Around us, the island continued to tremble.
And for the first time since I had begun studying the failing wards, the solution was no longer theoretical.
It was happening.
Now.
Wren was going into labor. And for the first time since arriving on Lyoness, I found myself staring at a problem intelligence alone could not solve.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
TRIGGER WARNING: THIS CHAPTER CONTAINS A DEPICTION OF CHILDBIRTH THAT MAY BE DISTRESSING TO SOME READERS, INCLUDING A DETAILED BIRTH SCENE, PHYSICAL PAIN, MEDICAL/BODILY DESCRIPTIONS, AND EMOTIONAL DISTRESS.
WREN
Pain came in waves.
Not the kind I could brace for or push through with stubborn will, but something deeper, something that rose from inside me and took hold without permission. It built slowly, tightening through my core until it stole the breath from my lungs, then eased just enough to let me gasp before the next onefollowed.
Bad time.
That thought repeated itself with every breath I managed to take. It wasn’t the right time for any of it, but my body did not seem to care about timing. The island didn’t either.
I clutched Benedict’s arm as another contraction seized me, my fingers tightening until I felt the strain in his muscles. Beneath my feet, the ground trembled again, and for a disorienting moment I couldn’t tell whether the shaking came from the island or from within me.
“Wren,” Benedict said quietly, though there was tension beneath the control in his voice.
“I’m fine,” I said automatically, even as another wave of pain contradicted me.
Kieran snorted. I glared at him.
The heat from the volcano pulsed through the air, and I felt it in a way I couldn’t explain. It wasn’t just external. It echoed through me, through the magic coiled in my body, and through the life I carried. Each tremor from the mountain seemed to answer something inside me, as if the two were caught in the same rhythm.
That realization unsettled me more than the pain.
This wasn’t supposed to be so directly connected.
“Wren,” Ronan said, stepping closer. His voice was steady, measured, but I could hear the urgency beneath it. “We need to move.”
He was right. He was always right when it came to things like this—patterns, cause and effect, the progression of disaster when it was still small enough to manage.
But my body refused to cooperate.
Another contraction hit, stronger than the last, and I bent forward despite myself, breath catching as the pressure tightened through me. I couldn’t stand. There was no way I could walk. My body wasn’t my own anymore.
“I can’t—” The words fell apart before I could finish them.
“You can,” Kieran said immediately. His voice was rough, but certain in a way that grounded me more than anything else. “You can.”
I wanted to believe him. I truly did.
But the ground lurched again, harder this time, and several drakens nearby lost their footing. The clearing shifted into chaos—wings snapping open, voices rising, bodies moving in instinctive reaction to the instability beneath us.
And still, the pull from the mountain remained.
It was stronger now. Not just a distant awareness, but a persistent pressure that tugged at my magic, at my body, at something deeper I didn’t have the words for.
We were running out of time.
