Aira went rigid as the words came out of her own mouth.Mother, choose.For one terrible second, no one moved. The corridor seemed to contract around her, the hidden passage behind the wall, the seam in the floor, and the cracked ceiling above all pressing in as if the house had decided it was finished waiting. Kael turned sharply toward her, his face draining of color so fast it made her stomach twist. “Aira,” he said, but his voice sounded far away, as if he were calling from the other side of deep water. She tried to answer him and found that her throat would not work. Her seal was burning again, hot and sharp, and the child inside her was no longer calm. It was awake, trembling, and somehow listening to the same voice that had just spoken through her lips.The woman in the hidden corridor smiled with Aira’s mother’s face, and the expression was so cruelly familiar that Aira felt tears sting her eyes. “There,” it whispered softly. “Now the line is speaking for itself.” The mother t
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