As time went on, Taelon began to gradually warm to the idea that in a few months, we wouldn’t be by ourselves. And I too was able to come to terms, at least marginally, with what would happen. How my life would change. How I would change. How everything would change. For better and for worse.

A month after I was told I would have a child, we sat together outside near the cliff tree, basking in the bleeding sunlight and warmth that had soaked into the ground after the heat of an especially hot day. The sunset was painted across the sky in a brilliance of colors: Pinks, oranges, reds, and yellows.

Sunsets are like snowflakes. I rested my head against Taelon’s shoulder. There are no two alike.

Even after the sky had been wiped clean of its colors, we remained where we were. I asked my question a moment after the first star appeared.

“If there were nothing holding you back, nothing to be a hindrance to you, if anything was possible, what would you be?”

“With such infinite possibility, the mind quite loses the ability to choose.” His lips twitched. “A god? That is what most would say.”

“Well, not as much possibility as to allow that.” I rolled my eyes. “And I’m asking what you would want. When you were a child, did you never have any dreams?”

Taelon’s expression condensed into something thoughtful. When he answered my question, there was none of the previous fun in his voice.

“I had one,” he admitted timidly. “A very long time ago. I had nearly forgotten.”

“What was it?” The sky was growing darker and darker by the moment, and my gaze wandered down toward the ocean where the waves, black to my eyes, rolled against the beach in a gentle wash, hissing peacefully. When had I become so familiar with the song? What was the minute when it became a comfort to me? So many things were changing, and I could put neither day nor hour to them.

“There was this idea in my mind,” Taelon said, “that I’d become a knight in T’cor, and then be sent to keep safe some beautiful place I’ve never seen. Like Ri Deare, or Twol Bend.”

“You, as a knight?” I drew away to look him over. “I can’t picture you inside a suit of armor, but I can imagine you riding about doing noble deeds.”

“My mother was against it, of course. But my father was glad.” Taelon rested his head atop mine. “He said it would bring honor to the family. I was trained as a squire, in fact, and took lessons in swordplay and combat and such until I was fourteen so that I could be presented in T’cor as a candidate for apprenticeship.”

“What happened then?”

“I came here.”

“Do you ever regret it?” I asked uncertainly, seeing a glimmer of remorse in his eyes. When he told me no, however, there wasn’t a hint of doubt or a taste of resentment in the air.

“Not everyone has a dream so that they shall achieve it. Some have dreams to keep them alive until they have something else to live for. I think so, anyway. Sometimes we wish for one thing and receive something else much better.”

I didn’t know what to give him in reply to this. I thought I might agree but didn’t want to say so until I had been given ample time to think it over.

“Shall we head back inside?” Taelon stood up and offered me his hand. I took it and let him pull me to my feet.

Later, in bed, I turned over to stare out of the window where the moon hung low and bright against the veil of black behind it, like the eye of a grieving woman behind her dark cover of sorrow.

When my mind began wandering toward thoughts of James, it was without the sense of guilt and crushing sadness that had been his memory’s incessant companion until then. If the Radkkans had never come, if he had never been killed, I wondered, resting my hand upon my abdomen, would it be his child inside me, instead of Taelon’s? Would it be James lying beside me now? Would everything that Taelon and I were, be mine and James’s?

I waited for a moment of longing, or regret, but there wasn’t one. I was content, and in admitting this to myself, I was admitting also that I had truly let go of what was before and had begun to—no, I was embracing the future, and all the possibilities it held, both of a good and bad nature.

With this acceptance, I turned away from the moon and slipped my arms around the person beside me. A person— I thought, keeping a smile to myself as he sleepily tucked his head into the space between my shoulder and my neck —a person who I will not trade for anyone else. Not even if I can.

“Sard,” I hissed, frustrated as I attempted to lace the front of my dress closed. For the first while, apart from feeling periodically as though I were dying, slowly and painfully, there wasn’t an extremely noticeable difference in my body. Now, not only had my stomach grown, but my breasts had begun to swell, my hips had become wider, my feet ached, and I was having greater and greater difficulty fitting into my clothes.

