Page 72 of Monster Queen Rising

***

Gabi wakes up in the afternoon.

Madison's asleep — she sleeps when Gabi sleeps, which is most of the day — so I lift her out of the bassinet by the window and take her across the hall and sit on the bed with her.

Three weeks. Heavier than last week. The pale skin the same, the shadow under it the same, the small claws at her fingertips unchanged. Soft. Half-formed. There.

The dark eyes look bigger than they did. That might just be that she's more awake.

She looks at me.

She's looked at me like this since a week old. Harek thinks it's the hybrid biology. Madison thinks it's what she is.

I shift her across my lap, her head in my hand.

"Hello," I say.

She blinks. Her hand comes up and finds my finger and closes on it, the soft half-claws curling in against my skin, holding on — the grip of something that has decided the finger is hers now. This miraculous little hand grips me like it's the most ordinary thing in the world.

Then the hand opens.

The fingers uncurl off mine and the palm turns up toward the ceiling, and for a second it's nothing. An open baby hand in the afternoon light.

Something gathers under the skin.

A mark surfaces in the center of her palm. Small. Dark. The size of a dime. It deepens once — everything in it going darker at the same time — and then it sinks back down and the palm is bare.

She closes her hand. She blinks at me.

I don't move.

The place under my ribs warms. It isn't Fen. Fen sits at my sternum and burns; this sits lower and does something else, and it's been there since the night she came, and I don't have a word for it. Not a thread. Not a mate-bond.

Out on the porch I feel Fen's head come up. The patch at my sternum spikes when hers surfaces and his line answers it a half-second behind.

He doesn't come in.

He waits.

In the kitchen Crull turns from the counter toward the back of the house, registers it, and goes back to the bread.

I sit with her a long time. She doesn't open her hand again. The mark doesn't come back.

I hold her and let her look at me until she falls asleep with my finger still caught in her fist.

I lay her in the bassinet. Madison doesn't wake. I touch the back of her head once with two fingers and go out and close the door.

Fen's on the step with a book shut on his thigh.

"She marked," I say. "The palm. You felt it."

"Yes." He nods.

"I wonder what she’s going to be."

Fen smiles.

"You're not afraid."