Esmera's chest tightened, and her heart beat against the walls of it. She kept her breaths slow and soft and steady, kept her panic at what a god could possibly want from her contained within her.

The beautiful, enchanting land of Milatanur was a place of high prices. Tauram's love for Ghallia had cost him his throne and his siblings' lives. Yandriya had paid with her life to save Esmera's. What would be the price of a god's favour?

Oblivious to Esmera's apprehension, Nuredir took his time closing his otherworldly eyes. A ripple passed through him, sending his black curls fluttering and his golden skin stirring. When he opened his eyes, they were directly on Esmera, clear with that knowledge the deities possessed that mortals were denied.

She swallowed, awaiting his terms the way an accused anticipated their sentencing.

"Your first child will be a daughter. I want her." Nuredir dared to stand tall, unfaltering, even as a little part of Esmera's hope crumbled inside her.

Her head felt light, as though it floated some distance above the rest of her, above her friends. Esmera thought she must've misheard Nuredir, but Tauram and Anjarah's sharp intakes of breath behind her told her that she hadn't.

The god had indeed demanded a human sacrifice in exchange for rebuilding a weapon he had created.

"What do you want with her?" Esmera asked, as much because she was curious as to buy time to wrap her head around what was happening because it was the last scenario she had imagined playing out when she left the Finnaaz estate in search of Nuredir earlier that day. In fact, it was a possibility that hadn't even crossed her mind.

"It's simple." Nuredir's eyes remained unchanged as they pinned Esmera in position even though all she wanted was to shrink away from him, from the steep expense of his cooperation. "I want to marry her."

Esmera blinked, her mind emptying itself of all the questions she might've possibly answered with. Her thoughts had gone swirling again, and they took a moment to right themselves once again.

Even in a land where Esmera's own marriage had been arranged when she was just born, she couldn't shake off the sickening sense that she was using her unborn daughter as currency. She may not exist yet, but she was still a person, not an object to be exchanged for a god's aid.

Esmera was shaking her head at Nuredir when Tauram's hand settled on her shoulder, and he stepped up from behind her so he was in line with her. Lundas remained at his ankles, fixing his luminous eyes on the god before them.

Her eyes settled on the floor as Nuredir's gaze swapped over to Tauram. That tight feeling returned to her chest, worsening like an elastic band being fastened around it.

She had been currency before, or at least a means to money. Most of the foster families who had taken her in had done so for the stipend they would earn from the state for caring for her, a stipend that far exceeded what they spent on her. The last thing would've ever wanted was to submit her own daughter to such a thing.

Tauram cleared his throat. "If you help us rebuild the Finnaaz army, I will win back my throne. As king, I will be the most powerful mortal in the land. Surely there is something you want that it would be in my power to give you."

"I'm aware of that." Nuredir raised his eyebrows at the prince, surveying him with cool eyes. "That is why I am asking you for your daughter."

Tauram's brow furrowed. "No, you asked Esmera for her daughter."

"I did." There was a little flicker of amusement in Nuredir's eyes as he looked between Esmera and Tauram, willing them towards the realisation obscured by his evasive words.

Oh.

Esmera's daughter and Tauram's was the same person.

Esmera's cheeks blazed as if heated by the flaming furnace behind her, but of course, it wasn't that. Tauram's hand fell from her shoulder. He brought it to his side, so steady and controlled in contrast with Esmera's disarrayed arms that folded around her.

She somehow knew that no touch she and Tauram exchanged would ever feel the same again, not with this knowledge of the child they would share that Nuredir had so carefully and carelessly imparted to them.

Tauram was right to want space from Esmera because if it was a break, if it was peace and safety and contentment he was looking for, he wouldn't find it with her. There were too many predictions about them, about her, that spoke of fates to the contrary.

Were she and Tauram still destined to be married after all? What about what Ruagu had said about Esmera ruling beside him? Surely both possibilities couldn't be true, or maybe that was just Esmera's wishful thinking in a land that could twist fates and futures to its inconceivable will.

Esmera shook her head. Jammas fluttered in her hair, sharing in her agitation.

This was all far too confusing. Esmera came here for a purpose, to secure Nuredir's help, and that was what she would do. The answers about the future that plagued her would have to come later.

"I take back what I said about you bringing mortals to my lair." Nuredir turned his amused smirk on Zaha, who simply stared back at him with expressionless, all-white eyes. "Feel free to lead them to my abode, but only if they promise to be as much fun as these ones are."

