Solie was crying as Mace carried her into the sitting room and over to a chaise near the window. "Why didn't you know?" she wailed at him, hitting his arm with a trembling hand. "Why couldn't you tell what she was?"

His sorrow echoed through her. "Forgive us, my queen."

Solie sniffled sorrowfully. "Where's Heyou?" she sobbed.

"Solie!"

Mace laid her on the chaise, and she saw her beloved, Heyou, limping badly and hanging onto the broken frame of the doorway to keep from falling. His shape was as perfect as always, but he held himself wrong, flickers of smoke rippling across his skin. He stared at her and nearly collapsed, but she felt his relief at seeing her alive.

Dillon caught him, holding him up and helping him over. Solie sat up on the chaise, reaching for Heyou and sobbing. The entrance was suddenly full of battle sylphs staring in at them.

Heyou fell to his knees beside the chaise and into Solie's arms. She hugged him tight and wailed as another contraction shook her, this one worse than any before.

"You're in pain," he whimpered, holding her.

"I'm supposed to be." She laughed and started to cry again.

Autumn stepped up beside them, one hand on Heyou to heal him while she lifted Solie's skirts with the other. The healer checked on Solie, tapping her belly, and Solie sagged back against the chaise in relief as the pain vanished. The sensation didn't: she felt the baby coming.

"Wait!" she heard suddenly. "Wait!"

Startled and afraid of what might happen, Solie looked up to see Sala's other surviving victims.

Unsurprisingly, Ril arrived later than anyone else, sprinting across town as fast as he could. The energy inside him burned. It was all Lizzy's, Ril not being willing to take any from Leon that the man might need while he was still in recovery. He was fueled by Lizzy's love instead, staring up at the swirling cyclone of battle sylphs rising high over the ground, all sweeping upward after one of their own.

He felt their rage and confusion. Claw was a hive mate, and there wasn't one of them who couldn't feel how badly he wanted to stop fighting them. Everything he felt was in the open now, all the secrets he'd been ordered to keep revealed.

She'll be queen! Claw screamed, sobbing. She killed Rachel to have me! She'll kill the queen and make me take her. She'll be queen of us all!

They would kill him. Ril had no doubt of that. He'd kill Claw himself if that was what it took to protect the queen, just like he'd killed Wat, and he'd live with that grief as well. Claw rose above them all, still fighting even as he screamed out his master's confessions and begged them to finish it before she did.

Then his scream became different.

Ril couldn't feel the death. None of the battlers could, not with the strange soullessness of Sala that hid her nature from them for so long. Claw did, and lightning flashed through him, turning him bright white for an instant before he fell, dropping back into the swirl of battlers below.

Ril sprinted across the wreckage of a building destroyed during the fight, past a hysterically barking dog and up to the wall that circled the queen's garden. He jumped it, one hand slapping down against the top of the stone as he vaulted over and landed on the gra.s.s on the other side. Claw and the other battlers were there.

Don't kill him! he shouted, running straight into the storm of battlers, their cool mist gentle against his skin even as their lightning made him ache to join them in his natural form.

He threatened the queen, Fhranke hissed.

He didn't, Ril retorted. His master did, and she's dead. This close, he could feel it now, through Claw. If all of you didn't know that, he'd be dead already. With the death of the master came the freedom of the sylph. Claw would only be a danger now if he lost his sanity.

He found the battler lying in his human form in the center of the storm cloud, shaking, his hair blue again but his eyes wide with madness. Ril knew exactly how Claw felt. He'd lost his own sanity when he came through the gate and Leon killed the girl who'd drawn him. They'd made peace, but first had been the madness-and it hadn't been Leon who pulled him out of it.

Inside the building, Solie wailed in pain. Her child was still coming.

Ril hauled Claw upright, pulling the other battler back against his chest and locking arms around him. Claw didn't help, but he didn't resist, either, hanging limp in Ril's grip as he was dragged across the garden and into the house.

"Wait!" he shouted. "Wait!"

Solie looked toward him in fear. Her feet were drawn up on the chaise, her knees spread and her skirts pulled up. Ril could see her clearly, and the crowning head that was already emerging streaked with blood.

Ril grabbed Claw's chin, forcing his head down to watch. "Look!" he gasped. "Look at her! See her!"

Solie screamed, bearing down, and Ril looked away, afraid to see the birth. That was how he'd regained his own sanity. In seeing Lizzy born.

He looked away and found himself staring at Betha. The woman stared back, eyes wide. Ril just watched his masters' wife and mother, and he closed his eyes against her understanding, not knowing what to say.

Claw was lost.

Rachel was dead. Wat, Galway, and Justin were dead. Even Sala was dead. He'd felt her die and been able to do nothing about it, and even as he'd reveled in that, he'd shattered. No, there was nothing left of him; only the dying remained to be done. Darkness. He'd welcome that.

Ril was shouting, telling him to look at her. What her? It didn't mean anything.

"Claw," Solie gasped suddenly. "Look, Claw."

Orders were absolute. Claw focused, even as he didn't want to. Solie's hair was soaked with sweat; tangled, plastered to her face. She was gripping the sides of the chaise hard and gasping, all of her muscles tight and trembling. Between her legs, between her legs . . .

A baby was sliding out from between her legs, a filthy, slimy baby girl with a face already s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up into a scream. Claw looked down at that perfect, untouched spirit, and she blew through him, bringing light like a ma.s.sive, sun-drenched diamond dropped into the pool that was his soul. She took him and made him hers as surely as the girl for whom he'd first come through the gate. Except, this was so much more powerful. Claw stared, rapt.

