The scent of blood was thick in the air.

It clung to the stone walls, to his hands, to the still-warm linens wrapped around the impossibly small, silent form now cradled against his chest.

She was dead. The female lay limp on the cot, her face pale, eyes open but glassy. Rhysand had knelt beside her minutes ago, brushing her hair back, whispering some worthless comfort. She hadn’t heard him.

The screams had ended.

And now—this.

A child. His child.

Silver hair damp against her scalp, tiny fists curled tightly near her cheeks. Her skin shimmered faintly, unnaturally. Starlight. Her eyes—when they fluttered open—were not violet like his, but lilac. Luminous. Ancient. And new.

He had never felt such stillness in himself. Not even when he’d been forced to wear the mask. Not even when he’d sold his body and soul to Amarantha’s games. But now—now there was only the weight of this tiny being in his arms, and the sick, frozen horror of what that meant.

A child. Under the Mountain.

His daughter.

His.

And no one could ever know.

Not Amarantha. Not the other courtiers. Not the spies that slithered between the cracks of stone. If she found out—if anyone found out—

He looked down again, at the pale starlit creature blinking up at him, her lips parting in a soft, breathy mewl. Not crying. No, not this one. She was quiet. Observing. Bright. Alive.

And for a heartbeat—a single heartbeat—he loved her more than anything he had ever loved.

Then he was moving.

He wrapped her tighter in the bloodstained blanket, shrouding the glow of her skin with a glamour so thick even he couldn’t see her. He didn’t have a plan yet—only instinct, sharp and ancient and unrelenting.

She would be hidden. She would be protected. She would never know these halls or the cruelty that built them.

Even if it cost him everything.

As Rhysand slipped through the hidden tunnel beneath the dungeons, shadows curling at his heels, he pressed a kiss to her silvery brow and whispered:

“You’ll have starlight instead of stone. I swear it.”