When Sabah awoke to the first snow of the season, she sucked in a breath of air so cold her lungs ached and knew it was time.

The ground crunched beneath her hooves as she travelled south, and the sky was a wall of opaque white, with just the faintest glow of peachy gold to the east. Though her heart thundered in her chest, she moved without hurry. Her fate was certain whether she crawled or sprinted there. The knowledge of what she had done, of what she had agreed to, sat bittersweet in her mouth. The memory of that stallion on her back—

No. She would not go there again.

Her thoughts instead turned to the second stallion she'd met, his coat the same silver-gold as her son's. She'd thought it a sign, and had taken refuge in him, in knowing that he, at least, was her choice. If she now carried a child, there was a chance that it would not be the product of a degrading bargain: one that Sabah had begged Acid—probably futilely—to keep secret from her son.

Another part of that deal, at Sabah's insistence, was that she come in her own time, and alone. She would not be paraded into the Lagoon at Acid's shoulder like some kind of trophy. Several days had passed now since those terms had been ironed out and the figurative handshake performed, and Sabah knew that to wait any longer would be to risk the entire Brotherhood coming after her. She might carry their future within her, after all.

At least there would be one friendly face to greet her. She would be reunited with her sweet son at last and it would all be worth it.

As she crossed the border into the Lagoon, her pale legs began to tremble. The stench of stallion was overwhelming here, and it felt strange to think that she was smelling her son amidst so many others. She wondered how he had been duped into coming here, for surely he had been duped. Every soul on the islands knew the Lagoon's reputation.

Shaking the snow from her coat, Sabah paused at the edge of the tree line and looked beyond, to where the surf and sea foam writhed against the white horizon, then back inland to where the herd must have lain hidden among the mud and rocks and clawing branches. Her ears pricked; her nostrils flared.

She felt like a deer that had strolled into a wolf's den.