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It's still frost-on-the-ground winter and Karo comes home with the credit, beaming like someone cracked the sun open and poured all the brightness into his smile, and he's so happy he hugs her, and what can Shian do but hug back?
("Never," says Sathi, leaning forward to take Shian's hands in hers. "Promise me. Never."
"On my soul I swear it," says Shian, who believes in melodrama.)
It's tender-budding-branches early-spring and Karo presses his hands, and then his cheek, to the bump, and then his lips, and whispers "I love you so much already," and Shian doesn't cry, she doesn't, she doesn't.
("You're sure?" the doctor asks her, again, and Shian puts on her most confident grown-up face and smiles and says "I'm sure," and signs where he tells her to sign, there and there and there.
"Ten," she counts, when he tells her to, chill flowing into her veins, "nine, eight," and then she wakes up with aches in strange place.)
It's mid-spring, the air heavy with flowers, and Karo's so worried and trying not to show it, and Shian would comfort him if she could, but she can't, can't do that any more than she can give him this other thing, so she just takes his hand in hers and waits for the inevitable.
("Yes," she says, wishing for the spotlight and swelling music that should rightly come with that question, "yes, Karo, yes," and then it all comes crashing down as she stops breathing for a moment and then chokes out painfully -- "but there's something you should know...")
It's spring and everyone has brought flowers and Shian is crying, crying and refusing to hold the baby, and Karo, sweet good pure Karo, doesn't understand, he's saying "don't you want to" and of course she wants to, that's the problem, it's so terribly terribly tempting, and she can't let herself have that, can't ever, should run far far away so they can be safe from her but that would make Karo sad --
("Okay," Karo says, and, inexplicably, "I love you," and in what is clearly a moment of madness, "of course I still want to marry you," and Shian shouldn't take advantage of someone not in his right mind but she's not a good enough person to refrain.)
"I love you," Karo tells her, over and over and over, and he has this way of making her almost believe it, and she never does relent on holding the baby but eventually she is persuaded to touch its soft downy hair and kiss its terrifyingly vulnerable little head, and oh, oh, oh, it has Karo's eyes.
"Kita's going to be a wonderful mother," Shian says, meaning it, and then cries again.