I called for Taelon to come and help me, and he obliged me at once, slender fingers deftly tightening the leather laces.

He finished tying the last knot and tucked a runaway strand of hair back up into the twist of braids on top of my head.

“I’ll leave now,” he told me, taking both my hands in his as a goodbye. “Is there anything else you need before I do?”

“No.” I tipped forward on my toes to press my lips against his cheek, feeling secretly proud when he smiled. “I will see you this afternoon.”

Just as he lay his hand against the door to open it, he stopped and said, “I forgot to mention it to you. Yesterday, your friends cornered me and demanded to know why they hadn’t seen you for two months.”

I felt a thrum of panic throughout my body. “What did you say?” I asked. “You didn’t tell them, did you? They may be friends of mine, but I know nothing will stop them from spreading gossip about the village.”

“I didn’t tell them,” he assured. “I thought it best that if they were to know, it should come from you. They are cunning, I warn you. It is likely they already have some idea of the truth.”

“It is likely.” I sighed dejectedly.

“Would you . . .” He tapped the wood of the door with his fingers as he thought. “Perhaps you would like to go down today? Their appetites might be satisfied if you come to them and give them the story before they have the chance to think one up for themselves?”

I shuddered and sat down on the bed as my stomach churned in protest at the idea. “I couldn’t. The very thought of the smell; baskets and baskets of fish sitting in the sun. Oh, I couldn’t do it.”

“Alright,” he said. “Then why not ask them up here?”

When I opened my mouth but remained silent, he tilted his head and asked me, “Do you not wish to see them?”

“It isn’t that,” I spoke anxiously. “It’s only a silly worry of mine.”

“You may still speak of it to me.” A look of realization dawned on his face, and his dark brows drew together in an expression of worry. “You believe they shall look down upon you?”

My silence was his answer. He returned to my side, reaching for my hand, which I gave to him.

“Ingrith,” he started, but I knew he had no idea what to say.

“I don’t blame you. Nor am I afraid,” I cut in. “Well, perhaps I am a little, but I have made my decision, and I shall bear whatever comes.”

Taelon’s hold on my hand was tight, but not painful. He looked up at me with genuine, troubled eyes. Eyes that hid nothing from me, and so were impossible to lie to.

“You can tell them,” he said, “tell them I fully intend to marry you, and they shouldn’t think anything terrible of you. If they do, then—” he paused and said, “—then they don’t deserve you. And I will . . . I don’t know what I will do. But there will be something.”

“It will be fine,” I told us both, and brushed my hand along his cheek, marveling at the way he could make me feel so wonderfully warm with only a few words and a touch. I was struck harshly with a sudden and long overdue sentiment of deep gratitude.

“Oh, Taelon.” I threw my arms around his neck and embraced him, squeezing my eyes shut over the tears that tried desperately to spill from my lashes. “You are so good; so unbelievably good to me. I don’t know how I came to deserve someone such as you in my life, nor what I would do without you now that I have you.”

I sensed he was confused, but he embraced me just as tightly and spoke, his words muffled against my shoulder, “I won’t leave you, Ingrith. Don’t ever fear that.”

I know, I said the words in my head, and with them came a sickly feeling of foreboding.

“I will.” I pressed my cheek against his hair, relishing the tickle of the smooth, black curls against my skin. “I will always fear because I care for you, ever so very much.”

We pulled away from each other, and I could see that he didn’t understand. He didn’t understand my sudden sorrow. I understood it even less, and so lifted my lips in a smile and told him to get going.

“And—” I stopped him just once before he left. “Tell my friends, if you see them, that I would be glad to have their company here if they would come.”

I didn’t have to wait over two hours after he left before I was paid a visit.

The four women were unusually tidy and quiet and, even more surprising, did not smell of fish, for which I was immensely grateful. But as soon as they saw me, I knew they saw all of me.

