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daughter and I needed to know you were all right. You need to worry about yourself, Synthia. Besides, I asked Ristan to show you Ryder’s mother. I thought you might be able to reach her where I had failed to, but it’s apparent now that she’s a lost cause.”
    “Lost cause?” I asked as I turned on my side, trying to ignore the twins who were practicing their kicking skills on my ribcage.
    Danu’s eyes lowered to my stomach where it moved in a frenzy of activity. “Nothing has gotten through to her and worse, based on what she did today, she’s becoming more unstable. Alazander crushed her mind and he had finally broken her just before he died. Now she goes into fight mode when others get too close to her, and I’m not sure she’s strong enough to come back from that. I had thought maybe she’d see you as a victim as she was, but I was wrong.”
    “That’s bullshit,” I whispered, remembering coming back from Larissa’s death. I didn’t want to; in fact I’d been inside my mind, and it had taken Ryder coming in to get me. She just needed someone to do the same for her. “It’s easier to hide from our feelings, from reality. She was abused mentally and physically. It makes perfect sense to give up when you can’t see light at the end of the tunnel, but there’s light now. She can come back from it, she just needs help.”
    “He comes,” she said as her silhouette shimmered and then faded. I looked at the spot where she had just been and turned in time to see the door open as Ryder walked through it. He was beautiful, with his large velvet wings that swept the frame with their width.
    “Pet, how do you feel?” he asked as he took me in with his golden eyes. He looked tired from playing war games with the Mages, and I felt bad for disturbing him from them. He’d missed being with me and Eliran for the quick check up after the disturbance with his mother, as something had called him away.
    “I feel fine. Eliran said it was just Braxton Hicks contractions, which is a fancy way to say my body is preparing for birth, but he said they can be just as scary and painful as regular labor contractions,” I said feeling a twinge of embarrassment at knowing beforehand what was wrong with my own body. “It had nothing to do with your mother,” I said softly as tried to keep the blush from taking color on my cheeks.
    “Do you need anything?” he asked, but I could see he was torn between staying with me and preparing his kingdom for their survival.
    “Mmm, I’m good. I’m going to rest, but can you please send Darynda in after she’s done with Faelyn?” He tucked the blankets around my body and gave me a chaste kiss on the forehead, and held up a cup for me to sip. It was filled with an herb drink that Eliran said would help with pain. It relieved the pain, but it also made me sleep like the dead.
    “Synthia,” Darynda’s voice penetrated my sleep-riddled mind. I looked up to find her green eyes peering with concern at me. “Are you well?”
    “I’m fine,” I said as I turned over and winced as one of the babies protested at the slight movement. “I think they are training for the Elite Guard already.”
    Darynda smiled as she brought over a crystalline container full of blue liquid. “This is from the Fairy Pools in Scotland; well, from our side of it anyway. “There’s a story that says Danu blessed the waters of the pools for the Fae, and mothers would drink it to give their unborn babe strength for his journey into his new world.”
    “Is that so,” I asked the air, hoping for some sort of confirmation to this old wives tale from the person in question, and then noted that Danu wasn’t here. Normally she was around when my eyes first opened in the morning, and today she wasn’t.
    Judging from the bright shade of blue that filled the sky outside the window, I’d slept through the entire rest of the day as well as part of the night. “What time is it?” I asked.
    “It’s later than