"You're wicked to refer to your antagonising them as fun." Zaha's mouth flattened in disapproval.

Nuredir grinned at that. "Some call me wicked. Some call me entertaining. Both are correct, khour."

"Where's your sympathy? Your kindness? You weren't always like this." Zaha glared at him. "They're just mortals, worour."

"Mortals who dare to barge into a god's territory and demand a favour are not just any mortals, Zaha." Nuredir fixed his eyes on Esmera, and she spoke just to shift the weight of his gaze.

"Surely there's something else we can give you in return." Esmera held the god's eyes, and as the words left her mouth, her hope diminished.

In his eyes, she saw the wars he had fought, the lives heartbroken parents and devastated widows and orphaned children had begged him for, only to be refused. Nuredir was the type of god to bargain his way to a fair deal, but he wouldn't settle for anything he saw as less than that.

The god merely shrugged, looking back at the earthen embryos on his worktable as if to remind Esmera of his boundless power. "My price is my price. Take it or leave it."

"But why do you want her?" asked Tauram.

His voice was soft, cautious. He sounded equally reluctant to lose a daughter he didn't know yet, so much like Esmera that she had to wonder if he also shared her question.

What was so special about a child who didn't exist yet for a god to trap her parents into a bargain, to want to wait years to make her his wife?

Nuredir shook his head, genuine resignation in the gesture, resignation that Esmera would've never imagined a god as arrogant and entitled as him would display. "If I knew the answer to that, I'd be Drishaaz, but she guards her knowledge of every being's destiny very closely."

There it was again. Fate. The future. Everything that would come to be no matter what route led the present to that point.

"So, marrying you is somehow linked to the child's destiny?" asked Esmera.

That was something else she wouldn't have wanted for her daughter: to be trapped by a prophecy in a life that would only threaten and torment her.

"Yes, and the fate of our existence as we know it." Nuredir raised his hands. "I have only seen her in my future. I don't know anything more than that."

Esmera narrowed her eyes at the god. Even if he was lying, was there any way for her to get the truth out of him?

"And if you did know more, you wouldn't tell us." Esmera could tell Tauram's jaw was tensing from the tautness in his voice.

She turned to him to see that she was right. His voice wasn't the only part of him that was tense. So was his mouth and the hand that now gripped Esmera's shoulder.

"That's a fair assumption." Nuredir shrugged again, leaning his hip against his worktable while he folded his arms in anticipation of their reply.

Esmera finally found it within herself to meet Tauram's eyes. This was apparently his child they were talking about. Esmera needed his guidance more than she ever did since setting foot in Milatanuran, and he needed to have his say.

"Tauram..." she murmured, even though she understood in this small chamber, in this tight circle of company, everyone would overhear her no matter how softly she spoke.

The prince shook his head, the defeat in the gesture crushing Esmera like a landslide burying her. "If that is the only way to earn Nuredir's cooperation, then we must agree."

Her shoulders sagged. If Tauram could see no way out of this, there was none. The only way through it was to do the unthinkable and yield to Nuredir's demand.

It seemed suddenly futile, all those years Esmera had longed for a child, enduring miscarriage after miscarriage, only to be told she would bring a daughter into the world successfully, but their days together were numbered because she would be taken away from Esmera too.

Anjarah had been so quiet that Esmera had almost forgotten she was there until she was sliding her arm around Esmera's shoulder and holding her steady while she cradled Samier in her other arm.

Anjarah had a son she valued more than anything in the world, with that ferocious, intense love that mortals felt only because they knew how short and precious life was. She was probably the only person present who could understand what Esmera was going through.

Except for Tauram.

"Hey." Tauram must've seen the tears rising in Esmera's eyes because he took her hand in the same way he had pulled her to him the first time Lundas transported them away from his cottage, that way that said he would protect her from whatever lay in wait for them.

It was a warm, soft, comforting lie because he couldn't protect her or the child from this.

"It's not unheard of for Milatanuran families to arrange marriages between their young children for the sake of treaties and alliances. Marriage isn't a loss. She will always be our child."

Those last two words sent shivers through Esmera. It was Tauram's acceptance of their messy, tangled fates that she was so used to denying. It made all of this real, not just a psychic's decades-old prediction but a glimpse into their future.