Early Morning - Victor POV

I woke to Mama being sick in the herb garden again.

At six, I understood enough to know why. The baby was growing. Her body was making room. Master Elena had explained it once while drying mint over our table, using calm words like strain and nourishment and healthy development.

Knowing the reason did not make the sound any easier to hear.

I rolled onto one elbow and looked across the room.

Elira was already awake, blanket shoved to her waist, listening too.

“She’s worse,” I whispered.

Elira frowned toward the window. “Mama says stronger sickness can mean a stronger baby.”

“That sounds unfair.”

“It is unfair.”

That answer made me like her even more.

Outside, Papa stood in the herb rows with one hand moving slowly between Mama’s shoulders while she bent over the mint patch. Dawn had barely touched the roof, and already his face had that look I hated. The one where he was holding still because if he could hit the problem with a hammer, he would have done it already.

I pushed back the blanket. “Come on.”

Elira sat up. “Where?”

“We make breakfast before they come in.”

That woke her the rest of the way.

We slipped downstairs in our nightclothes, the boards cool under our feet. The kitchen still smelled faintly of banked ash and last night’s broth. I reached for the eggs without needing the stool anymore, which I was quietly proud of, while Elira coaxed the stove back to life.

“Scrambled?” she asked.

“With herbs that don’t fight stomachs.”

“Not too much onion,” she said.

“Exactly.”

Over the last few years, we had become good at this. Not graceful the way grown women made it look. Useful. Quick in the way children become when someone needs help and there is no time to pretend not to notice.

I cracked the eggs. Only one bit of shell fell in.

Progress.

Aunt Seraphine appeared in the doorway as if the house had produced her out of thought. She was dressed already, though shadows sat under her eyes that had not been there a few months ago. Her staff leaned against the frame, crystal dim in the dawn.

“Well,” she said, taking in the eggs, the herbs, the pan. “The cottage breeds conspirators before sunrise.”

“We’re helping,” I said.

“I can see that.”

Her smile came, but it was thinner than usual.

I looked past it. “Is Mama worse?”

Seraphine came farther in and touched two fingers lightly to the ginger root on the table, thinking while she touched it. “Not worse. Pressed harder.”

That was not an answer and all three of us knew it.

Elira glanced up from the stove. “By the baby?”

Seraphine’s eyes flicked once toward the garden. “This child is active.”

“How active?” I asked.

The pause was small. Too small. “Enough to make their presence known.”

Something in the way she said it made the back of my neck prickle.

“What does that mean?”

“It means,” she said, gentler now, “that your sibling is impatient.”

Elira smothered a laugh. “Like you.”

“I am not impatient.”

Both of them looked at me.

I folded my arms. “I am only correct faster than other people.”

That got the laugh I wanted, but Seraphine’s eyes stayed thoughtful even after it faded.

When Mama and Papa came in, Mama looked pale and tired, as if she had already fought half a day before breakfast. Papa kept one hand hovering near her elbow even after she sat down, like he did not quite trust the chair to hold her without help.

Elira and I carried over the tray together.

Mama’s face softened the moment she smelled the eggs. “My sweet children.”

Papa handed her tea while Seraphine adjusted the blanket over her knees.

I climbed onto the bed after they made room. Carefully. At six, I had finally learned that elbows were dangerous things.

“How much longer?” I asked, staring at the curve of Mama’s belly.

“Still months,” Papa said.

Seraphine said nothing.

That bothered me.

“Can I feel?”

Mama took my hand and placed it against the roundest part. Heat came through the fabric of her dress. I held still enough that even my breathing felt loud.

At first, nothing.

Then a flutter.

Tiny. Fast.

I jerked. “They kicked me.”

Elira leaned in so fast she nearly upset the tea. “Really?”

“Like a fish,” I whispered.

Mama smiled. “Try again.”

The second movement came stronger. Not a flutter now. A push.

My whole chest tightened around it.

There was someone in there.

Not an idea. Not later. Someone.

“I’m going to take care of them,” I said.

The words came out before I could think whether they sounded childish.

Nobody laughed.

Elira put her hand over mine on Mama’s belly. “Me too.”

Papa looked away so quickly I knew there was something in his face he did not want us seeing.

Seraphine adjusted the blanket again, though it did not need adjusting.

For one strange quiet moment, the whole room held still around that small moving life.

Then Mama said, “Well. Your little brother or sister has introduced themselves properly.”

And the room breathed again.

Late Morning - Victor POV

Aunt Seraphine took me to the stream after breakfast because, according to her, “your concentration is better before you’ve had an entire day to ruin it.”

“That seems unfair.”

“It also seems true.”

Elira came too, carrying a satchel with bandages, chalk, and the little metal markers Seraphine used for position drills. If I had to suffer, it was only right she should have to watch.

The flat stones by the stream were cold through my boots. Water rushed past fast enough to drown out village noise, which was one reason Seraphine liked training there.

“Again,” she said.

I stood barefoot this time in the shallows, trouser legs rolled to my knees. The water bit with cold. That was on purpose too. Seraphine liked doing things on purpose.

