XII
Symbols of PurityThere was a shortage of babies. A ‘dearth of birth’, Daro had said when he was still prospecting for her sense of humor. Jokes, whimsy, banter, she had no room for them anymore; they’d been scoured away by winds, rinsed off with blood. Farce she still recognized, and irony. Irony that she had achieved so much, and had no one to share it with. Had achieved so much because she had no one.
If Tana hadn’t died, and Snuggles, and Neris before them, would she be queen now? Did she even want to be queen, when the title came with so many demands?
“I cannot heal them,” she told Daro, as she had told him so many times before. “I need birth magic to heal.” It was far too late to keep secrets from her Chancellor. In any case, like all the new citizens of Welk, he’d sworn a loy
