The skin healer offers a well-practiced, obliging smile. “It won’t be long now.”
Tentative, I take a few steps forward, until I can reach out and take Farley’s hand if I want to. A few machines blink at the side of her bed, pulsing slowly and quietly. They pull me in, hypnotic in their even rhythm. The ache for Shade multiplies. We’re going to get a piece of him soon, but he’s never coming back. Not even in a baby with his eyes, his name, his smile. A baby he will never get to love.
“I thought about Madeline.”
Her voice snaps me out of the spiral. “What?”
Farley picks at her white bedspread. “That was my sister’s name.”
“Oh.”
Last year, I found a photo of her family in the Colonel’s office. It was taken years ago, but Farley and her father were unmistakable, posing next to her equally blond mother and sister. All of them had a similar look. Broad-shouldered, athletic, their eyes blue and steely. Farley’s sister was the smallest of them all, still growing into her features.
“Or Clara. After my mother.”
If she wants to keep talking, I’m here to listen. But I won’t pry. So I keep quiet, waiting, letting her lead the conversation. “They died a few years ago. Back in the Lakelands, at home. The Scarlet Guard wasn’t so careful then, and one of our operatives was caught knowing too much.” Pain flickers across her face now and then, both from the memory and her current state. “Our village was small, overlooked, unimportant. The perfect place for something like the Guard to grow. Until one man breathed its name under torture. The king of the Lakelands punished us himself.”
The memory of him flashes through my mind. A small man, still and foreboding as the surface of undisturbed water. Orrec Cygnet. “My father and I were away when he raised the shores of the Hud, pulling water out of the bay to flood our village and wipe it from the face of his kingdom.”
“They drowned,” I murmur.
Her voice never wavers. “Reds across the country were inflamed by the Drowning of the Northlands. My father told our story up and down the lakes, in too many villages and towns to count, and the Guard flourished.” Farley’s empty expression becomes a scowl. “‘At least they died for something,’ he used to say. ‘We could only be so lucky.’”
“Better to live for something.” I agree, a lesson I learned the hard way.
“Yes, exactly. Exactly . . .” She trails off, but she takes my hand without flinching. “So how are you adjusting?”
“Slowly.”
“That’s not a bad thing.”
“The family stays around the house most days. Julian visits when he isn’t holed up in the base lab. Kilorn is always around too. Nurses come to work with my dad, get him readjusted to the leg—he’s progressing beautifully by the way,” I add, looking back to Sara, quiet in her corner. She beams, pleased. “He’s good at hiding what he feels, but I can tell he’s happy. Happy as he can be.”
“I didn’t ask about your family. I asked about you.” Farley taps a finger against the inside of my wrist. In spite of myself, I flinch, remembering the weight of manacles. “For once, I’m giving you permission to whine about yourself, lightning girl.”
I sigh.
“I—I can’t be alone in rooms with locked doors. I can’t . . .” Slowly, I pull my wrist from her grasp. “I don’t like things on my wrists. It feels too much like the manacles Maven used to keep me a prisoner. And I can’t see anything for what it is. I look for deceit everywhere, in everyone.”
Her eyes darken. “That’s not necessarily a terrible instinct.”
“I know,” I mutter.
“What about Cal?”
“What about him?”
“The last time I saw you two together before—all that, you were inches from ripping each other to shreds.” And inches away from Shade’s corpse. “I assume that’s all settled.”
I remember the moment. We haven’t spoken of it. My relief, our relief at my escape pushed it far into the background, forgotten. But as Farley speaks, I feel the old wound reopen. I try to rationalize. “He is still here. He helped the Guard raid Archeon; he led the takeover of Corvium. I only wanted him to choose a side, and he clearly has.”
Words whisper in my ear, tugging on the back of a memory. Choose me. Choose the dawn. “He chose me.”
“Took him long enough.”
I have to agree. But at least there’s no turning him from this path now. Cal is the Scarlet Guard’s. Maven made sure the country knew that.
“I have to go clean up. If my brothers see me like this . . .”
“Go ahead.” Farley shifts against her raised pillows, trying to adjust into a more comfortable position. “You might have a niece or nephew by the time you get back.”
Again the thought is bittersweet. I force a smile, for her sake.
“I wonder if the baby will be . . . like Shade.” My meaning is obvious. Not in appearance, but ability. Will their child be a newblood like he was and I am? Is that how this even works?
Farley just shrugs, understanding. “Well, it hasn’t teleported out of me yet. So who knows?”
At the door, her nurse returns, holding a shallow cup. I move back to let her pass, but she approaches me, not Farley. “The general asked me to get you this,” she says, holding out the cup. In it is a single pill. White, unassuming.
“Your choice,” Farley says from the bed. Her eyes are grave as her hands cradle her stomach. “I thought you should have that, at least.”
I don’t hesitate. The pill goes down easily.
Some time later, I have a niece. Mom refuses to let anyone else hold Clara. She claims to see Shade in the newborn, even though that’s practically impossible. The little girl looks more like a wrinkled red tomato than any brother of mine.
Out in the ward, the rest of the Barrows congregate in their excitement. Cal is gone, returning to his training schedule. He didn’t want to intrude on a private family moment. Giving me space as much as anyone else.
Kilorn sits with me, cramped into a little chair against the windows. The rain weakens with every passing second.
“Good time to fish,” he says, glancing at the gray sky.