The woman’s eyes filled with tears. Her eyes flicked around the room, haunted, seeking the gaze of someone else—anyone else—who might do something. None of the other holders could meet her gaze. The young mother looked up at Invidia pleadingly, and she began to sob. “Lady,” she whispered. “My lady, please.”

Her stomach twisted and rebelled, but Invidia had learned long ago that retching sent the parasite into convulsions that could all but kill her. She ate seldom, of late. “You have another child,” she told the young mother in a calm, hard voice. “Save her.”

The man sitting beside the young mother moved. He gently took the boy from her arms, leaned forward to kiss his hair, and held him out to the vord Queen. The child wailed in protest and tried to go back to his mother.

The vord Queen took the child and held him in front of her. She let him kick and wail for a moment, watching him with her alien eyes. Then, quite calmly, she held the boy close to her body with one arm and twisted his head sharply to one side. His wails ceased.

Invidia found herself about to lose control of her stomach, but then she saw that the child still lived. His neck was twisted to the breaking point, his breaths coming in small, labored gasps—but he lived.

The vord Queen stared at the sobbing mother for a moment. Then she said, “She feels pain. I have not harmed her, yet she feels pain.”

“The child is hers,” Invidia said. “She loves him.”

The Queen tilted her head. “And he loves her in return?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because it is the nature of love to be answered in kind. Especially by children.”

The Queen tilted her head to the other side. Then she stared down at the child. Then at the young mother. Then at the man seated beside her. She leaned down and touched her lips to the child’s hair and paused for a moment, as if considering the sensation.

Then, moving slowly and carefully, she released the child from her hold and passed him back to the weeping mother. The young woman broke down into shuddering sobs, holding the child close.

The vord Queen turned and left the cottage. Invidia followed.

The young Queen walked up a nearby hillside and, once they had crested the hill and moved into sight of a vord landscape stretching out before them, stood with her back to the little steadholt for a time. “Love is not always returned among your kind.”

“No,” Invidia said simply.

“When it is not,” she said, “it is a kind of pain to the one who has loved.”

“Yes.”

“It is irrational,” the vord Queen said—and to Invidia’s shock, there was a quiet heat to the words. An anger. The vord Queen was angry.

Invidia felt her mouth go dry.