She couldn’t bring her second child into this world without experiencing the echoes of her first – it was in every twinge and urge, every wave that gripped her – and though she closed her eyes against it, all she saw through the darkness was Evia. Yet when it was finished, she would turn. She would see the stark differences – the alien brilliance of her firstborn juxtaposed with the absolute plainness of her second – and she would feel such a sharpness in her chest that her lips tightened coldly against the sheer force of it.
Evia had been the outcome of a mutual experiment – the result of which had been undeniably extraordinary. Kora would remember the shimmer of her as she’d slipped like a gemstone beneath the waves, even as she walked this shadow of a second daughter across the same brooding sea on a bridge of ice that materialized before them as they went. Yet while her first daughter had been forever changed by what Kora and Woolf had done next, this time the mage of winter made her decision alone.
If the first had been an experiment, the second had been an eventuality. Perhaps she should have foreseen it – put an end to it before it happened – but she had allowed herself a passing sort of indulgence (a test in its own right), and now here was the result. An undeniably ordinary one. Kora could have brought the girl to her father. She could have let Hurricane take her under his wing.
Instead, she sought the wings of another.
Evia had been the outcome of a mutual experiment – the result of which had been undeniably extraordinary. Kora would remember the shimmer of her as she’d slipped like a gemstone beneath the waves, even as she walked this shadow of a second daughter across the same brooding sea on a bridge of ice that materialized before them as they went. Yet while her first daughter had been forever changed by what Kora and Woolf had done next, this time the mage of winter made her decision alone.
If the first had been an experiment, the second had been an eventuality. Perhaps she should have foreseen it – put an end to it before it happened – but she had allowed herself a passing sort of indulgence (a test in its own right), and now here was the result. An undeniably ordinary one. Kora could have brought the girl to her father. She could have let Hurricane take her under his wing.
Instead, she sought the wings of another.