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  “I want to wait a bit longer,” she ruled, her face red and sweaty. “Am I close? Can we check again to see how much I’m dilated?”

  The brothers were shooed out of the room, but Mariang insisted I stay with her and Danny. I held her hand through the examination and subsequent contractions, wishing I was anywhere else in the world. I tried not to feel the pain of losing my baby, but every now and then, the fresh memory coiled itself around my neck and squeezed, until I had barely any breath to speak with. Luckily, Mariang didn’t need me to speak; she needed me to smile at her and stay by her side.

  Mariang was closer to delivery than she’d been half an hour ago, but still wasn’t dilated enough for the big moment. She screamed through yet another contraction, and try as he might to be her beacon of calm strength, Danny was at his wit’s end. I pulled out a chair and sat him in it, and then helped Mariang to roll onto her side to keep her heartrate from dipping. I rubbed her back as I whispered encouraging things to her, and she cried through the pain I wished I could take on myself, so she didn’t have to feel it. She had that certain quality about her – the kind that makes you want to move Heaven and earth to make sure she never stubbed her toe again. She pulled me down to lay in the bed next to her. There was barely enough room, but we made it work. She was scared, so I was there, making sure she didn’t have to be afraid by herself. I spooned my sister, letting silent tears fall into her hair. I would endure any kind of emotional torment for her.

  Ollie stopped by, but quickly darted out after a sweet kiss to Mariang’s cheek and chuck to Danny’s shoulder. He sat with the brothers in the hall to distance himself from Mariang’s agony. I didn’t much blame him. I wanted to be out there, too. But Mariang needed me, so I stayed by her side and muscled through my dread. “Just think,” I said, rubbing circles into her back while she shook with pain, “in just a little bit, you’ll have your girl in your arms. I think she’ll have Danny’s mouth and your eyes. Maybe Danny’s ears and your hair. Super cute, right?”

  “It hurts! It hurts so badly!”

  “I know, babe. I’m here.”

  “And I’m here,” Von announced, bolting into the room like friggin’ Superman. He paused to kiss my cheek and then knelt on the other side of Mariang’s bed, pressing a kiss to her wet nose. “You thought you’d start the party without me? For shame. You know how much I love a good party.”

  When Mariang opened her mouth to reply, a contraction hit, and the only thing she could do was howl. Von matched her cry with one of his own, smiling sympathetically and squeezing her hand when she worked out a short laugh at his dramatic antics after the pain subsided. “You came,” she marveled. “You and October, you didn’t have to be here. After everything you’ve been through, you still came?”

  “Of course. You’re my sister. I want to meet my niece. I was thinking of taking her horseback riding next week. Kabayo’s wrapped around this one’s finger,” he said, jerking his thumb over at me. “I bet we could talk him into some shenanigans.”

  She reached out and touched Von’s cheek with a trembling hand and tears in her eyes. “I love when you smile. I adore you, Von.”

  “Let me meet my niece, and I’ll never stop smiling for you, darling.” Von grinned when he kissed her palm, staying in her eye line until the next contraction. He started howling again to match her yells. “See? I’m so much better at this than you. My cries were more operatic, yeah? Let’s let November decide. Who’s better at being in labor, me or Mariang? I personally think she’s faking it.”

  Mariang and I both laughed. Von was exactly what the room needed. “I’m glad you’re here,” I said, smiling at his handsome face as I rubbed Mariang’s back.

  “I am too, but perhaps you should take a break, yeah? This is all a little too fresh for you. Maybe Graham can take you down to the cafeteria.”

  I was about to say that I was okay to help Mariang, but Danny beat me to it. “No, she has to stay. The doctor listens to her. If something goes wrong, I want a medical professional in the room with Mariang.”

  Von stood, looking over us to stare at Danny in the chair. “You don’t understand what you’re asking her to do, being in here like this. She was just the one in labor, mate. It’s cruel, asking her to stay.”

  Danny looked up, hopeless and lost. “Then I’m cruel. I don’t care. All I know is that we need her to stay.”

