Jonas was breathless.

‘It survived?’

The doctor shook his head. ‘This is the second one. Could hardly recognize the first.’

Twins?

‘Can you save it?’

The doctor shook his head again. ‘You said to save her. Besides, she could never carry it safely to term. It’ll grow faster than she can heal. That’s assuming she doesn’t die from infection.’ The doctor glanced sideways at Jonas. ‘It may as well be dead already.’ He spoke with a combination of medical authority and the nervousness Jonas’s threat had instilled in him, and Jonas knew he didn’t speak of the dilemma lightly.

He lowered his gaze to the translucent child in the palm of the doctor’s hand. So alien and yet so perfect.

‘I’m sorry to rush you, but the longer she’s open, the greater the risk of infection, and I don’t know enough about Aenuks to give you any reassurance about her ability to fight that,’ the doctor said. ‘You can’t save this one. But we can still save her. Maybe.’ A defiant tone came into the doctor’s voice, as if daring Jonas to carry out his threat if Llew didn’t make it now. The man was doing all he could. Jonas knew that now.

Jonas dipped his head, nodded, swallowing the crazy mix of emotions simmering. He wanted to weep, or wail, or throw something, or bash someone. He wanted to do it all, but it would do no one any good.

‘You want to hold it?’

Of course, he did! He crawled around Llew and raised shaking hands to accept the bundle. It filled his hands only because of the cloth it lay in. He eased himself back to lean against the cell wall.

His child. His child with Llew, and the future he had envisioned, lay in the palm of his hand.

‘When I cut this, it will begin to die,’ the doctor said gently. ‘The sooner we sever the tie, the sooner I can stabilize her. Are you ready?’

Of course, he wasn’t ready, but Llew needed him to say yes. He nodded before he could think about the decision he was making. If he thought about it, the temptation to linger would be too great. The tiny head turned; fingers scrunched. The heart beat in the transparent chest.

Jonas sat, watching his perfect child die, and was protected only by his eyes welling with tears, blurring the image.

Was that what it had been like for his unborn child when Kierra had died? Only a month shy of entering the world, the child had died when Braph had killed its mother, Jonas’s wife. Then Braph had set their family home alight, Kierra and their unborn child still inside. Jonas had returned to his home as a smoldering mess, the fire nearly burnt out on its own before it could be put out. Aris had assured him they were dead before the fire. Braph had, after all, left the knife he’d used – Jonas’s knife – in Kierra’s chest.

Jonas had been too heartbroken, too angry to stop and think about anything. He’d lashed out, taking his anger and his knife into Turhmos, and decimating a barracks full of Aenuks.

He’d never taken the time to wonder what it must have been like for his baby to suddenly lose its life support. He now found himself confronted by two such deaths.

He wept openly, his trembling sobs coming out in coughs and starts.

Someone gently lifted the bundle from his hands. He let them and wiped his face with his sleeve. Cadyn looked down at him with gentle eyes, tears glistening. He managed something approaching a smile and she returned it.

His child was gone. Llew still needed him. He returned to her side, wrapping his hand again to hold hers. He would have to tell her about her babies. But first, she needed to live.

Cadyn moved away, spoke quietly to the doctor, then left the cell.

Work continued swiftly and yet time dragged. Llew tried dying once, but Hasiph brought a fist down on her sternum and, after some coughing and spluttering, her breathing settled, and her heart kept beating.

A stretcher was brought down and a group of Karan soldiers worked to ease Llew onto it and carry her up the stairs and to the barracks’ hospital.

The room Llew was taken to looked more like a bedroom than a hospital room, with a few tasteful pictures around the walls. A room for higher ranked officers, perhaps. Jonas hadn’t yet landed himself in hospital, but he’d visited some recruits over the years, and they’d never had a room like this.

With Llew stable and under the best possible care, the doctor offered to look at Jonas’s hands. There wasn’t a lot to do but cool the skin and apply a salve. Dressings would only hinder the use of his hands. The doctor left a tube of salve and departed to get some sleep, advising Jonas to do the same.

Cadyn materialized out of nowhere, placing a low chair beside Llew’s bed. Jonas fell into it.

‘I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow,’ Cadyn said, ‘but sleep now.’

With energy to do little else, Jonas slept.

Llew woke at the sound of her own moan, which only served to sharpen the pain she’d been complaining about, and immediately she was aware of every ounce of agony radiating from her core. She’d never felt anything like it. The room was silent though, and, as the ache subsided, she wondered if she was alone. It was still dark.

