Silver Creek where have you buried all your children?

Europia. Thalassa's eyes sharpened on the Prophet. For a moment her throat felt constricted, and she could not speak; she feared that even if she could have spoken then, she would only have shouted at the prophet, for it was all she thought of in those moments of silence. Keep your scheming and your prophecies away from my sister, she wanted to spit — but no one could run from the curse of their own blood.

The Queen gestured stiffly for Haedwig to go on. She turned her eyes away so that the Prophet would not see the hatred in them. Hatred not for the woman herself, no, but for all that she represented; for the weight her words had held in the ears of Thalassa's mother. It was the shade of the old Queen which guided her hand even now, even as everything in her trembled at it.