Page 35 of Postpartum Spells & Infant Hells

"One," Mnemar reported.

The first echo child came right up to the edge of the light before his courage could fail him. One dinosaur sock sagged around his ankle. He also had a cowlick standing up stubbornly at the back of his head. He was adorable. "Miss Phoebe, is it gonna hurt my mama when I go?" he asked, hugging his elbows while the gold light lapped at his bare toes. "She still cries when the house gets too quiet."

"It'll always hurt because she loves you," I told him, forcing my voice level while my throat tried to close around it. "But it won’t be any worse because you cross over. She wants you to have peace."

He weighed that with a seriousness no child should have, then nodded. He stepped through, color flooding his cheeks and weight settling into his small frame. When he looked solid enough to go raid Nana's cooling rack, he beamed at me. "Thank you," he whispered, right before he came apart, turning gold.

I swear it felt as if six months of energy were taken from me for him. My knees buckled before a mother's strength surged up through the anchor from a thousand miles away. The next four crossings blurred. A girl went through with a message for her father. The boy behind her stopped to ask Aidon whether dead dogs were allowed wherever he was headed. My mate promised that no afterlife turned a dog away. The fourth reached for me, breaking my heart until he crossed. The fifth actually laughed when the gold lifted him.

By the fifteenth crossing, my hands shook hard enough that I thought I was going to pass out. Fine silver had threaded itself through the hair at both my temples, and the skin around my eyes pulled tight every time I blinked. I could feel each ounce of energy I spent settling into my joints as cold water poured straight into my bones.

Nina stepped up to the life anchor then. Her white-gold power rose out of her with the scent of sun-warmed grass after rain. "I'm carrying part of this with you now, so save your breath arguing," she announced, lifting her chin in a dare. "You can lecture me about it after, assuming you've got the legs left to chase me down."

"That is not the threat you think it is, smartass," I quipped, even as relief nearly folded me when her magic slid beneath mine and took some of the weight. "If I drop, you need to tell everyone I went down with dignity."

Nina's mouth tipped at one corner as she set her feet wide. "I've met you," she clarified as she scanned for trouble. "I'll tell them you threatened a primordial monster, complained about your knees, and tried to micromanage death itself."

“Sounds about right,” I chuckled.

The twenty-first echo child had nearly reached the threshold when the outer ward tore along the eastern fence. I nearly jumped out of my skin when we heard a sound like wet canvas ripping. Pressure shoved through the gap. The lanterns nearest it flared so high their glass cracked in the frames. Nina moved before the scholars finished checking it out. Her power drove into the breach like roots splitting stone. The silver-white was alive as the split sealed with a flash that threw her hair back off her face. Blood slid from her nose and over her lip. My heart was trying to claw its way out of my chest as I watched it happen.

Mom made a wounded sound from beside the carrier and started forward, but Mythia threw herself in front of her with both wings spread wide. "If you leave the babies, the convergence will shift, Mollie," Mythia pleaded, shaking with the effort of barring a woman ten times her size. "Phoebe can help her the second the line steadies. I swear it."

Nina dragged her sleeve across her nose and grinned. "Claire was right about one thing," she reported, her voice gone hoarse but triumphant. "Kaltherax can't stand creation magic. His power recoiled the second I touched it."

Aidon's shadows lashed around the death anchor. "Don't give it so much of yourself next time."

"Stop letting your fear control your reaction. We’ve got this," Nina fired back as she braced herself for the next rupture.

“We do," I agreed.

We pushed on and got through thirty. Then thirty-five and forty. Every child stood firm at the threshold before dissolving into gold, leaving the yard a degree warmer and me a bit more zapped. At the forty-second crossing, Aidon staggered for the first time. The death anchor guttered low around his boots while the waiting children turned toward him.

"Don't you dare go down before me," I warned across the circle. My voice was the only thing left that I could use without nearly passing out.

The smile Aidon aimed at me was fatigued. "I'm staying upright through sheer effort," he returned, hauling the black fire tighter to himself. "Also, your grandmother's armed. I refuse to be shot while I'm holding death open for children with better manners than most gods I've met."

Nana rolled her eyes from her post at the carrier, though her eyes shone wet when they cut to the empty grass where the children had been standing. "You’d best keep being useful, Big Guy," she ordered, thumbing the hammer of her shotgun theatrically. "I've no interest in explaining to Persephone how I came to wing her boy."

Nina sealed three more breaches before the forty-sixth child crossed. By then, a thin stream of blood had soaked into her collar. Clio was at the edge of the circle, vibrating with a healer's fury. She didn't like being locked out by a ritual when one of her patients needed her.

The last child stepped forward, and the chant lowered to almost nothing around her. The little girl’s damp dress was clinging to her knees. Her eyes were fixed on me. "I was the very first one the monster ever took," she murmured. The whole circle seemed to lean in to hear her. "If I cross, it'll know. And come after you." She looked at my babies in their carriers, then at Nina. Her small hands knotted in her skirt. "It'll come for yours next. Are you sure?"

Aidon held my eyes across the circle. The wreckage on his face told me he would never ask me to trade our children for a stolen one. He'd accept whatever I chose, either way. Mom stood frozen with one hand on the carrier and the other pressed flat over her mouth. Nana had gone gray. “We’ve got you and the babies,” Nana promised.

I looked at the girl who'd waited longer than any of them. "Yes," I told her, and the word scraped its way out of me raw. "Go home, sweetheart."

She smiled then. Something close to peace smoothed her face as she crossed. Gold light wrapped around her and filled her cheeks with life for one breath before Kaltherax screamed from the far side. Every window along the back of the house blew inward at once.

The wards over the carrier flared white, and Mom flung herself across the babies as Mythia and Stella joined her. Dogs howled from every yard within a mile. An alarm shrieked somewhere down the road. Mnemar fought to call out over the noise while Asphodos held the chant together by sheer will. The bridge bucked and heaved under my feet.

Nina drove both heels into the sodden grass and poured creation into the last rupture. Aidon threw the death anchor wide enough to swallow the backlash before it could touch the carrier. I emptied every scrap of life I could still reach into the road. The doorway folded shut on itself, and Kaltherax's scream cut off so abruptly that the silence left my ears ringing.

Aidon reached me, caught me around the waist, and dragged me against his body. It shook as hard as mine did. "You did it, Queenie," he murmured into my hair.

"Do I look like death warmed over? I feel like it," I rasped, fisting his shirt because the yard refused to stay level under me.

Aidon pulled back far enough to study my face, and whatever he found there tightened his mouth before he kissed my forehead. "You look like mine," he told me, the words rough and absolute. "You look alive. That's the only thing that matters right now."