hour. Whatever the birth had damaged remained hidden inside her, quiet enough to escape hands, eyes, and ordinary tests.
That uncertainty frightened Sule more than an answer would have.
