“What was your mother’s name?” Lucius asked, surprisingly interested in the baby as we sat around the large fireplace in the inn’s common room.
“Ekaterina,” I said, unable to take my eyes off my daughter as she slept. “But I’m not naming her after anyone in my family,” I added in a grim tone. “Not after everything they did to me.”
A short silence followed, then Mara suggested, “You could name her Agnes, after her mother.”
I pinched my face. “I think that would just remind me of the strange way she was conceived.”
“How was she conceived?” Leander asked with a salacious look.
I glanced up at him with, shaking my head. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t told this story before. “I stayed here for one night on my way to the Old Realm. Agnes took a fancy to me right away, and she snuck into my bed and rode me that night.”
“Looks like she got what she wanted from you,” Darius snorted.
“I guess she did,” I said, gazing down at my baby again.
She really did need a name. I toyed with the idea of naming her Hope, since that was what she represented after everything we’d been through, but it didn’t seem to fit. I kind of liked the idea of Dawn as well, since we were at the beginning of a whole new era, but that wasn’t right either.
Then an old word I’d once heard that also meant dawn struck me.
“Aurora,” I said, smiling at her as she wriggled in her sleep. “I think her name is Aurora.” I glanced up at my friends. “She’s a new dawn. And this way, she can keep the first letter of her mother’s name.”
“Aurora,” Appius said, stroking her head as he sat with his arm pressed against mine. He glanced up at me. “I like that.”
I met Appius’s eyes, and burst into a smile. In that tiny, golden moment, I could feel my entire future starting to unfold. I had healing skills now that few people in the frontier had, so I would never lack for employment or purpose. Neither would Appius. I knew he would be by my side for a long, long time to come. And we would have Aurora with us, and Dushka too, though I wasn’t sure how that would work yet.
I blinked and grinned as it hit me that Aurora would grow up as the most cherished and protected little girl in the forest, what with three fathers. Although that was putting the cart before the horse a little bit. I didn’t know that Dushka would accept her. I didn’t honestly know that she would live.
But she would. She would live and grow and be happy, if I had anything to do with it. I would live and thrive with Appius and Dushka by my sides. There were so many things still to sort out, but I knew that one thing.
We stayedat the mountain in for a few days to rest and recover. Flora was willing to keep feeding Aurora, which I was certain was the only way my daughter stayed alive. Flora’s baby was nearly two years old, but by a stroke of luck, she had continued to give the boy breast milk, even as he’d learned to eat solid food.
Flora was subdued during those days, and even though she was willing to help, she didn’t make any sort of connection with Aurora.
“She’s mourning her husband and children,” Larth’s wife explained to me a few days later, as we packed up our few remaining things. “So be gentle with her. And make certain she comes back to us soon.”
“I will,” I promised.
I was desperate to return to Kettering as quickly as possible, now that the journey was done, but Aurora still needed to eat. So I’d negotiated a deal with Flora whereby she would come with us to Kettering for Aurora’s sake, and as soon as I was able to find another wet nurse, I would provide her with someone to escort her back to her mother and father’s inn. With all the refugees Kettering had taken in after the dying winter and through the summer before I’d left, I was counting on there to be a nursing mother somewhere who could help. Hopefully more than one so I didn’t put too much strain on anyone.
We set off for home four days after arriving. It would be at least five days of walking, unless we were lucky enough to find a boat at the confluence of the Wolf River. I wanted to avoid Tesladom at all costs, and there was no telling where General Rufus and the men he still had with him would be. I was willing to forge through just about any obstacle to get back to Dushka, though, and after a murderous king, a city held prisoner, fields of boulders, and broken bridges, I didn’t think there was anything in the frontier that could so much as make me blink now.
The walk out of the mountains was far more pleasant than any other part of the journey. Larth’s wife had constructed a sling for me so that I could keep Aurora against my chest at all times. Unfortunately, that also meant that I was splattered with everything that came out of every one of Aurora’s orifices as we walked, which Leander and Darius thought was hilarious. Larth’s wife had found a few bits of baby clothes, but they were all much larger than Aurora. They would do, though.
We hit a stroke of luck when it turned out that there was a boat moored at the Wolf River, and that its captain was willing to take all nine of us—I counted Aurora and Flora’s boy among our numbers—down the river to Kettering.
That took another day—and a promise that Dushka would pay the captain once we reached Kettering—but finally, after what felt like a lifetime, in the middle of a balmy, spring afternoon, with the birds singing overhead, the sun shining down through the trees and casting dappled patterns along the riverbank and streets close to the river, we reached Kettering.
I was home.
“This is where you’re from?” Leander asked in utter awe as we climbed out of the boat.
“This is what a city in the frontier looks like?” Darius echoed his question.
“Well, Kettering is more of a town,” I said, breathless with anticipation, already searching for Dushka as I adjusted Aurora’s sling after exiting the boat. “There are much bigger cities than this on the frontier.”
“It’s much larger than I thought it would be,” Mara said, glancing around at everything in awe.
“Is that what you said to Lucius the first time he fucked you?” Leander joked.