Pain lanced through her a second time, sharper, and Jasmine barely kept her feet as Xavier's arm caught her, half-carrying her back toward the fortress gates through a field rapidly dissolving into violence. Behind them, she could hear Hardin shouting something at his own men, his voice cracking with a fury that sounded, for once, entirely genuine — a king watching his own carefully staged parley detonate into a war he hadn't ordered.

"It's early," she gasped, pressing a hand to her belly. "It's too early, Xavier, the twins aren't supposed to—" Her voice broke off into a sharp cry as another wave of pain tore through her, worse than...