“Yes,” said Crier without hesitation.

“Okay. The only thing is I can’t do it alone. We’re going to need someone with experience.”

“What kind of someone?”

Ayla met her eyes. “We’re going to need a Midwife.”

It was like a reenactment of the memory she’d seen in the locket.

Firelight, yellow and alive. The bundles of drying herbs hanging from the rafters cast odd shadows on the walls, like hands reaching down from above. Ayla was sitting on the lip of the hearth, fire a wall of heat at her back, and she was not alone. There were two figures in the middle of the room. She couldn’t see their faces, but she knew one of them had to be Siena. The other was clad all in white. A Midwife.

But this time, Ayla stood in Siena’s place.

They didn’t have a physician’s table, so Crier was lying on the floor of the music room, Ayla and the Midwife she’d fetched from the physicians’ tents—who had introduced herself as Jezen to Ayla, and to Crier had said, “Good to see you again, lady, even in times like this”—kneeling on either side of her. When Ayla had explained what they were about to do, Jezen had shook her head hard.

“No,” she’d said. “That’s—that’s unprecedented. We have no idea how that would affect her vessel. She could die.”

“It’s not unprecedented,” said Ayla, even as the words she could die rang through her head. “It has happened once before. I saw it.”

“How—?”

“We don’t have time,” Ayla said. “I’ll explain everything later, but for now, we don’t have time.”

And Jezen, grim, had nodded.

Now, kneeling over a wide-eyed, silent Crier, Ayla willed her hands to stop shaking. They had to stop shaking, she had to be steady for this. One slip-up, one moment of clumsiness, and—

Don’t think about that.

They had cut open the front of Crier’s shirt, just enough to expose her collarbone and the top of her chest. It was terrible that Crier would be awake for this, but Jezen had assured them opening the seam in her chest wouldn’t be painful—it was Designed without nerve endings. The dangerous part would be the few moments in which Crier didn’t have a heart at all.

“Are you ready?” Jezen asked Crier.

“Yes,” Crier whispered.

Jezen looked at Ayla. “Are you?”

“Does it matter?” said Ayla.

“Fair enough.”

Like the other Midwife had, all those years ago, Jezen lowered her blade to Crier’s chest. She didn’t have the delicate little physician’s instrument Ayla had seen in the memory; she had only a small dagger. But it was well sharpened, and it would have to be enough. Jezen ran the knife along Crier’s skin, finding that same near-invisible seam, the skin splitting apart easily. No blood. Using only the tip of the knife, she pried open that small section of Crier’s chest. The door to her heart. Crier had squeezed her eyes shut the moment the blade touched her skin; she kept them shut now. Ayla brushed her fingers over Crier’s forehead. “It’s okay,” she murmured. “It’ll be over soon.”