I waited for the exclamation of triumph, and the knowing grins, but instead, I found myself drawn into a four-person embrace of death.

“Oh, Ingrith, you wicked girl!” Pathedra scolded me after we had all been disentangled. “You wicked, wicked girl! Have you any idea how concerned we were? I thought you must have been poisoned!”

“I thought you must be dying of some fearful illness,” Verity threw in her concerns. “Or violently stabbed to death. Strangled, even. You don’t know how many terrible things I imagined.”

“Taelon was so very serious and grim when he told us you could not come down to see us, and so we come to you, expecting to hear something positively horrible, and we find only that you are pregnant!” Purity glowered at me as though I’d done her some great personal ill. “We even washed up and put on new clothes to see you!”

“Purity!” Pariena gaped in horror at her niece.

“Forgive me,” I apologized to them, flustered, and threw my sight about the room for a distraction. “Will you sit down?” I gestured to the table lamely. Only after I said it did I remember that we only had two chairs.

Luckily, this didn’t become a problem. Pathedra and Purity went straight for the chairs, and their sisters made for the stone rising of the hearth.

“You have a very nice—EEEEEEEK!” Pariena leaped away with a shriek just as she was about to sit down, pointing a shaking finger to where she had been about to place her bottom.

Verity looked closer eagerly, then her face fell in disappointment.

“Tis only a bird, Aunt.”

“A bird—” Pariena shuddered horrifically, “—indoors.”

“Oh, dear.” I hurried toward them and scooped up the crow that had been resting there, rather peacefully until that moment. “Don’t worry,” I told the frightened woman. “He won’t hurt you. I’ll just put him outside if you give me a moment.”

I carried His Lordship to the window and threw it open, letting him hop up on my hand. “Go on,” I urged him. He had escaped once, a week before, and I had spent the entire day fretting over him, only to have him tapping at the windowpane to be allowed back in at dusk. Since then, Taelon and I had given him leave to do as he liked, confident that he would make his way back to us eventually.

But for some reason, today the lazy thing seemed to want nothing to do with the great outdoors and stuck himself firmly to my hand.

“Have it your way then.” I shooed him off onto the windowsill and shut the glass so he wouldn’t sneak back in. “You may come back,” I told him sternly, “when you have been out for a good while. Not before. Away with you now.”

He didn’t budge but glared at me resentfully, and defiantly settled down where he was.

“As you like it.”

I ignored him and turned back to my guests.

After I had assured Pariena that there were no more birds, or anything of the animal sort hiding in the house, I managed to convince her to sit back down and busied myself with brewing some tea.

“Why did you never tell us, Ingrith?” Verity asked me when I had handed her a cup of steaming ginger tea.

“Forgive me,” I apologized again. “I was frightened, I suppose.”

“Frightened of what? Us?” Pathedra’s black eyes were uncommonly serious and hurt. “I know what our reputations in the village are, Ingrith, but I would have hoped that you wouldn’t think we would betray the trust of a friend.”

That had been what I thought, and though the assumption was not without ground, I still managed to feel quite badly for making it.

“You must understand,” I told her gently, “that I know only too well what people would say if they heard. Therefore, I have been cautious.”

“People might be quick to scorn these things in Saje, but you give this island far too much credit, Ingrith,” Pariena told me. “We most of us haven’t the pureness of virtue and soul that would be fit to cast judgment upon others. There are some who might be cruel, like that boar’s arse woman from Kanee, but they are only some, and should not matter. Half the villagers—” she waved a hand toward the direction of the descending path outside, “—had their children before they married each other. Why, Bronagh was with child at least a month before she and Tadgh visited Ragnagh for their marriage. And Taelon is an honorable lad from what I’ve seen. He does mean to marry you, doesn’t he?”

They were all watching me, but though their eyes were searching, they were not greedy.

“He claims he does, and I believe him. Yes.”

“There!” Pathedra clapped her hands together with finality. “Then there is nothing to be ashamed about, is there?”

