Glenna did not have much use for Beqanna anymore.

Not with Core gone, not with her own useless gifts stripped from her. 

It had become a boring, desolate wasteland—and save the regular trysts with whatever magician she stumbled upon, the thrill of it all had long left her. Instead, she stuck to the outskirts, never mustering up the courage to live completely, but also not bothering to immerse herself back into the pulse of it all. Without Core, without the pulse of a heart in her chest, it all seems vaguely…useless. She ate food but did not taste it. She slept but did not dream. She lived with a complete apathy that left her cold and cruel.

Were she not pregnant, she would not have even bothered to make her way into the Forest at all.

But, here she was.

Her breathing was shallow but controlled. This was, after all, not the first time she’d felt such pangs in her stomach; she almost thrilled to feel the pain, the first time in months that something cut through the fog. It was enough to sharpen her gaze, to steady her thoughts as she made her way deeper into the Forest to where the trees grew thicker and the shadows more dense. She lowered herself to her knees and, for the first time since she had made her way down the mountain, was thankful that the glass had been stripped from her. Birth was precarious enough of a situation without worrying about your own bones splintering.

Time sped up and then slowed down—each moment colliding onto one another but drawn out for eternity. She screamed at one point until her throat was raw, if only because it felt good. She tossed her head back, no longer youthful but still pretty, still refined and gulped for air. She fought until she felt the child slip from her and onto the ground. Selfishly, she took perhaps too long to care for herself, to gather her own wits, before she stood up and mechanically went through the motions to ensure that the child would live.

For a while at least.

“Oh,” she said quietly when she realized it was a girl. This world was not made for them and Glenna was always disappointed when the magicians gifted her one as a child. Perhaps because she knew just how difficult it was to make it—or, perhaps more likely, because the last girl children she had loved had been the manifestation of Core’s heart and her own, placed in her chest and then birthed as two impossibly beautiful girls. Girls who had long since abandoned her, just as surely as their father had done.

Still, she nudged the tiny thing, unable to know whether the cursed glass of her bloodline would be passed down to it or if she was normal, as so many others had been. “Get up,” she commanded, her voice sharp. After a second, she sighed. “Useless little girl. You won’t have the nerve to survive at all, will you?”