Page 96 of Raven's Dawn

Rania’s voice was softer than I had yet to hear it. “Did she have any reservations?”

“When I asked her for it?” I asked.

She didn’t look at me, but she nodded.

“Yeah, she had one. She suggested that I have a tubal ligation first.” A quiet laugh escaped me. “I don’t want kids. She didn’t want me to get pregnant and regret it.”

“Not because of anything you had done?” Rania asked.

“It’s less about what you’ve done and more about who you are,” Luci said behind me. “Laila is not unreasonable. I find her too reasonable, most of the time. If you want eternity, ask her for it.”

Caeda made a noise in her throat, a few octaves louder than I thought we were supposed to be during this. “Fuck eternity.”

“Fuck it then.” Luci didn’t match her tone. He spoke flatly, plainly. “Do what you would like, Caeda.”

“I would like if I hadn’t taken thousands of souls to stay alive,” she snapped. “I would like to travel backward in time so that I and my people wouldn’t have had to see what we’ve seen and deal with what we’ve dealt with for my entire life. For all the lifetimes that came before me. For my mother, and my grandmother, and my?—”

“I believe she would like the same.” Rania’s voice was still quiet. Not soft in the affectionate sense, but in an understanding manner. “You are my elder, your Majesty. I truly mean no offense. But it is not as though they have ignored us for thousands of years. They were dead. They didn’t choose that any more than we chose to be born into this war.”

“So they say,” she said beneath her breath.

“I read her mind,” Rania said. “I saw it all. I saw what she did then. For us. The sacrifices she made. We are queens as well. We know the sacrifices we make for our people. We know the way it hurts. The sacrifice you’ve made—using maalaichte cnihme magic—hurt. But you did it to support your people. She had to make hard decisions like that too, and I can’t blame her for the ones that were out of her control.”

“Then get on your knees and beg her.” Though quiet, Caeda’s voice was like venom. “Plead with your life. I will not.”

If her problem was that she had needed to use the dark magic to stay immortal, a solution was right in front of her. But she didn’t want a solution. She wanted to be angry. I could understand that.

Didn’t change that it was childish.

Rania seemed to feel the same way, because she only sighed.

We rode in silence for a few more minutes. The island was still deep in the distance. And I had a question.

“Do gràs?” I looked to Rania, and then to Caeda behind me. “I know we’re planting the crystals, but how exactly are we doing that? Are we diving?”

“Think we’d survive that?” Rania asked me. “No, of course not. We have a bit further to go, and then a few friends will assist us.”

“What kind of friends?” I asked. “I don’t see anybody else out here.”

“As above,” Luci said, pointing at a few of my ravens overhead, then gesturing to the ocean, “so below.”

I squinted with confusion.

A quiet splash sounded on my left.

There’d been many splashes out here. Waves tended to do that. But this one was different. Louder. Somehow softer at the same time.

When I turned that direction, though, all I saw were white bubbles.

“There she is,” Rania said.

There who is?

Something popped out of the water.

At the front of the boat, inches from Rania, a ball popped out of the water.

No, not a ball. It was a head.