Ril whispered something in his ear about her being his, or him being hers, but Claw didn't really hear. The other battler let him go, and he thudded to his knees, staring at the shrieking baby as she was wiped clean and handed to her mother.

Heyou stared like he'd never seen such a thing before and didn't know whether to smile or run screaming. Claw didn't care. He looked at the queen, who stared back at him with contented exhaustion.

"Can I call her Rachel?" he asked.

Epilogue.

Solie walked past the window that overlooked her kingdom, glancing idly out at the fresh snow that fell during the night. It was warm inside, heat piped in from a central location the fire sylphs took turns making as hot as they could. The entire downtown core of the Valley was riddled with such vents, and those living farther out could relocate if it became too cold in their own homes.

It was peaceful, even with the late afternoon dim and cold. Solie hadn't fully appreciated how tense she'd been over the last few months, afraid of an enemy she couldn't even identify. That was over now. Before he'd stopped talking entirely, Claw told them all what Sala had done. Unlike Wat, he hadn't been ordered to forget, all in the hope that when the time came, he would be insane enough to kill his own queen. Solie wept when she learned what had been done to him.

She left the window and walked past the newly repaired doors to her garden. A big bull mastiff slept before them, his ear twitching as she pa.s.sed. The garden itself was still devastated, but Sh.o.r.e and Loren would need to wait for spring to fix it.

Since the attack, Solie hadn't stepped into what had once been her master bedroom. She went into one of the smaller rooms instead. In a corner, a crib stood against the wall, Heyou looming over it with his jacket off and a wondering look on his face. He really hadn't realized what he was getting himself into, Solie reflected with amus.e.m.e.nt.

Heyou looked up and returned her smile. "She's about to wake up hungry," he said.

That little trick was going to be convenient, Solie thought. There was no chance that this child was ever going to complain that her parents didn't understand what she was feeling. Or that she would ever feel alone.

Solie stared into the crib at the sleeping little girl and at the blue-furred puppy that lay beside her.

"h.e.l.lo, Claw," she whispered, and he shuddered, his wounded gaze never leaving the baby. Beside him, Rachel shifted and screwed up her face, getting ready to scream.

"Aw, it's all right, sweetheart," Solie promised, lifting her up and carrying her over to a chair to nurse.

When Claw started whimpering, Heyou picked him up and brought him over as well. Claw didn't speak to him, but Heyou didn't seem to mind. He just cuddled the puppy as the two of them settled down to watch.

At least Rachel would always have a protector, Solie thought as she nursed the infant. Claw would always be there for her, and someday, Rachel would be his master. Eventually, she would be his queen. Until then, Claw's master was asleep in the other room.

It had been an experiment, binding him to an animal, but Claw was too damaged to take orders from anyone. The mastiff was working fine.

Solie nursed her daughter, her thoughts turning toward the maintenance of the Valley. She'd heard from Devon Chole again. He was content in Meridal and planning to stay there as a permanent amba.s.sador. Solie had written him a letter in return, congratulating him and telling him about the daughter he couldn't ever acknowledge. There would be other children for him, she hoped.

Mace continued to work directing the battlers. Leon was back as chancellor, with Ril as Solie's majordomo and Lizzy still learning how to keep track of the Valley's finances. She was a surprisingly quick study, and the Widow helped out on a part-time basis, when she wasn't working with her orphans. Nelson was starting to help Lizzy, too, brought into the council on a trial basis. He and Heyou had made their status public. Things were safer now, though life in the Valley had changed forever, thanks to Sala. They knew their vulnerabilities more clearly. They lay in the people who were also their strengths.

She felt the emotions of her people. The Valley was at peace, everyone settling down to bear the winter. In the Petrule house, Ril lay on the couch in the living room, his head in Lizzy's lap and his tunic undone. Autumn had her hands pressed against his chest, working slowly to try and repair old damage, while his masters both watched hopefully and Betha chatted with Gabralina. Children played and argued all around them, making a happily chaotic noise that no one really minded.

In the Blackwell home, the chaos was far less controlled, the orphans playing loudly with a big battler who didn't often deign to do so. Mace tickled the girls, sending them giggling hysterically while they squirmed to get away. The boys piled on top of him, trying to wrestle him to the ground. The Widow watched all this from the doorway before shaking her head in patient tolerance and turning to go and finish dinner.

Meanwhile, at the Galway home, Nelson headed into the bas.e.m.e.nt while his mother shouted for him to get back in time for dinner. In a corner, he found and unlocked a door that led to a stairwell down into the underground corridors of the hive. Stria had made this connecting corridor for the house, and he was very glad of it as a way to avoid the cold snows whenever he went to the queen's quarters and his hungry battler.

Solie didn't know those actual activities, but even with her limited empathy, she could sense that the Valley had breathed a sigh of relief. Winter was here, but it was a cleansing cold, the snow a blanket that would cover the horrors of the past year and freeze them away. Once spring returned, the Valley would be like new.

She kissed her daughter. For now she had no other worries than making sure Rachel was fed and clean. She settled back in her chair with her eyes closed and her child feeding contentedly at her breast. Heyou grinned, and she returned his smile. The future looked good.

About the Author.

L. J. McDonald was born in 1970 in Canada and has a bachelor's degree in Anthropology from the University of Victoria in British Columbia. She grew up reading horse books until Christmas day when she was twelve, when her parents gave her a book t.i.tled The Elfstones of Shannara by Terry Brooks. It was the first time she ever read fantasy, and from that point on she was hooked. L.J. started writing when she was fifteen, but she didn't try very hard to get published until she was in her later thirties. L.J. works in the Canadian military and also spends her time drawing, knitting, and reading as many good books as she can get her hands on. Visit her Web site at www.ljmcdonald.ca for more details on upcoming releases.

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