Chapter 156 It's a Baby

Chapter 156 It's a Baby
VISCA -

The tracks led west through crusting snow. Visca rode ahead with his eyes on the ground, following the deeper footprints away from the chapel. The prints appeared again when the path dipped low, and they sank deep with the moist mud. Blood marked the snow in thin brown smears, too recent to belong to any shrine offering.
Behind him, Anahi held the baby under her cloak. It moved often, making Anahi pull it closer into her arms. She rode carefully, her shoulders curled forward to block the wind, her injured hand tucked under the child's body.
"It keeps moving," she said.
Visca slowed his horse enough to ride beside her. "It's alive. It will move."
Anahi looked up at him, her cheeks pink from the cold and irritation. "I know it's alive. I mean, I don't know if I'm holding it right."
A tiny mouth opened against the cloth, searching weakly before disappearing beneath Anahi's cloak again. Visca's fingers flexed on the reins.
"Support the head," he said. "Keep the cloth away from its mouth. Your body heat matters more than the cloak."
Anahi adjusted immediately, although he noticed she did it smoothly and without the frantic need to obey as she had that first day.
Visca turned back to the tracks before his hand could reach for the child. He remembered when Savonnuh was small like that, and she leaned her little body into his chest as her tiny fists closed around his finger. His throat worked against the memory, and he forced his horse forward.
The tracks ended at a cottage beyond the last stand of trees. Its roof sagged under the snow, and no smoke rose from the chimney. The door hung crooked, leaving a black gap where wind whistled through. A shovel was stuck in the dirt beside a mound behind the cottage.
Anahi stopped beside him, and the baby made a thin sound beneath the cloak. Her arm tightened around it immediately.
Visca dismounted and walked to the door, but before he could knock, it opened.
A young man stood inside with hollow cheeks, cracked lips, and a knife held low in one shaking hand. "If you found it, then you keep it," he said. "I already gave it away."
Visca's wolf shoved against his skin.
The air narrowed until only the young man's throat, the knife, and Anahi's quiet breath behind him remained as Visca tried to control his wolf.
"Your name?" Visca asked.
The boy swallowed. "Bram."
"Where's the child's mother?"
Bram's eyes moved past him toward the mound behind the cottage. His jaw clenched several times. "She's buried."
Anahi's breath caught.
"She died giving birth?" Visca asked next.
Bram laughed once. "She screamed for two days. I went for help, but no one came. The midwife said if the baby took too much before its first breath, then it was marked."
"That's superstition." Anahi said before she caught herself.
Bram looked at the cloak in Anahi's arms. "It only came out breathing... after she'd stopped." The boy's eyes flicked back up to Visca. "That thing cried while she lay there dead. Tell me... what else am I supposed to believe?"
Anahi turned slightly, shielding the baby from his gaze.
Visca crossed the threshold and entered the cottage. The inside smelled of old blood, cold ashes, and sickness. A cot stood near the hearth, stripped of blankets, but he could see the bloody cloths that had been shoved into the corner. His eyes trailed across the inside, and he saw no food except a handful of grain in a bowl on the nearly broken table.
Bram followed him in but kept his distance. "We had nothing." Spittle flew from his mouth as he spoke and he swiped his hand across his lips before he took a breath and continued. "She was all I had. I can feed myself, but I can't feed that too."
Visca turned slowly, and the boy flinched when their eyes met.
Old anger filled Visca's arms and settled into his hands. He could drag Bram outside and make him look at the hollow where he'd left a living child to freeze. He could even call it justice.
His vision tinted with red just before a sound cut through the heat under his skin. It was a whimper from the baby.
He closed his eyes and spoke. "The child didn't kill your mother."
Bram's mouth twisted. "You didn't see her."
"No. I see you." Visca stepped closer, stopping only when Bram's back touched the wall. "Your grief didn't carry that child to the altar; your fear did. Your fear nearly killed the baby your mother died bringing into this world."
Bram shook his head, but his eyes had filled. "No."
"Yes."
"It killed her."
Visca's hand twitched. "Say what you left in that chapel."
Bram glared at him through wet eyes.
Visca let his wolf press forward, not enough to shift, but enough that the air tightened. "Say... it."
Bram's knife slipped from his fingers and hit the floor. "A baby."
Visca held himself still until the urge to strike passed. Then he bent, picked up the knife, and set it on the table out of Bram's reach.
Behind him, Anahi shifted in the doorway.
"You will mark your mother's grave properly before nightfall," Visca said. "You will take her name to the village record keeper and have it written down. You will give the midwife's name to the crown messenger when he comes."
Bram wiped his face again. "Messenger?"
"Alpha Dax will know what happened here." Visca pulled a small pouch of coins from inside his coat and placed it on the table. "This is for burial, food, and wood. It is not forgiveness." He took a step closer to the boy. "If you run, I will find you."
The boy nodded, his chin trembling.
Outside, Anahi waited, but when Visca took the last step to her she looked down at the baby as Visca spoke. "You can give the child to me."
The baby’s cheek pressed against her cloak, and Anahi’s injured hand tightened beneath her. She swallowed, then shook her head once. "Not yet."
He watched her for a moment before nodding. He turned and mounted, turning their horses South. Behind them, Bram lifted the shovel and began breaking frozen earth beside his mother's grave.
"I thought you were going to hurt him," Anahi said.
His fingers squeezed the reins. "So did I."
She looked down at the child bundled in the cloak. "Where are we taking the baby?"
Visca glanced back briefly, and Bram was digging the heel of his hand against his eyes.
"Away from anyone who would call a baby a curse." Visca said.
"She needs milk, warmth, and someone who will care for her."
"Then that's what we'll find."
"We?" she asked, looking over at him.
He kept his eyes forward. "You found her. Kept her warm through the cold. I think you've earned the right."
Anahi's lips parted, and as she looked down at the baby, something firm moved in her features.
Visca turned his horse South, carrying the weight of the child's life in the silence between the hoofbeats. For the first time since Dax sent him away, the mission felt less like punishment and more like a debt entrusted to his care.