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“That’s ok. Neither is Leda,” Alice pointed out.
“Hey! I’m getting better. I actually managed to touch my toes this morning.”
“Because you bent your knees,” Andromeda reminded me. “A lot.”
I shrugged. “But it got the job done.”
“I’m not really into frou-frou sport and braiding each other’s hair and all that,” Basanti said.
But Leila looked like she liked the idea. Her hand rested on her belly. Sure, it was still flat like all of our bellies, but that wasn’t the point. It was a gesture of love. Love for the baby growing inside of her.
Leila was really glowing. I remembered her recently telling me about how much she’d always wanted to have kids but had never been so lucky to get them. Well, now she and Basanti were going to have two.
“And then there’s the best thing about being pregnant: I finally have real boobs.” Alice pointed down at her chest.
I lifted my coffee cup in the air. “I’ll drink to that. I am, for the first time since joining the Legion, getting some serious curves. Now I look like one of those busty women on the cover of a muscle car magazine, sprawled out on the hood of a truck, sticking out my scantily-clad chest, a devilish come-hither look on my lips.”
“You sure have a vivid imagination, Leda.” Basanti took a bite of cake. Then she turned to me, surprise written all over her face. “You’re right. Cake does make my queasy stomach feel better.”
“Told you.”
Basanti took another bite of cake. “I can’t believe I’m subscribing to the Leda Pandora pregnancy diet of cake and ice cream.”
“Just keep clear of those vitamins Nerissa keeps trying to give us,” I warned her. “They have the opposite effect of the cake and ice cream.”
One of Basanti’s eyebrows cocked upward. “You mean, they’re actually healthy?”
I laughed and took some more dessert.
* * *
Now that ournumbers had swelled, Tessa had to add more chairs to the dais in the Court Chamber—and add a fancy angel banner for Leila too.
Finally, we’d reached the end of the day, the final round of petitions. It opened with a bang. Our first petitioner of the session was none other than Arina Phoenix.
Arina marched up to the base of the dais and declared, “Leda Pandora, I heard you’re looking for me.”
“Yes,” I said in surprise.
Arina’s arrival here on the airship would save me the trouble of searching the city for her.
“We need your help,” I told her.
“And I need yours. That’s why I came here.”
“How can we help?” I asked her.
“It’s my children.” Arina’s voice shook. “I need you to help me get them back.”
I remembered her cute twins, a girl and a boy about eight years old.
“I’m so sorry they’re gone, Arina. Don’t worry. We’ll find them.”
“I know where they are,” she said, her voice harder, her fists clenched. “And I know who took them. It was the Guardians.”
