But she doesn’t die. Something else happens.

Her heart cracks open, and a viper hatches.

With a searing pain, it bores a tunnel down her arm and out into the world. It’s as white as maggots. It’s dreadful. It’s terrifying. It’s beautiful.

It flicks a cunning tongue to scent the air, and all at once it darts aggressively toward her knee. She hasn’t the energy to flinch, but it isn’t attacking her. It’s found a filament of Spore lodged in the folds of her tunic. It unhinges its tiny jaws, and swallows the Spore, just like that.

Then it slithers down to the White Sea, where it drinks as any animal might refresh itself. After it has taken its fill, it explores the rock, then returns to her, where she hasn’t moved because she’s so stunned. Her hand is still pressed to the ground, bracing herself so she doesn’t topple over.

The viper pokes its sharp nose into her skin and, with that same burning pain, it crawls back up inside her body, into her heart, where it curls around once, twice, and nestles to sleep.

When the sun sets, she crosses the White Sea again, this time with no fear. The viper devours any Spore that attaches itself to her, while Ao watches her approach with gleeful amazement.

Imagine two girls finding themselves in a new land, where anything might happen. Where they might even hope to live ordinary lives, with a room of their own and enough to eat more days than not. There is hardship to come, especially for Ao. They will never fully leave behind the terror of their early lives because it has woven itself into their bones, but they will live.

At first, they will live in what seems like a garden of plenty, as menials at Duenn Manor. But its walls will become a prison of a different kind for Ao. But this second time, they will know they can escape, so they escape again.

This second time, they will make a good, decent life in Orledder Halt, with the beloved baby who will have a better childhood than the one they suffered. This child will smile when he sees the dawn and laugh when the moon and stars delight him, because he doesn’t walk every day in fear. They won’t speak of what came before, so it will fade as if into background noise.

Never mistake silence for forgetting.

It’s not that they don’t trust the child to know. It’s that it hurts so much to look back down that path.

67 THE PERFECT WEAPON

Elen woke as she always did, just before dawn. It was the one enforced demand from her childhood that she had kept and made a habit. The shutters’ cracks and irregularities became visible as night lightened to gray.