“What are we working on?”

“Response.”

“That sounds vague.”

“That is because you want it reduced to a trick.”

I made a face at her.

She ignored it with professional cruelty.

“Do not summon fire first,” she said. “Feel the pressure before the flame. Where does it gather? How quickly? What changes when emotion gets into it?”

I closed my eyes and tried.

Usually fire came easiest when I wanted something. That was the problem. Wanting made it answer fast, but not always cleanly.

This time I listened first.

Water around my ankles.
The rush of the stream.
The pull low behind my ribs where the warmth lived.

Then I reached.

Flame gathered over my palm. Small at first. Steady. Orange at the edges.

“Better,” Seraphine said. “Now move with it.”

That part was harder.

She had marked four positions on the stones with chalk. Pivot. Step. Breathe. Hold the flame without letting it gutter or leap.

The first turn made it flare.
The second almost killed it.
By the third, I was annoyed enough that it wanted to jump higher just to embarrass me.

“Elira,” I said through my teeth, “stop watching so loudly.”

She was sitting on a dry rock with her chin in her hands, running slow circles with her thumb over the back of her wrist the way she did when she was feeling for something that had not arrived yet. "I am not making noise."

"You are making witness."

Seraphine made a sound that was either a laugh or a cough she had chosen not to explain. “Again.”

So I did it again.

Pivot.
Step.
Breathe.
Hold.

By the fifth round, the flame moved with me instead of against me.

By the seventh, I got proud.

That was where everything went wrong.

I glanced toward Elira to make sure she had noticed.

The flame snapped brighter in my hand, blue-white at the core.

Too hot.

Too fast.

The water at my feet hissed.

Seraphine cut it off with two fingers and a word. The fire vanished so cleanly it felt rude.

I stood there dripping and offended.

“I had it.”

“You had most of it.”

Elira pressed both lips together. Her shoulders shook.

“You can laugh,” I told her.

“I know.”

That was worse somehow.

Seraphine stepped closer. “What happened?”

I looked down at my empty hand. “I wanted to keep it pretty.”

“No,” she said. “You wanted her to see you keep it pretty.”

That landed exactly where it hurt.

I crossed my arms. “Maybe.”

“There is nothing wrong with wanting to be seen,” Seraphine said. “There is a great deal wrong with sacrificing control to be impressive.”

I did not answer.

Because she was right.

Because that was worse.

Elira slid off the rock and came closer, not laughing now. “It was still impressive.”

Seraphine gave her a look.

Elira lifted both hands. “I am helping badly.”

“Very badly,” Seraphine agreed.

Then, because she was not actually cruel, she reset the markers and made me run the sequence again until the flame stayed clean through every turn.

By the time she finally let me stop, my calves ached, my pride had bruises, and I was grinning anyway.

“What now?” I asked.

“Now,” Seraphine said, “you learn not to let pride get there before judgment.”

“That sounds boring.”

“That is because you are six.”

“I am almost seven.”

“You are still six.”

Elira laughed outright.

I splashed water at her with my foot.

She shrieked and nearly dropped the satchel.

Worth it.

Early Evening - Lyra POV

The last weeks of pregnancy made time behave badly.

Some days dragged. Others vanished whole.

By dusk, my back ached, my ankles had started to swell, and Naelira, though we did not yet know her name, had developed a talent for pressing sharp little heels into places that made breath catch in my throat. Still, the house was full, alive in a way it had not been years earlier when grief had sat in every room like a second winter.

Victor came in from training damp to the knees, trying not to look proud of himself and failing badly.

“Elira laughed at me,” he informed me.

Elira came in right behind him. “He nearly boiled the stream.”

“That is an exaggeration.”

“It hissed.”

“Briefly hissed.”

Gregor looked up from the table where he was fitting a new handle onto a tool. “Briefly hissing streams are not generally encouraging.”

Seraphine entered last, dry and composed in a way that proved magic had been involved. “His control is improving.”

Victor perked up instantly. “You hear that?”

Seraphine kept pulling off her gloves. “So is his talent for showing off.”

That put him right back where he belonged.

I hid a smile.

Supper was noisy. Not because anything dramatic happened, but because houses with children become noisy even when everyone is tired. Elira corrected Victor’s use of a word. Victor insisted he had invented a better use. Gregor claimed both of them would one day lose an argument to a cabbage if they kept talking over one another. Seraphine raised one eyebrow and said nothing, which somehow restored order faster than speaking would have.

Halfway through the meal, a pain caught low and hard enough that I stopped moving.

Gregor noticed at once. “Lyra?”

I breathed through it. “Not yet.”

Seraphine’s gaze sharpened.

Victor had gone still too.

“It’s fine,” I said before he could speak. “Finish eating.”

He looked like he wanted to argue but knew better than to do it with that tone in my voice.

The pains came irregularly through the night.

Enough to warn.
Not enough to begin.

By morning, they were closer.

By afternoon, the whole house had changed.