“No.” I smiled at her, heartened.

They stayed another hour, and we talked about pleasant things and enjoyed ourselves, quite enough that I was sorry to see them go, and when they promised to return another day, I told them I would be glad if they did, and I meant it.

Afterward, I thought, for the first time in many months, about Sashada. My only friend in this adventure before we went our separate ways. She would have had her child. It had been almost two years after all. Unless something had happened to her.

Surely, nothing would have. She has Balro with her, I comforted myself as I took out a needle and some thread and began stitching at the large white handkerchief I had been working on for the past four months. A gift for my mother when I saw her again because I would. I would see her again. I would see her and my father. As soon as the wars were over.

With this determination, I picked away the last half of the flower I had stitched the day before and started anew.

When Taelon arrived home, he asked me whether I had seen my friends.

“I did.” I smiled. “And I’m pleased. I feel much better now that I have.”

“I am glad of that.” He shrugged off his coat and dug out a few glass bottles from somewhere inside it. These he placed carefully in front of me.

“From Grieda,” he explained before I had the chance to ask. “She never told me what’s in them, only to tell you it would be in your best interests to take a bit in water every morning.”

I unstopped one and lifted it to my nose, cautiously, as I remembered my experience from the last time. I could only detect that it was made of herbs, but not which kind. And it brought on no urgent need to hurl up my insides, so that was a good thing.

“You are certain she wanted me to ingest them?” I raised an eyebrow and Taelon nodded his head.

“I am certain.”

I gathered the tinctures into my arms and stood up. The bottles made a cheerful clinking sound as I bent to place them on the stool near the wall inside the bedroom. When I straightened up, the blood rushed from my head, and I was caught with a brief spell of faintness.

My vision narrowed. For an instant, everything faded to white and black, and my eyes ached.

“It’s alright,” I told Taelon as he reached out to balance me, catching myself against the wall. “I’m alright. Truly, I am.” I reached for his hand, and he gave it to me.

“I feel that—” I struggled to find the perfect words to describe the feeling that had been growing within me as certainly, perhaps even as one with the child. “I feel that this will be the completing piece. The piece that makes this my new life. It will make definite that I have let go of what was before, and that I am fully here, in this life. Can you understand me?”

It was suddenly very important to me that he did.

He squeezed my hand. “I believe so.”

“Thank goodness.” I smiled weakly.

“Are you tired?” Taelon searched my face. “You look tired.”

“Now that you mention it, I am.” I looked at him guiltily. “You only just returned; I wouldn’t like to fall asleep now.”

“You go to sleep,” said Taelon. “I shall be here when you wake up; be that this evening, or tomorrow.”

“What do you mean?” I slid off my shoes and climbed on top of the bed. “Won’t you be working the last day of the Feignt tomorrow?”

“No.” He sat beside me. “We are expecting another ship this late autumn. All men able to work have been asked to help with building the new houses, so we won’t be caught unawares this time. We’ve been given a day to rest before we begin.”

“Oh,” I remarked sleepily. My eyelids were heavy, and the stroke of Taelon’s hand over my hair had a soothing effect. His was a presence that I would never have to fear leaving me. His was a voice that did not lie or conceal. With this promise of security, I drifted into a deep, comfortable sleep.

“I’m glad.”

As the months flew by, my general good mood took a steady decline. What with the expansion of my girth, the countless aches and pains that couldn’t possibly be necessary to make a healthy child, and every other intolerable malady that took a fancy to me as time went on, irritable was only one word for how I felt.

Now without the heat of the summer to warm me, I relied on the fire, and the growing cold felt like a personal insult sent to punish me for some petty sin I had committed long ago.

With the first frost came a ship, and on it, dark tidings.

The women who filed onto the beach were far fewer than the times before. They were thin, sickly, and pale. Some died where they stood on the sand, others staggered into the helping arms of the villagers who came to greet them.

Half of those who made it into the village died within the next week. The fallow field was now cramped with hasty burials. Graves with nothing but nameless stones to separate one from the other. Last beds for women with names no one managed to learn.