  I rolled onto my back and reached out to hold Danny’s hand for a brief moment. “It’s alright. I’m not going anywhere.”

  After the twentieth contraction, Von decided he didn’t want to scream anymore with Mariang, so he simply held her hand, shooting me looks of silent concern when the heartrate monitor kept beeping even after her contractions subsided.

  “We have to reconsider the C-section, hun.” Danny spoke into his hands, his nerves shot. “Your heartrate’s taking longer to come back up.”

  “No, Danny. I want to try! Everyone thinks I can’t do anything. I can do more than people give me credit for. I can do this! Don’t you believe in me?”

  Danny hesitated, and then nodded. “Okay, we can wait it out a little while longer. As long as the doctor lets you.”

  I held onto Mariang’s hand, letting her squeeze it through her next contraction. Only this time, she barely put any pressure to the vice. “You alright? I barely felt you squeeze my hand that time,” I asked in concern.

  “I... I can’t feel my fingers,” she admitted, sounding drunk.

  I barked over my shoulder, “Danny, get the doctor!”

  “No,” she whined, but she had been officially overruled. What had been just enough heartbeats a few minutes ago to keep the doctor on the fence, and let her decide her method of delivery, was now past the point of no return. Danny obeyed, knocking over his chair and shouting down the hallway for help.

  It was at that exact moment I felt something familiar and cold shoot through me like a lightning bolt of ice in my veins. I’d just reaped someone, but knew it couldn’t be. I couldn’t have reaped. There weren’t any humans in the room. The nurses were all out in the hallway, fearing Danny’s wrath. I was the only partial human in the room.

  That is, except for the other partial human I was currently wrapped around while she howled.

  My mouth went dry, and all other noises in the universe faded from my mind, save for the sound of my own terrified heartbeat. My muscles went on lockdown as the ice stayed tight inside of me, my eyes widening as I tried to work out the panic that foreshadowed the thing that absolutely couldn’t be.

  I hadn’t just reaped Mariang. I couldn’t have. Mariang was strong. She’d dipped in the healing waters. There weren’t any Terraway monsters clawing at her right now. We were Topside, safe from the drama.

  I couldn’t find my breath as the cold crept through me, freezing me around Mariang while I tried to reason with the ice, telling it that it didn’t belong in me. There was no way Mariang was going to die today. It would be too soon. If she lived to be a hundred, it would be too soon. “No!” I worked out, my voice choked with tears that stung my face.

  Von reached over Mariang to grip my shoulder in solidarity, no doubt assuming I was crying because of the baby emotions. When Mariang’s soul leapt from me into him, he shot up from his kneeling position. “Was that... Did you just...”

  Screw fate. I would fix this. I bolted out of the bed the second the chill left me, and ran to fetch the doctor, who was already on his way in. “Something’s wrong!” I told him, stating what he no doubt already knew. He checked her, frowning that she still hadn’t dilated enough to deliver yet. Mariang’s breath was shallow and her eyes kept fighting to stay open between contractions that didn’t seem to hurt her anymore. Her pain was gone now, because I’d just ensured that she would have a peaceful death. It was the cruelest kind of tease, to give her a chance at everything she’d ever wanted, only to have it ripped away inches before the finish line. I couldn’t work out words to warn the room at large that irreparable things were happening.
r />   Surely not death. I couldn’t have reaped Mariang. She has years left. Dozens and dozens of years! I’ve done everything, reaped more than I should, to make sure she lived. She’s going to be a mother in just a few minutes!

  With a kind but grave bedside manner, the doctor explained to Mariang that he wasn’t willing to gamble on her heart being strong enough anymore. “I’m afraid we have to take your daughter out now if you want to live to see her.”

  “No! I... I can...”

  Mariang struggled to sit up, but the second she did, her sweaty body fainted in my arms. Her heartrate plummeted to a dangerous low and stayed there. The monitor blared, yelling at us that we’d waited too long – listening to her when we should have been taking over.

