Nate’s voice cut across the stronghold’s war room like a de, sharp enough to silence even the whispering mes. The map of fractured leylines between us curled at the edges from the heat still radiating off my skin, and I could feel the pressure building behind my eyes. Again.

Bastain didn’t flinch. He simply turned his head, fingers still sped behind his back. “Do you ever stop letting emotionpromise judgment?”

The tension cracked.

I stepped between them, my chest already tight from the child rolling beneath my ribs. “Enough.”

But neither of them looked at me. Not really.

Nate took another step forward, fire in every line of his body. “You’re nning to use him.”

“I’m nning to protect her,” Bastain replied, voice still cold, still too calm. “And if you can’t see that-”

“He’s my brother.”

“And he’s not entirely himself, is he?” Bastain’s eyes finallynded on me. “She knows it. Don’t you?”

My hands curled into fists.

The me inside me flickered at the edges of my spine–ready tosh. It wasn’t just from the arguing. It was the child. She was reacting again. Every pulse of their anger churned her power closer to the surface.

I drew a slow breath. “Bastain, Nate… please. If we fight amongst ourselves, we lose before the Hollow–born even arrive.”

Bastain’s jaw ticked, but he turned back to the map. “One of the Triad has already beenpromised. You think Aedric doesn’t know what that means?”

“He hasn’t lost himself,” Nate snapped. “He’s not like them.”

“You’re not sure.” Bastain didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t need to. “And if you’re wrong–if Ethan bes the doorway–then everything we’ve built falls.”

“Don’t leave me,” I gasped.

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My fingers clutched Nate’s wrist, slick with sweat and blood, as my body arched from another contraction that felt like it had split me down the center.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he said, voice low, fierce, shaking.

Another scream wed its way from my throat as fire rippled under my skin, not metaphorical, not imagined -but real. Every contraction came with a pulse of heat that red out across the room, singeing the air, making the floor tremble.

Outside, chaos screamed.

Roars. Steel. Shouts. Bones breaking.

But I wasn’t out there.

I was here. Trapped in this room.

My body was a battlefield, and the war hadn’t waited. It hade for us now, with talons and ash and blood- soaked teeth.

“They’re inside the walls,” Eva said sharply.

She knelt beside me, pressing damp cloths against my burning skin, not wincing even when her palms sizzled from the contact.

The midwife was already gone–her neck snapped before she could draw breath for a scream. A Hollow–born had breached the northern side. Bastain had dragged the beast’s body away and mmed the door shut, warding it with everything he had.

But he was pale. Drained. And the chalk runes were already dimming.

“It’s not holding,” Bastain muttered, more to himself than anyone else. “It’s drawn to the me. To her.”

“I’m not ready,” I whispered. But it was a lie.

I wasn’t ready for the pain. Or the screams. Or the way the child inside me wed her way out not with cries or kicking feet–but with fire and pressure and a will that wasn’t entirely mine..

But I had been ready since the moment I chose her.

Since the moment I let go of the de and believed she’d bring something better into this world.

Even if I didn’t survive it.