Page 103 of Shadowed

"The eighth will be different," Oberon says. "They are all different. But the eighth —" He pauses. The reflection shifts. "The Crystal Court omega is not like you. Not like any of the seven."

I wait. Seven women. Seven bonds. Every one of us fought—kicked, bit, raged, negotiated, stabbed. We came out of rookeries and laboratories and diplomatic halls with calloused hands and no illusions. None of us wanted what the prophecy offered. That was the point.

"She believes." Oberon's voice carries the weight of someone who has watched nine hundred years of women dragged into bonding. "Truly believes. In her god. In her order. In the life she has built inside a temple. She is the only omega the prophecy has ever named who is not angry. She is not broken. She is not running."

I let that sit. A woman who isn't running.

Every one of us was running from something when the bond found us. I was running from poverty. The others from war, from betrayal, from grief. The claiming caught us mid-stride and we fought it because fighting was the only language we had left.

"She's happy," I say. The word sounds wrong in my mouth. Wrong in this garden, this court, this conversation between a thief and a ghost about the prophecy that ate our lives.

"She is devoted." The silver eyes hold mine. "She has given everything she is to a faith that was built on the bones of Solarin's court. She prays to the memory of what Crystal Fae were before the Sundering. She has no idea what she's praying to."

"And when she finds out?"

Oberon's reflection ripples. "That is the question. Every other omega lost something she was already prepared to lose. This one will lose the thing she loves most. Her god. Her purpose. The entire structure of meaning she has spent her life inside."

I put my hand on my belly. The twins kick. A woman who has to lose her faith to complete the prophecy. Not her freedom—she'll walk in willingly. Not her safety—the Crystal Court won't hurt her. Her belief. The thing that makes her who she is.

"You can't take someone's god and call it a willing choice," I say. Flat. The fencing voice.

Oberon's reflection goes still. The pool's surface smooths to glass. For a moment—just one—the ancient Fae in the water looks at me with something cold and patient and utterly unsurprised. As if a twenty-year-old thief from the rookeries just named the thing he's been planning around for six hundred years.

"No," he says. "You cannot take it. She has to put it down herself."

The reflection fades. The pool is just water. The garden is just shadow-blooms and stone paths and the sound of a palace breathing around the woman it was built for.

I turn from the pool. Caligo is there—standing in the garden archway with the practice lock in one hand and the expression of a male who's just watched his pregnant queen negotiate theology with the ancient's ghost.

"Fourteen seconds," I tell him. "But you're holding the tension wrench too tight. Loosen your grip. Let the lock tell you where it wants to go."

He adjusts his grip. The shadows around his hands shift—making room, giving his fingers space, the living dark learning to step back from something it wants to control.

"Like that," I say.

He works the lock. The tumblers click. One. Two. Three.

The lock opens. Twelve seconds.

I take the lock from his hands. I take his hands. I put them on my belly, where the twins are moving—two kicks, almost coordinated, the rhythm of two presences that dance to theirown timing. His hands are cool on my skin. The shadows settle. The marks on my belly pulse once—warm, brief, the bond acknowledging the touch. His wings shift behind him—not spreading, just settling. The way they settle when he's content, the vast black membrane folding close and easy.

"Twelve seconds," I tell him. "You're catching up."

"I had a good teacher."

"You had a thief. There's a difference."

His mouth twitches. Not quite a smile. The closest he gets—the fractional movement that took him seven hundred years to learn and that I taught him in eight months by refusing to accept anything less than the real expression.

I lean into him. His arms wrap me—careful, now, careful with the belly, careful with the twins, the care of a male who held me against a wall and now holds me against his chest because both are real and both are needed and the difference between them is the difference between a lock forced and a lock opened.

The garden blooms around us. The shadow-flowers open wide. Tommy's drawings are pinned to the throne room wall—six of them now, each one held by a shadow that will not let it fall. Elena's letters are in a drawer in the east wing, beside the shadow-bound books she catalogued on her visit because she's her sister's sister and she organises information the way I organise locks. Marcus's coat still fits. The school is fine. The world I came from and the world I chose aren't the same and both are mine.

The twins kick. Two small feet against two large hands. The shadows curl around his fingers and the marks on my belly glow and the court—the living court, the breathing palace, the realm that nearly died and did not—hums at ninety-eight percent and the remaining two percent is the work of a lifetime and I have a lifetime to give it.

The practice lock sits between us. Brass. Three tumblers. A lock that opened because a key learned its shape.

Both things. Both things true. Both things carried.

And she is exactly where she belongs.