She turned to see Jonas’s head resting against her mattress, his chin sunk down to his chest, his shoulder and arm at an awkward angle while his hand still clutched hers through a layer of bedding. She smiled.

A vague thought flitted past that she was on a mattress. She hadn’t had a mattress when she fell asleep, she was sure.

When she fell asleep . . .

Violent visions of Aris, Karlani, and a knife flickered through her mind’s eye.

Jonas’s head came up, eyes bleary. He blinked a couple of times, and then startled awake. ‘Llew!’ He shifted, jostling the bed and Llew sucked in a breath. ‘Sorry, I . . . sorry. Here.’

Jonas grabbed a little bottle and squeezed the rubber tip.

Llew remembered Jonas stabbing Aris, but Aris had run. Details were hazy, but she remembered Jonas trying to heal her.

‘Show me your hands,’ she said.

He shook his head and opened his mouth to dismiss her concern, but she managed a hard look despite the pain.

He held up one. The skin was flaking, peeling. ‘Not so bad.’ He gathered sheet, holding it between them as he gripped her arm. ‘I’ve had worse. It’ll be fine.’ He kissed her cheek, flinching and making a face, scoffing at himself that he could forget even as he remembered to protect his hand. He sat back, rubbed the back of his wrist across his lips, but he seemed to have avoided damage.

He administered a few drops of the drug onto her tongue, then lay his head on her breast, and rested his hand on her tummy, to the side of her covered wounds.

‘Not this time,’ he said, little over a whisper.

Llew remembered in time that laughter was a bad idea. ‘Not any time. It was a Syakaran knife.’ She hated him a little bit, then. He would never have such a choice taken from him.

He turned to face her and reached out to brush a hair back from her temple, stopped an inch short and withdrew his hand. ‘I’ll take you to your tree. You’ll be fine.’

Her tree. She wanted to get up and go to it now to end this agony. But moving would bring more pain. And what would it all be for? Her tree couldn’t bring back what was lost.

Their child was gone, and her body irreparably damaged.

Can you save it? and the answering shake of the head: No. Aris had killed her baby, and destroyed her body, and an Aenuk could not regrow what was no longer there. She wasn’t ungrateful to be alive, but she needed time to mourn her losses, current and future. She couldn’t carry Jonas’s as well. Besides, other women would bear his children. He didn’t have to stay with her. But he had, so far.

Llew went to reach her free hand out and caress his head, remembered what would happen if she touched him and let it fall back on the bed, blowing out her own frustrated sigh.

Soon, the drug haze took over and she was lost in days spent fishing in Cheer’s Big River.

Tears rolled down Jonas’s cheeks, but he wasn’t crying. He had no energy to mourn anymore. No energy left to feel at all. He was numb.

He wanted to reach out and gather Llew to him to share in her loss. But he couldn’t touch her. While he would give his life for her, dying by her touch now would benefit no one.

‘Lieutenant Vastergaard.’

The official address had Jonas on his feet in a moment, remnants of sleep and sorrow hurled aside.

‘Lieutenant General Kasal.’ He saluted Kane with as much respect as possible. His part in their incarceration was still unclear. Besides, it hadn’t been lost on Jonas that Llew had been allowed a private room in the hospital. Quaver didn’t know what to do with her. For the moment, Jonas was willing to work with whatever forces would keep her alive and well.

‘So.’ Kane clasped his hands behind his back and stepped into the room as if he planned some serious pacing. Instead, he only took a couple of strides before turning to face Jonas. ‘Aris. What is he?’

The thought of Aris had Jonas’s body preparing to fight. What he would do to the man the next time he saw him . . .

What would he do? Aris had healed from a knife wound, and he hadn’t had to drain anything to do it.

‘I don’t know,’ he said.

‘I have received several accounts from various witnesses. But I’d like to hear what you saw.’

Jonas shrugged. ‘I stuck two knives in him. He healed and ran.’

‘As fast as you?’

Jonas thought back. Aris’s laughter echoed in his mind. ‘I guess.’ For perhaps the first time in his life, Jonas felt fear at the thought of facing someone. If Aris was as fast as him, and could heal like Llew . . . ‘He’s an Immortal?’

Kane held his gaze, his eyebrows and shoulders lifting in the tiniest of shrugs.

Aris had stabbed Llew with a Syakaran knife. He had killed their child. One of their children, he corrected, leaving the other as good as dead. Could the child have been an Immortal?

He wished Anya was there. Anya and her books. She would find something. He looked down at Llew. Sleeping now, her weeping subsided. He would have to tell Anya.

