Hawk started to speak, but she quickly put her finger to his lips to silence him. “You promised not to interrupt,” she reminded him. She took her finger away. “When we were on the walls afterward, you asked me if I had told the truth, if there was a child. I said that there wasn’t, that I had told the judges this just to try to save us.”
She paused. “I lied to you. There is a child. Our child. But I couldn’t tell you. I couldn’t watch you die knowing that we had a child and that our child was dying with us. So I lied.”
She gave him a small smile. “That was why I couldn’t jump when you asked me to do so. I couldn’t make myself kill our child even if there seemed to be no hope left. I couldn’t do that.”
She looked at him, studied his face carefully. “Okay, it’s your turn. Now you can say anything.”
He shook his head in wonder. “Can I say how happy I am?”
She nodded, tears in her eyes. “That would be nice.”
“Can I tell you that I don’t care about anything—anything!—as much as I care about this? When you told those judges we would have a baby, when I heard you say that, I couldn’t believe it. But later, back in my cell, I thought about it. I thought it was sad and terrible and wonderful, and I wanted it so badly I could hardly stand to think about it because I didn’t believe it could happen. We were sentenced to die. We would never have a child. So I asked you on the wall, and I was relieved when you said there was no child.”
He exhaled sharply. “But now. Now, Tessa, I am so happy. I don’t care that you lied. I know you did it forme. I know that. But I want this child. No matter what else happens, I want it. The newest member of our family. Of the Ghosts. But not another Ghost that will haunt the ruins that our parents destroyed. Not that. This will be a child who will help rebuild the world. This child will be the beginning of something wonderful.”
“I’m glad you’re not mad at me,” she said.
“Mad at you? I could never be mad at you. I understand why you lied. I would have done the same. That’s in the past. We can forget all that. We have a new beginning.” He shook his head, still smiling. “I can’t believe it. A child. Our child.”
She leaned close. “A special child,” she whispered. “Born of you and me, of our two worlds, of our two bloods. A child who’ll be a leader, like you. I know it. I can feel it.”
He drew her against him and hugged her fiercely. He had never loved her so much as he did in that moment. He thought maybe he would never love her so much again.
A child.
SPARROW STOOD IN THE SHADOWS, her heart racing. She had heard everything. She had heard it all. There was to be a child. Hawk and Tessa were going to have a baby, and it would be the first of a new generation of children.
She had come looking for Hawk to ask him to speak with Candle, to reassure the little girl about her place in the family, knowing that it would mean more coming from him than from her. She had not meant to overhear but she had not been able to help herself. She had found them just as Tessa was telling him about the baby, and she could not help listening to everything.
She stood rooted in place, undecided about what to do next. Should she reveal herself to them? She felt like a spy, hiding in the shadows, hearing secrets not meant for her ears. How would they feel if she stepped out now and let them know?
Perhaps it was better to wait. If she said nothing, she could wait until they told the others, and then she could pretend she was hearing it for the first time. That might be better. More comfortable for everyone.
She backed away noiselessly, leaving Hawk and Tessa alone, wrapped in their joy and their love. She would like to have that someday, she thought. She would like to have someone to share her life.
The secret of the baby was hers to keep, but halfway back to rejoin the others she had already decided she was going to tell Owl.
SIXTEEN
T HE SUNRISE WAS BLOOD RED. Hawk had never seen one like it, and it disturbed him for reasons he could not explain. It was more than the strangeness of it. It wasn’t even that it felt ominous. It was that it signaled something, a shift in the order of things perhaps, that wasn’t apparent on the surface but that he could feel somewhere deep down inside where such things wedge themselves and refuse to be dislodged.