I made the decision alone in the sense that matters not in isolation, not without Jasper present and accounted for, but in the specific solitude of a decision that could only be made by the person it was made for. He was on the roof with me. He had been there every night since Asha first appeared.
He would be there when it happened. But the decision was mine in the way that the gift was mine, and the bloodline was mine, and the responsibility of being the last and most of a line that had begun with the woman on the other side of the palace wall was mine.
I asked her one question before I agreed.
‘Will it hurt the twins?’
Asha’s voice was slower tonight. The mechanics of speech require more effort. ‘No. What I give you will find its way to them in time. Through the bond between mother
