She’s smaller than he expects, somehow. 

Logically he knows how big a newborn is – even if he’d not helped deliver a few back in the desert, he still remembers the sudden shock of seeing his own smallest sister for the first time. But, logic or no, the tiny shape nestled in the crook of his elbow still seems somehow mis-sized for the world she’s fallen into: when he holds her, he’s half afraid that even the slightest touch might shatter her fragile form.

It won’t, of course. He knows that, just as much as he knows that here, in the heart of the Duke’s power, is by far and away the safest place in Dusk for two outlanders to raise a child. Just as much as he knows that whatever power brought them here did so for a reason, and that, if that’s the case, it probably knows enough to stay the hells away from their daughter. And just as much as he knows that, despite all that, they’ve brought a child into the world in the middle of a warzone, and there’re very few ways that ends well for anyone concerned. 

Cionne, perhaps unsurprisingly, shares almost none of his fears in that regard. She carried their daughter in her womb for nine months, across two worlds and half a continent, and she knows full well how much resilience lies within that little body (if nothing else, she has the half-healed bruises still banding her ribs to prove it). She understands her husband’s feelings – even if she teases him about them, it’s in loving jest – but, as far as she’s concerned, they’ve little enough reason to fear how the world will treat their daughter. 

If anything, given how she came here, it’s the world that should be scared of her.

[Author’s note:

So! Way back in the mists of 2010/2011, when I was still writing primarily on deviantArt, I found a prompt challenge that seemed like a good fit for my at-that-time-very-new urban fantasy ‘verse. And, surprisingly for late-teenage me, I actually gods-damned finished it: 100 snippets (of, admittedly, very varied quality) set in the Black Roses universe.