Eleanore felt something cold settle deep in her stomach. "It's been growing this entire time. Inside me."
"I believe so. Which means he'll come back for it eventually. Fragments like that don't simply sit dormant forever, and a man patient enough to wait this long isn't a man who's given up his claim on it." Serenya reached out, cupping Eleanore's face gently, the same way Caelestis so often did, the resemblance so striking it ached. "You must be careful, Eleanore. More careful than you've ever been. When he comes for it—and he will—it won't be a conversation. It will be a fight for something he considers rightfully his, and I don't yet know what removing it from you would cost."
"Could it kill me?"
Serenya's silence was answer enough, and Eleanore felt the weight of it settle heavy and cold against her chest, made sharper still by the small, fragile life growing inside her that she now had to protect from a danger she barely understood.
