Jade Fern Grove but you are dressed in night and snow

Perhaps, she wondered, that relief of pressuring escaping merely opened the wound. To hear him lay it before her and know that even then — those two labeled, the silver one she had not been aware of! — he still missed the others.

There are more. She breathed in silent confession. Eyes adverted still.

There is a northern woman who is expecting. A warrior woman too.

It is the warrior he has taken by his side.

Rightfully so, perhaps.

She should have been there with celebrations and congratulations. Yet all she could taste was her own bitterness in the back of her throat, a building sensation.