  Von scrambled to help me support her, lowering her back into the bed while I started chest compressions. Nurses flooded the room, edging Von and me out and shoving scrubs at Danny, who looked like he might be the one passing out. They ran her bed down the hall, shouting instructions to each other and pumping her chest that ceased to move on its own.

  Forty-Eight.

  Anastasia Grace

  I never learned the house doctor’s name. Everything about the rest of that day turned to a blur of white noise in my ears. Though I was the only one who understood the medical terminology for what had happened, everyone understood the finality of the grave pronouncement.

  I cast around for Ollie, but he’d left half an hour ago to sit with Allie, who was in a different wing of the hospital. Life was normal for him right now; he didn’t know. I wanted him to stay in that bubble as long as possible.

  Danny was taken into a room, shouting at the doctor and demanding they try harder. He cursed everyone and raged that they should’ve done more, that he had to see her because they were wrong. He’d given up everything so Mariang would be safe. They were surely wrong if they were saying she was dead.

  Boston, Graham and Von wrestled with their brother in the hospital room, pulling in small doses until Danny stopped throwing punches at everything and everyone who had robbed him of the one beauty in his life. They lowered him to a chair, Boston and Graham sobbing uncontrollably as they tried to keep Danny upright. They tried gently to make him understand that sometimes life was death, and there was nothing to be done about it now.

  The doctor was patient with our mess as he explained the other shoe that had to drop. “We weren’t able to save Mariang, but we were able to deliver the baby. Your daughter’s healthy and very much alive.”

  Danny had been blissed not completely out, but enough to where he couldn’t comprehend what the doctor was saying, let alone get up to do anything about it. He stared listlessly ahead of him, unblinking as his jaw went slack and tears streamed down his red and forlorn face.

  When the doctor realized he would get nowhere with Danny, he turned to me. “You’re her sister? That’s what I have here on her forms.”

  “Um, yes. I’m her sister.” None of it felt real. It wasn’t possible that Mariang was dead. It wasn’t even Terraway that killed her.

  I didn’t pay attention to my steps as I followed the doctor down a few hallways, tears blurring my vision and making my feet stumble. Halfway there, I keeled over and let out a gut-wrenching cry, leaning on the doctor who supported my weight and had the decency to hold me while I wept in the stranger’s arms. He led me slowly to the private room Mariang had been laboring in. Then he sat me in a rocking chair as I cried, unable to hear anything he was saying.

  It wasn’t until a pink blanket was placed in my arms that I realized the world was still turning, though it felt like with all the horror, it should’ve stopped long ago. Staring up at me was a squawking, round-faced angel. She had Mariang’s hair, Danny’s ears, Mariang’s eyes and Danny’s lips.

  I don’t know how I saw her that first time with so many tears marring my vision, but somehow I found her in the haze. A cry too horrible cracked out of my mouth, bubbling out and landing on the poor baby whose biggest crime was being born. The baby was the one who was supposed to be crying, but I was the one who couldn’t control myself. I held her face to my cheek, rocking slowly as I felt her tiny baby breath on my skin.

  Something in my gut stirred at the sweetness of her miniscule cry. Her insistence was so important to her, but still came out a high-pitched squeak. She needed her mother, and I was a poor substitute. I held little Baby Girl Manaul-Vandershot to my breast, falling more in love after every second I rocked her. She was perfect, and looked so much like Mariang, my heart could barely take it.

  I don’t know how long the nurses waited in the room with me, some of them crying softly as they watched me rock my niece. One brave nurse ventured forward, helping me hold the baby when my sobbing grew too erratic for me to see straight. She tried to arrest the baby from me, but I lashed out in desperation. “No! Her mama just died! She needs me.” The poor nurse apologized and helped me hold the baby more securely, placing a pillow on my lap in case my arms grew too unstable.

  I felt unstable, but I tucked it away because something inside of me was still a mama, so the baby’s cries held the first and foremost importance in my mind.

  When Von wandered in, agony slashed across his face at seeing me holding his niece. Tears cascaded down his angular cheeks as he pulled up a chair next to mine, holding his arms out for a turn. It was only to Von I could surrender her. She was too precious, too perfect. Anastasia Grace. That was what Mariang had wanted to name her.

