Page 142 of Winter Gods & Serpents

She giggled and made for the doors of another room. “My fat sleeps in her crib.”

When she came back, a sleeping baby rested in her hands and she joyfully brought for us to see. Nia held the little baby girl first after the three of us made a pass on the request. Amerie had not named her yet.

“Would you like to hold her?” Amerie finally asked Snow, who’d been too busy chewing biscuits than pay attention.

Startled, she coughed her mouth stuffed in ginger biscuits and blinked back her moist eyes before nodding and cautiously taking her gloves off revealing the small palms adorned in cuts and slashes.

“Have you peppered it?” Nia asked playfully. “She likes them peppered first, it helps with indigestion.”

She gave us all a look as we chuckled silently from amusement. The baby shifted on her arms and her eyes widened in worry towards us. “There is something the matter, it moved,” she said panicked, and all the room shook in laughter, almost waking the sleeping baby.

“Yes cakes, they do that a lot,” Caiden teased.

“You should see what she does to her nappies,” Amerie added.

“What does she do to them?” Snow asked blinking confused and none of us held it in.

Her slender pale fingers traced the baby’s features in wonder, the baby’s little hand wrapped around her finger. “Coghna, neh coghna.” Small, so small, she whispered in Calgnan.

I saw it again, a second time, her gentle, calm, and hypnotizing sight that paled all gardens of flowers out of colour. I’d glued a stare onto her, on how that little being had seized her better than any trained soldier or assassin. I’d walked another trap of hers when coming here tonight. Not only had I relented to the bite of its sharp metallic jaw of tenderness, but the steel weight of that genuine smile.

“Don’t, Kil,” Mal warned in a murmur. “Don’t begin convincing yourself that she will show this side when it comes to us.”

“I am not.”

“Then what are you doing?”

“Staring,” I said. “Only staring.”

“Well, stare any longer and you might see her brains, cut it out.”

Snow played with the little baby’s arm and I tried my best to follow my brother’s advice by gluing my stare to the floor.

“She is trying to teach her sword fighting,” said Nia.

Caiden shook his head. “I think its waltzing.”

“Did you come to recruit my daughter?” Amerie joined in while she lit all the candles in the room.

Snow smiled and tucket the baby’s arm back in the blanket. “Possibly, but she has weak throws. I’d go for a scholar with this one.”

Caiden handed Nia five silver dar. “Told you,” the latter exclaimed, pocketing her victory.

“It was waltzing,” said Snow.

Annoyed, Nia handed ten silver dar back to Caiden.

Amerie sat down with us. She appeared nervous for the first time around Snow, lacing and unlacing her finger wanting to say something. “I have thought of a name, but I wanted your opinion on it, more like permission,”

“You need not my permission, I am not a priestess, but I am curious about the name.”

Amerie looked around us uncomfortably and shifted slightly in her seat. “I would like to name her Serene.”

Nia and Caiden were looking at her like a madwoman. Snow stiffened for a split moment but then continued playing with the baby’s fingers in her arms. It was her mother’s name, her dead mothers name, the mother Adriatians had killed, Amerie’s people had killed.

“Amerie, I don’t think—” Nia begun, almost stuttering her words out.

“Serene it is then,” Snow interrupted, without separating her eyes from the small creature.