The few who survived gave us the news of what we had all refused to believe could be happening. The Radkkans were growing more daring. Gatcha had been taken. And no one was pushing back.

“It doesn’t have to follow that Seaggis shall be the next target,” I said when Taelon told me everything he had heard. “We’re so small and insignificant, surely they’ll want to save all of their men for the bigger parts of the continent.”

“We can hope so,” Taelon spoke grimly. “Only, there are rumors spreading that this isn’t merely an attempt at full conquest. People say the Radkkans are looking for something. Someone.”

“Who?” I whispered, shocked.

“It doesn’t really matter, does it? If this is true, it will not matter how small or insignificant the place is. They’ll search every inch of the continent until they find what they’re looking for.” He slung his cloak off and folded it over the chimney surround, then motioned for me to follow him.

“Come with me, Ingrith. There is something I wish to show you.”

I did as he bid me, walking a few steps behind, curious as he led me to the pantry. He opened the door and ushered me inside.

There was nothing unusual about it, it was the same as it always had been. The slightly crooked shelving lining the walls. The cool box; accessible but out of the way. I stared at him in utter bewilderment until he pulled aside a crate of vegetables, and another one holding an assortment of tools, and I saw that beneath them, there was an irregularity.

The wood of the floor seemed to be fitted with a small, square door.

“Is that—” I leaned down to peer at it closer, and Taelon confirmed my unfinished question by reaching down, digging his nails in the small crack between the slats, and prying it open.

“My,” I breathed, staring down. My gaze was met with darkness.

Taelon snatched a grit-torch from a pile leaning against the wall and struck it stiffly against the wall to light it. The fire revealed a stairway that looked as though each step had been roughly hewn out of a thick tree trunk.

When he made to begin the descent down them, I caught his arm in a panicked moment of uncertainty.

“It is quite safe,” he promised. “ I will go down first, and you follow. Would you hold this?” He placed the torch in my hands, and I held it out so he could see where to put his feet.

When he made it to the bottom, he held up one hand to take the torch again, and the other for me to keep my balance with.

I took a deep, slightly gasping breath, and shakily urged myself down.

Once standing on flat ground again, I realized that it really hadn’t been such a great distance as I had thought it was. In fact, it was only a hand or two higher than I was. Taelon had to keep his neck bent to avoid hitting his head on the ceiling.

With the light of the torch, I saw we were in a small, round room, shaped like a pot. There were a few barrels here and there which took up an inordinate amount of space. When I opened one, I saw that it was full of flour.

“What is this?” I asked Taelon.

“I cannot know exactly what it is.” He cast his eyes to the walls and leaned his hand against a barrel thoughtfully. The room was not stone as I had guessed, but dark, hard-packed earth.

“This house was not a new one when we moved into it. We didn’t even know the door existed for the first few months. Then I went exploring one day, and I came across it by chance. I expect it was built when there was still a lord, and coin, and taxes.”

“To hide things?” I figured, and his nod agreed.

“Why are you showing it to me?” I brushed my fingers through the yellow dust in the barrels. I didn’t have to taste it to know it was many years stale.

In the dark, with the shadows from the torch flickering over Taelon’s eyes, they looked darker; less blue and more ebony, with echoes of red and gold.

“So that if the Radkkans arrive here one day, you will have a place to hide.”

A spark of unease was lit inside my chest, and I frowned in worry. “You believe then, that they shall come here?”

“I do not want to believe it.” His voice was bitter and swollen with something unintelligible, akin to the shadow I could see in his eyes. “But yes. Whether it be a year, ten, twenty, I know they’ll come here eventually, and when they do, I want to feel secure in your safety. I know—” The stale darkness had become too much. He started up the stairs, and I followed close behind, “—I know nothing is assured, but if there’s a possibility, then that’s enough for me.” He refitted the door and we both sat side by side against the wall.

