Page 42 of Postpartum Spells & Infant Hells

I made myself breathe through the urge to argue. "What if Orenthiel reaches for me first?" I pressed, planting my muddy boots like the ground might steady the rest of me. "You heard Mnemar. Aidon might not move fast enough."

Hades reached into the dark fold of his coat and drew out something small that gleamed dully in his palm. It was a thin disc of black stone. And it was warm even from a foot away. "Carry this against your skin," he instructed, folding it into my hand and closing my fingers around it the way Mythia had with her bundle days ago. "It is cut from the same vein as my son's anchor. It will not stop Orenthiel from finding you. Nothing will. This is an additional tie binding you to Aidon. If you are pulled, don’t fight the current. Find your bond and let it haul you back like a fish on a line."

"Follow the thread home," I surmised as the stone pulsed against my palm as if it had heard me. "Got it. I just wish, for once, that keeping my kids safe didn't involve me being bait on a hook."

"You’re the target because you are the only one strong enough to survive being bait," he replied, with no flattery at all. He said it the way he'd report the weather, and somehow that made it hit harder than any kindness would have. "You’re the first ever to see Orenthiel. You walked into Tartarus when no one had ever walked back out of it. Do not let the size of this battle convince you that you are small."

Emotion burned the back of my throat, stealing my ability to speak without breaking down. That was the nicest thing he had ever said to me. When I was sure I wouldn’t lose my shit, I smiled at him. “Careful, Hades. That almost sounds as if you like me.”

He rolled his eyes as one corner of his lips twitched. “Gods forbid.” One of his hands landed on my shoulder. "Survive the night, daughter," he ordered softly.

"We will find the rest of the road together. Tell my son nothing of this until it is done." Before I could so much as draw breath to argue, the pressure of him snapped out of the air, and he was simply gone, leaving me alone.

I tucked the black stone into the pocket of my jeans and went inside. I hoped to find Aidon and my babies. Or Nina's smart mouth. Or Jean-Marc. What I got instead was Morrigan with the bone compass sitting dark and silent in her lap as she murmured something under her breath.

Every muscle in me locked. This was the woman I'd caught with her magic guttering over Melaina's heart in the dark. The liar everyone had warned me away from. "What are you whispering about?" I asked.

"Apologies, mostly." Morrigan straightened. Her silver eyes had gone wet. It was the first real crack I'd ever caught in the armor that the whole network had warned me to fear. "They ought to hear it from someone who's stood where they may be sent. I won't be able to tell them after tonight. I'm doing it now, while I've still got time."

I didn't have a thing to offer back that wouldn't have insulted us both, so I squeezed her shoulder once and left her to finish speaking to the dead. Mythia met my eyes from the stove and gave the smallest nod of her head. She’d keep an eye on Morrigan.

I continued to the staircase and made my way to our room, where I found Aidon sleeping in our bed with the babies. Nyssa was awake in the dark. She wasn't fussing, just watching her siblings and father. Her shadows peeled loose from her little body and stretched across the bed in a thin gray ribbon. The end of it brushed Melaina's round cheek, then Thaniel's and Aidon’s. It was as careful as a mother checking for a fever.

Between Thaniel's curled fingers, a white thread snapped, guttered, and snapped again. Were they rehearsing while they slept? It seemed like it. All three of them braided their power together in a rhythm only they could hear.

I'd told myself I'd only sit for a minute, but a minute in the rocker turned into hours while I watched the three of them sleep. Aidon was flat on his back with all three babies tucked into the long line of his body, and not one of them had so much as twitched. Their magic, though, had no such manners. It rose off their skin in thin ribbons while they dreamed and braided itself together in the dark above them the same way it had when they'd stitched that tear shut on the living room floor.

We'd spent the whole night building a trap in the yard, but the thing it was built to catch hadn't come. Some part of me had started to hope it wouldn't. It was naive and stupid. It was better to end the threat. Knowing didn’t stop me from wanting this small slice of normalcy to last.

That hope died sometime past midnight, when the first ward shivered. Down in the kitchen, Jean-Marc's detector had been ticking all evening like a clock. I imagined it was spiking as something tested the lines. There were four separate pushes. Each at a different seam.

I sat up straight with my hands gripping the rocker's arms, counting the probes the way I'd once counted a patient's failing pulse. The fourth push withdrew as quickly as it touched the wards. Yet the silence it left behind wasn't relief. It was the deliberate quiet of something that had finished looking and gotten what it came for.

"Did the wards hold? Tell me we aren't under attack," Nina called up the stairwell in a voice that was pitched too hopeful by half.

I was on my feet before I'd decided to stand, one hand already closing on Aidon's shoulder. "They held, sweetheart." The braid of magic over the babies tightened and went still. "It wasn't trying to break in. It was mapping the way past. It's done browsing."

Aidon came awake the way he always did. All at once and already dangerous. "Get them to the pocket room," he ordered, sliding out from around the babies carefully. "It's skipping the sigil entirely. Mollie, Mythia,” he called out so the rest of the house could hear, “Get to the room off the pantry and use the chant my father gave us."

Mom and Mythia were through the bedroom door before he'd finished speaking. I scooped Melaina, Aidon took Nyssa, and Mom had Thaniel. We practically ran down the stairs. Mythia went right to the fridge and grabbed bottles of milk I’d been pumping. She was inside the pocket room before Mom. I set Melaina in the swing while Aidon put Nyssa in another. My heart felt like it was being wrenched from my chest as I looked at Mom while backing out of the room.

“We’ll keep them safe,” she promised. “Go.”

Nodding, I stopped by Aidon as he shut the door to the pocket realm. The latch clicked home, sealing my mother, my pixie, and three babies behind a door Hades had carved out of nowhere. Around us, the rest of the people in the house rushed to their positions.

Within a couple of minutes, the house emptied. I sent a message to Stella, letting her know she was needed. She had wanted to stay the night before, but I insisted she get some sleep at her house. Now, I was kicking myself.

Brenna dropped beside me at the living room anchor. Both our palms were flat to the boards where my magic had pooled under the wood. The floor felt warm as if the sun had been beating on it all day. Across the space, Nina hauled her braid of magic taut between two fists at the eastern wall.

Looking over my shoulder, I saw Wilhelm and Astrid at the front. When I checked the kitchen, Morrigan was working at the back window with the compass alive in her hands. Its needle was bouncing toward something none of the rest of us could see.

"Stay safe, Queenie. Love you," Aidon said as he brushed a kiss to the top of my head. I thought he’d already gone outside.

“Love you, too, Yahweh,” I murmured.

He paused at the back door and cut his eyes to me across the dark kitchen. "If I go down, you keep doing what you need to do, Queenie."

"You don't get to issue that order and call me Queenie in the same breath, you overgrown thundercloud," I shot back, making his mouth twitch at one corner.