Creche (Book II of Paranormal Fallen Angels/Vampires Series) by Karin Cox

it to be true.
    “I hope so.” She sighed. “Milandor is a mighty Crèche now, bigger than Silvenhall even. How can we hope for victory while they sit sipping each other’s blood and convince fledgling Cruxim to join them?”
    Jania’s defection from the Council had hurt her more than I realized.
    “Our enemy grows in number while we shrink.” She sounded defeated.
    “Have hope,” I told her. “We do not shrink. Our population is constrained.” It was a strange word, but it had once been Sabine’s and the thought comforted me. What had she said? I searched my mind, but her exact words were gone, and only that one remained. “We live, we have a child, we die.”
    Skylar’s face crumpled suddenly. The sight of tears glittering in her eyes shocked me. I had never seen her so animate.
    “It is our Crux.”
    I put my hand over hers, alarmed for her.
    “Do you not feel it then?” she asked.
    “Feel what?”
    “The desire for a child?” Her voice was small and impossibly soft in the darkness.
    Ah, and there is the kernel of her anger .
    Another memory tugged at me, not of Sabine or of revenge but something softer, something lighter—something altogether more urgent. Azure eyes. Tiny arms outstretched.
    “No,” I said. “No.” I shook my head, gripped by a visceral fear. “What could I teach a son but how to die? What could I teach a daughter but how to grieve the loss of her mother?”
    “You could teach them how to live.”
    We were silent for a time. I leaned back against the stone, thinking of Joslyn’s words, all those centuries ago, about the convent, her anxieties about being cloistered. They are not so different, these two women, I thought, glancing at Skylar. Her head was back against the wall, her face framed by a halo of hair.
    “You never did say it.” I broke the silence.
    She cocked her head.
    “The Swan they spoke of in the Council, you never told me what they meant by it.”
    It coaxed a small smile, but her mood was still somber. “The Swan is a ... it is nothing.”
    I squeezed her hand, preventing her from pulling it away. “Tell me. Please.”
    “It predicts who will pair-bond with whom.”
    “A bird?” It sounded ridiculous. I couldn’t help but laugh.
    I saw the white flash of Skylar’s smile in the semi-darkness. “A bird? No.” She laughed. “It is known as the Swan because ... swans, too, mate for life. The Sibylim tell us who will be betrothed and make a record of it, sometimes even before the lovers are born.”
    “Betrothed so they might love one another so fully, so faithfully, that they create orphans to weep for them. It seems callous.”
    I had thought to be consoling, but Skylar glared at me, her face flushed. “Jania might say the same.”
    “How can they tell who someone will love?” I scoffed. “It’s as if it is a transaction, like a carriage-man at the markets arranging to breed a mare.”
    “It is an oracle.” I could hear her slow inhalation. I had exasperated her again. “But sometimes a Messenger may know it themselves. I am a Messenger,” her voice softened. “Sometimes I know.”
    “You mean the Maker. He tells you who should love whom?”
    “No.” She put her hand to her chest. “The heart tells me. The Sibylim visit a holy grove to make the oracle. Once, it was in Delphi, but since your mother—”
    I sighed. “Again?”
    “Hear me out. Now, they do not leave Cascadia. The oracles tell us which hands will meet. Which are destined.”
    “From birth?” The pffttt of my escaping breath was loud in the silence.
    “Sometimes before.” She jumped off the ledge. “But why waste time with histories you will not believe?”

CHAPTER TEN
    S he did not speak to me again until we reached the glade. We found it filled with mountain deer, dainty, curious, big-eyed things that rushed up to Skylar expectantly.
    “You feed them.” I gestured to the insistent way they followed her.
    “No, many others before me, but I would not let this