“You won’t fight them,” I voiced one of my fears that had been growing, rotten and unspoken in my heart ever since the threat of potential invasion here came. “You won’t fight the Radkkans if they come, will you?”

He crossed his legs and held his hands, palms up and open in his lap. “Would you have me sit by and do nothing, Ingrith?”

“Yes.” I reached for his fingers and grasped them tightly. “I lost one person, who I cared for very much, because his hot-headedness got him killed, and I could only stand by and watch as he was taken from me. I won’t go through such a thing again. If they come, we’ll surrender, even if that means we must live under strict, cruel hands. I won’t care about any of that, as long as we survive together,”

He let me press his hand against my swollen abdomen. “All three of us must survive.” My voice trembled with emotion. “You must promise me that we shall.”

Our eyes met, and I could only pray that he saw the desperation in mine.

He broke our shared gaze. “I promise you Ingrith, we shall all survive.”

“You must!” The unbidden tears were hot and thick, beading along my lashes and spilling down my cheeks. I wiped them away with the back of my hand, but the flow would not be stemmed.

“You see,” I choked out. “If you do not promise, I might as well kill myself, because I have seen firsthand how cruel they will be to those who oppose them, and you have not, so you must listen to me.”

If I were any less emotional, I would have felt sorry for the bewildered man who stared at my tears with an equal mix of guilt and concern, as though he hadn’t the keenest idea of which one he was supposed to be experiencing. One of his hands was half extended, as though he wanted to touch me but was afraid that I would break if he did.

“If you fight them . . .” I took a few shaky, calming breaths for his sake and tried again to explain myself sensibly. “They will offer no mercy, and in the end, it would have been a waste. You would be dead or imprisoned, I would likely be the same, and it would have all been for nothing. Do you see?”

“Yes, yes, I see.” He tried to hush me, but I pushed away the arms that were reaching for me.

“You mustn’t simply say that you do.” I pressed my fingers to his lips. “You must understand me. You must understand and mean what you say when you promise because if you break it, I shall kill myself. I swear I will do it. I shall throw myself upon one of their swords or cast myself off the cliff. Don’t you dare think that I won’t.”

The threats pooled out of my mouth in a rushed stream, frightening me as much as they did him because I now knew the truth of men. They did not fear for their own lives. Only threats made on those who they cared about most would carry any success in tapering down their greed for vengeance and heroism.

If only I had known this when James still lived. If I had, I might have saved him from his own reckless courage.

However, I knew the moment the thought took solid form, that it likely wouldn’t have made much difference. James had loved me. He had loved his family. But above all, he loved himself and was weak to the seduction of danger.

I didn’t want a man who needed to be saved from himself.

“I swear to you.” Taelon took my face in his hands. “I will not fight the Radkkans when they come, but—”

My heart dropped. There was always something. There always had to be something. Why couldn’t men just be safe?

“I cannot promise not to fight them if they attempt to harm you. I don’t say this out of a will to go against your wishes, but out of one of hoping to be honest with you. I know I could not stand by and watch as you were harmed, as I know you would not if it were me who was in danger.”

I wanted to say that I could. I could stand by and watch. When I tried and failed, I began to say that it was different. It was not the same. But even as the words wet my tongue, I knew they would not go beyond my lips.

A wave of exhaustion hit me unawares, and I let my head press into Taelon’s chest, condensing the anger and fear that overwhelmed me into one small spark, which I buried in my heart, stamping it down, with brutal, unrelenting force until it went out.

“Very well,” I said. “But you stick to what you have promised.”

“I will.”

This time I accepted his comfort, and gave him my own, releasing my resistance and willing myself to trust. Trust that the Radkkans would not come for us. Trust that if they did, nothing terrible would happen, and trust that Taelon would keep his promise.

I felt a movement inside of me, a child growing unhappy with the lack of attention directed toward it.

I’m sorry. I wished with all my heart it could hear me. I’m sorry that I am bringing you into a world of such danger, of such uncertainty. Please, forgive me.