Page 103 of Phoenix's Fire

"This stop husbend," she said.

I glanced at Ayla, who had just pressed both hands to her face. "What?" I demanded.

"She says she'll sting your husband," Ayla explained. "Meri, Dragons are venomous. They have a stinger in their tails, and they can poison a person with it."

"Nat you," Lessa corrected her.

"Not you?" I asked, pretty sure I'd understood that.

Which made Ayla sigh. "I'm now immune," she explained.

"I want to be immune!"

Which made Ayla's shoulders slump. "You can't. It'd be bad for the baby."

"But it's Gideon's baby," I shot back. "I didn't ask for it. I told him I wasn't ready and that we should wait, but he wanted to breed now. Always now. And now I can't be immune to the Dragons?"

"Wait?" Ayla begged. "Meri, being around them is fine. It's not their skin or anything. It's only their tails, and only if they intentionally sting you."

"Or oops," Lessa added.

"Or accidentally," Ayla clarified almost sheepishly, "but only little babies do that, right?"

Lessa nodded, proving she was keeping up. "Oops." Which was followed by quick words in that other language.

Ayla nodded, then her eyes returned to me. "Some women get immune when they have a Dragon baby," she told me. "Since yours won't be a Dragon, you have to wait. Otherwise, the venom you'd take might hurt the child. Maybe even kill it."

"Oh." I glanced over at Lessa's tail in a whole new way. "How do you get immune?"

"You have to drink it," Ayla said. "For me, I took one drop in a glass of water each day until it stopped burning, then kept adding more. And Meri? It's not fun. The first time, I thought they'd killed me. It hurtsa lot."

"How much would hurt my baby?" I asked.

Ayla asked Lessa. There was a lot of back and forth between them, and then she finally looked at me again. "They don't know. Probably not much because you're so thin. For others, it takes more. That's why Jeera and Brielle make sure you don't eat anything that was killed with venom, because it could make you and the baby sick."

"Oh."

"And all the food today is safe," she went on. "Zasen and I hunt for Saveah too, because Taris doesn't have a tail, so she isn't immune yet. They said she'll do that when she's old enough to have her cycle."

"That old?"

Ayla nodded. "I guess a lot of people aren't immune here, because there are a lot of tailless daughters. The guys wanted me to do it because I looked like a Mole, and Dragons thoughtallMoles were dangerous. Not just the men."

"What am I supposed to do?" I begged her.

"Get stronger, eat more, and walk as much as you can," she told me. "It won't be long before the baby is here, and Lessa says you have options after that." They traded a few lines, then Ayla looked at me again. "She's worried because pregnancy is hard, you have been mistreated, and that's not fair to you."

I slid my hand over the bulge in my stomach again. "No, it's not fair, but there's nothing to do about it now."

"But it's going to be okay," Ayla assured me. "And Kanik is going to teach us how to speak Vestrian."

"You already speak it!" I snapped.

"A lot, yes," Ayla agreed, "but not all. I'm still learning, Meri."

"But you can talk to them, and do things. I just do this!"

"What do you mean?"

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