The poor Tempest had worn himself out so terribly that Kirastasia’s kisses failed to immediately rouse him. She grinned gently down at the spent soldier, allowing herself a heartbeat to study the razor-thin flickers of blue that sliced from his half-lidded eyes and outlined the handsome planes of his muzzle. This dear, handsome creature had fathered the life that now kicked in her womb. Whether or not he chose to accept his role as father, or slip into the shadows as distant as her own sire had been, in that moment mattered little to the frightened snowbird. At least my children will be strong. Beautiful. At least my first litter had this specimen to infuse their blood. A tiny thrill zipped through her—would they share Drizzt’s magnificent eyes? Her dark web of brindling? Or . . . perhaps they’d be cursed with scales as well, bizarre lizard skin crawling up their tiny limbs . . . “I don’t know if I can wait for you to awaken, my darling,” Kira panted, stepping back over Wudubearo’s fence as she trembled. “You see . . . this feels like the proper ‘time,’ and I need to figure things out. Perhaps once all is said and done, I can invite you in to meet the tiny things . . .”

Shuffling leaves and the scent of another ripped Kirastasia’s voice from her throat and constricted her body like the ruthless coils of the python whose armor she wore. Reflex jerked her head from Drizzt’s prone form toward a familiar earthen wolfess hobbling toward border, though her suddenly wide maple pools did not seem to truly see the silhouette in detail. A disconnect had snapped the taut bridges linking speech and recognition, emotion and sense. Kira calmly gathered herself to face Kahlan directly, yet she possessed no conscious control over her body. A numbness stole over her swollen frame . . . the icicles that weighed her down growing thicker, piercing her veins, injecting her with stony frigid cold and cementing her in place. Behind glazed windows, she mutely noticed the similar state of the ex-healers abdomen. The telling roundness of belly, the faraway ache in the sunlit eyes, the harshness of breath that still smoked slightly in the cool spring air. As the Ice Princess has suffered alone in her pregnancy, so had Kahlan . . . and the alternate world that shuttered over Kira’s mind like a fantasy dream nearly brought a whimper to her tightly pressed lips. In another universe . . . they might have discussed their pregnancies together. They might have giggled over their fates, their shared motherhood, gossiping about the fathers as they lovingly groomed one another’s pelts. Even now, as frozen in shocked rigor mortis as she was, Kirastasia sensed a pull toward her Kah that ached deeper than the raw uterine pangs squeezing her core. In any other timeline than this, she would have pressed her pallid kissers to her first love’s tummy to feel the cute squirm of tiny limbs. She would have curled around Kahlan to keep her warm at night, embracing the beloved cinnamon-woven body as if the pups Kah carried were somehow her own.

And then those gorgeous, citrine irises—still just as luminous despite the telling fever of mental sickness—fell toward Kirastasia’s mutated columns, and a gush of shame like acid bile broke the spell. A pitiful moan exited her hollow breast. The white she-wolf winced where she stood, ashamed, knowing there was nothing she could do to hide the alien iridescent sequins from view. Never had the outcast punkette felt so unnatural. So revoltingly abnormal. And still a secret part of her weeping out of sadness wondered if this change too might have been shared with her Kah, accompanied by startled giggles and soft kisses rather than stunned stares from a mile away.

Abruptly, the vague disturbed surprise in Kahlan’s summer portals turned to scathing mockery, the ex-healer remembering herself and assuredly preparing words to wound Kira. The alabaster damsel moved closer to Drizzt, as if to protect him, amber honey gaze fixed firmly upon the other woman’s merciless mask. “He’s hardly more than a boy, Kah, it should be fine if he steps into Wudubearo—”

Except this was not what Kahlan felt like pointing out. This was not the direction of her weaponized voice, which lashed at Kirastasia’s pelt like the slashing sting of a whip.

“For . . . forsaken?” It echoed from the ivory warrioress’s maw as if she no longer understood the meaning of language, her expression stunned as a scared doe’s. This must be what true shock felt like . . . the distance the body put between itself and horrific physical trauma, a powerful endogenous anesthetic to halt the mind and shut off ever nerve mid-fire. She still felt the powerful tormenting agony of her own contractions demanding that her pups leave her womb, but that pain registered in her brain on the same level of importance as the tickle of grass under her paws. It was there, but not important. Her entire reality centered on the bitter disappointment transformed to cruelty in every edge of Kahlan’s countenance, and the syllables like scalpels flaying her flesh. “M-my blood . . . my brother . . .” Vague lyrics that nevertheless rang perfectly clear. The hazy outline of meaning rippled just on the outskirts of Kira’s brain. She knew what Kahlan meant. She knew. Tears had once again started rivering down her lovely cheekbones. Warm, quiet streams. Glistening in the muted light. The blood of her injured emotions. “You did not.” But Kirastasia knew that she had. There was no other candidate Kah could have chosen to destroy the vipera dancer so efficiently. With so much brutal savagery.

Kira expected that to be it. For Kahlan to lace her mind with so much poison and heartache and to turn around and abandon her to her Tempest and her pups. Instead . . . instead the healer flinched, her body commanding her to collapse so that her children might enter the world. The next hour or so passed in a living nightmare. The silver-scaled lady rooted in place, unable to run, unable to avert her burning stare, unable to cry out or scream or beg or wail. I will be doing this soon. Very soon. I should take note. Except despite the clinical, glacial, emotionless affect that Kira displayed as she voicelessly observed Kahlan clean each pup, she raged. Crumbled. Her first love was giving birth right in front of her—and all the amazed wonder that she should have felt was instead congealed into a violent ugliness that nearly made Kirastasia retch. Two. Two new lives that she had watched take their first gasping breaths on Wudubearo soil. Curled protectively against their elegant, mind-broken mother, unknowing and uncaring. And Kira to witness them.

“Ha . . . ha ha . . . ahahaha! AHAHAHA!!”

Laughter. Hysterical. Bubbling and tumbling out her like wrenching sobs. Shaking her shoulders the way her uterine wall shook her stomach, so hard and so ruthless that new tears prickled at the corners of her wild lanterns. When Kirastasia finally gathered the breath to speak, she snarled out across the space separating her and Kah. “Haaa! Check mate, Kah my dear! You’ve done it! You’ve won! I’ve nothing to counter this devastating defeat—so sleep well, sleep long, and dream of your incredible victory! And blessings be upon your new sons, my precious brothers, may they rest as peacefully as though they slept in a grave.” She spat wickedly on the earth between her bejeweled forepaws—sending a vicious smile at the already unconscious woman—and tore back into the heart of the kingdom, leaving Drizzt behind. Kira ran blindly. She breathed without feeling the desperate expansion of her lungs. And when she could run no more—when she finally fell to the ground with a primal shriek—she at last allowed her muscles to do what nature had programmed them to accomplish. There, bathed in the cool silver of moonlight, sheltered only by the arms of trees silhouetted above, the tundra maiden pushed forth three small bundles of exquisite perfection. Slimy with blood and glimmering with fluid. Tiny mouths she kissed to coax to breath, whimpers so sweet they cracked her heart. Kirastasia hiccupped as she struggled to reproduce what she’d watched Kahlan do, cleaning each child in turn before nudging them awkwardly toward her swelled teats.

“A pretty daughter and two strapping sons . . . what is the point of you, anyway?”