Morning came grey and reluctant, the storm reduced to a fine mist clinging to the fortress towers. Jasmine hadn't slept. She sat by the window with her hands folded over the swell of her belly, watching the twins' restlessness settle into something almost like listening.

They are close now, one of them whispered, and she no longer startled at the voice inside her own body — she had grown used to sharing herself with something that hadn't yet drawn breath.

"Who," she murmured, "is close?"

The one who opened the door.

"Is it him?" She didn't say the name. She didn't have to.

The twins did not answer. They rarely...