  A low, mournful sound erupted from Von’s mouth. I heard the weeks of heartbreak in his cry, and the many more to come. “September! September, my heart.” He moaned our daughter’s name for a solid minute before he started to realize the baby in his arms had needs of her own. He rubbed her back, and started saying his niece’s name over and over. “Anastasia. Anastasia, my beauty.” Every time it came out, it was more loving, more grounded and slowly, it sounded less painful.

  Von with a baby was a beautiful thing. He handed her to me with great reluctance, but had something on his mind he needed two hands for. “Okay. I don’t know how to do this, and my brother’s absolutely wrecked, so you lot get to stand there while I ask as many questions about babies as I can think of. I need something to write with.”

  The nurse near the door grabbed him a pen and paper, answering gently every intelligent and obvious question Von produced. He scribbled the answers on his paper with a trembling hand while I rocked poor Anastasia Grace.

  It wasn’t until Graham came into the room sometime later that I remembered there were others who might want to meet Ana. I couldn’t surrender her, and Graham was too overwhelmed to hold her without potentially dropping the treasure. He stroked her cheek and then bent down to whisper to me, “Danny won’t come. He doesn’t want to see her. Boston and Ollie are taking him to see Mariang’s body. Can you and Von stay with Anastasia? He’s not... He can’t... It’s bad.”

  “Of course.” I looked down at the beautiful girl who was calming down in my arms. Her squawking quieted when I offered her the bottle the nurse handed me. Mariang had wanted to breastfeed. So many plans Mariang had for her daughter, and this was the first one of many that would be sacrificed. “I can stay with her, no problem.” I kept my eyes locked in on the perfect princess who totally owned me in the first two minutes. “I can stay with her forever.”

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  Enjoy a free preview of Trap,

  the final book in the Terraway series.

  One.

  Mariang’s Funeral

  Though I’d seen an avalanche of deaths in the past year, I’d only been to one funeral in my life. It was for Mrs. Kitsa, when I was young. I could still smell the thick pancake makeup on her, marring the cookie smell she’d always traveled with. Mrs. Kitsa had been one of our neighbors a few trailers down. She loved to bake, and always had a smile for Ollie, Allie and me. When she’d passed at eighty-two, I’d been only nine. Ollie and Allie took me to the funeral, clothes washed, faces scrubbed and somber.
We sat in the back, and I watched with fascination the ritual of a funeral. The praying, the hopeful message, and the mournful family who had never once come to the trailer park to visit their mother, grandmother or great-grandmother. Yet they all cried quietly into handkerchiefs and sleeves, swearing they thought they’d have more time.

  Mama McCray’s funeral was when I was seven, but I hadn’t been allowed to go.

  Omen funerals in Terraway were... different. The grand affair was held at Kabayo’s enormous stone castle. It somehow felt drafty and cold, despite the sunny ninety-degree weather that beat down on the expanse of grass covering the field. Last time I’d been in Silo, everything had been bone dry due to the drought, with barely a patch of green in sight. Now with regular rain coming, there were traces of emerald, jade and olive brushed through the woods, dotting the ground and filling out the mountains. It was beautiful, but I couldn’t really appreciate it, being that we were there for Mariang’s funeral. All six nations were gathered outside the castle. People from the furthest corners of Terraway came out to pay their respects to the woman who’d given everything to make sure they had a chance at survival. Mariang’s body had been magically preserved somehow, making her look like she was merely sleeping, though she’d been dead an entire month now. Each day felt like heaviness in my breast that I couldn’t escape. Every passing hour that Mariang remained dead, I grew more weighted, the youth gone from me completely.

  The council and kings had been given ornate chairs to sit on, facing the crowd above the stone steps of the castle. The casket was before us, resting on the expansive dais between the royals and the people. I was on the council, and Mason as well, since he was the delegate from Sombi, so we were given chairs, but Von was made to stand behind me as my sentry, staring out at the crowd with a hollow expression.