It is only slightly less miserable the second time around, but she loathes the child just the same.
When she emerges, draped in galaxies just like the twins who came before her, Gospel can barely look at her. The girl has fangs, just like her sister, just like her mother. The girl has skin made of scales and a voice that sounds more like a hiss than anything it ought to sound like.

Gospel hates so many things, but she hates the children most of all.
She had been kind with the first two.
She had wanted such great things for them.

She had given the girl youth and the boy a power of the stars that he was never able to control.
They must be around here somewhere, she thinks, but she has not looked for them.

There is a static pulse in her veins as she returns, again, to the magic women.
She makes no effort to hide the disdain in her voice when she speaks.

“I want the child, Spectra, cursed,” she says and feels no flicker of remorse.
It is not the child’s fault, the child with soft edges. More ghost than equine sometimes, it seems.
No doubt it is the fault of the girl’s father. Stave. His relationship with death.

“I want her to see others as skeletons,” she continues, “so that she might never become attached to anyone.”

As Gospel had become attached. To Ghaul. To Stave.
And, in this, perhaps she is saving the child from such a troublesome fate.
Perhaps it is an act of mercy after all.