Kane drew a breath, recalling Jonas’s attention to him.

‘There’s still not a lot of support for your girl out there.’ He nodded to Llew. ‘But there’s enough speculation and fear flying around about what Aris is and what he might do, and all anyone can think of is that you’re goin’ to have to stop him. No one wants a return of the Immortals, Jonas. Can you stop him?’

They’d stuck him down in a dungeon for however many days, and now they wanted his help? It used to be that Jonas would have done anything Quaver asked of him, anything Aris had asked of him. It wasn’t an easy habit to break. But it was breaking.

‘Where is he?’

Kane shrugged. ‘No one’s seen or heard anything since he ran out.’

‘Then he’s not my problem.’

Kane opened his mouth to speak, but Jonas shut him down.

‘I have spent my entire life doin’ the somethin’ that had to be done, and along the way I lost everyone I loved, and I’m about to lose another if I don’t do what’s gotta be done by her, and that ain’t got nothin’ to do with Aris and Aris’s plans. For the first time in my life, I’m free of Aris’s plans. Now it’s time I made my own. And right now, my plans revolve around Llew gettin’ well. And if you want me to fight Aris, then you better start thinkin’ about Llew gettin’ well, too, because if Aris is what we think he is, then I’d be headin’ into a fight that could get me killed, and I reckon I’ll fare better if I’ve got somethin’ to come home to at the end of it.’

Kane stood in silence.

‘Very well,’ he said after a time. ‘Quaver’s best doctors are yours.’

Sip, don’t gulp.

He shouldn’t have been gulping it. It was good whisky. Worthy of an appreciative sip.

Jonas couldn’t be bothered, sitting, as he was, leaning against the inside of the perimeter fence of his old home. A low, concrete fence, high enough he could rest his head.

He reached up to check his hat. Still there. That was a good thing. He liked his hat. Funny how you got so used to it you could forget it was there. Especially at night.

Long, weedy grass grew up through and around the chunks of fire-scarred wood and concrete. Flowers, too. Tiny whites and blues. Bigger yellows. Forget-me-nots. Dandelions.

Forget-me-nots. He hadn’t forgotten.

He never saw their bodies.

Throwing back another mouthful, he didn’t take his eyes off the pile he thought would have been the kitchen and living area. The heart of a good home. And over there, a little to the right, was the master bedroom. It had been a humble home, perhaps, for a nation’s hero. But they’d liked it that way. It had felt like a family home. He’d been fortunate, in that respect.

Sometimes, he wondered if he should have asked to see them. He’d seen his folks after they died. Right messes they were. And yet it had made it that little bit easier to say goodbye. Something about seeing what was left behind had assured him they were well-gone, not of this earth anymore. Kierra, their child. He hadn’t got to say goodbye.

Then again, there wouldn’t have been anything to see after the fire. Aris had said You don’t want to remember them that way. And he hadn’t. But what did Aris say when he attacked Llew? Just like Kierra. Like he’d seen. And the fire had still been blazing when Aris handed him the knife . . .

He lifted his chin, tilted the bottle again. Bah! Empty, damn it. He sighed. Empty bottle was probably a sign he should head back. Llew had been doing a lot of sleeping. She wouldn’t be missing him. And now that other guards had been assigned, he didn’t need to concern himself with her safety so much. He was strong of body, if not mental capacity. They all knew what would happen to them if anything happened to Llew.

He sat, bottle hanging between his knees.

It was a hard sight to look at, and yet he was having trouble turning away. He could’ve had a life here. Could’ve been a father already. Well, he supposed in the biological sense he was. And that only seemed to make it all the harder. He’d never intended to feel anything for those others. But the intensity of the loss of his children with Kierra, and now Llew, had him wondering if that was the right of it.

Enough. No idea of the time, but he’d been away long enough. His chance for a new family lay battered and cut back at the barracks. Whatever the clock said, it was time to head back. Llew would be coming due her little bottle, anyway. He pulled it from a pocket. Better check he’d left enough in it. The doc hadn’t said nothing about how often he was refilling it. It sure did dull the pain, all sorts of pain.

Dulled, not obliterated.

Bringing his feet under him, he wriggled and squirmed, worming his back up the fence. He spared one last lingering look at the piles of debris. That was all they were now. Still, it was strange how a soul could linger. Especially an unavenged one.

His heart heavy with guilt and confusion, he exited the property, and stood a few moments more looking back at the devastation before finally turning to his future.