Cainan waited until silence had fallen in earnest before calling out, “Does anyone know what’s happening?”

“They’ve captured yer mother an’ they’re takin’ turns with her!” one voice shouted.

Cainan ignored the heckler, who would only gain satisfaction if he rose to the bait. He knew a lack of response would grate on the beastly man’s nerves. He was probably a murderer or a rapist, or both, some scum of the earth that deserved to rot in here.

As if you don’t, he thought to himself, not in a self-pitying way for it was a truth he’d accepted long ago.

Silence fell once more, and then another voice, more timid, said, “I heard one of the guards say something about an ‘attack’.”

“Go attack yourself!” shouted the heckler, which made about as much sense as what he’d said about Cainan’s mother, who’d been dead for more than a century.

Cainan ignored the latter, focusing on the former, his thoughts immediately going to the series of attacks by the forest that had originally driven Mick to eschew life as a Comman Dur guard, only allowing him to return about a decade later. Could his luck really be so ill that within a week of his renewed employment the forest decided to rekindle its assault on the prison?

As he considered this, an explosion rocked the prison, the ground shaking so hard beneath his feet that he was thrown to the floor, pain shooting up his arm where his elbow contacted the stones. Dust rained down from the cracks in the ceiling’s mortar, stinging his eyes and coating his skin.

Everything went still and silent once more.

Twenty-seven years earlier

Slough, Finfalla

Sweat sheened Cora’s forehead, her entire body sagging after being so taut and strained just a moment before. Cainan held her hand, her grip slackening once more, as limp as a sock after having been like iron crushing his fingers a second ago.

The midwife had tried to chase him out on a dozen occasions already—“The birthin’ room is no place fer a man,” was her favorite refrain—but he’d refused until she’d finally given up, instead giving him various jobs to do—gathering towels, heating water, pushing a cup to his wife’s lips—all of which he performed with the manic energy of one who was equal parts excited and scared out of his mind.

But mostly he was pained seeing the woman he loved suffering like this, and yet he refused to let her see it on his face, even after more than eight hours of steadily increasing torment. None of this was about him, only her and the life she held inside her, as it should be. “You can do this, my wife,” he said, giving her hand a gentle squeeze of support.

“I can’t.”

Hearing the self-doubt in her voice made his heart ache. “You are the strongest, fiercest, most capable woman I have ever met. You are the love of my life. And the child you will soon bear is our creation, ours alone, and no one will be able to take that from us. Not ever.”