Mel released a noise from the back of her throat. "To divert our attention."
Jack and I had already had this conversation. I tapped my toe, impatient for us to move on to something that would bring my mother's killers into arm's reach.
Jack touched the tip of his nose. "What was here someone wanted?"
"The baby." Me this time. "But we've been over that. Unless they heard us talking and knew the baby was important to us, there was no real reason to target him."
He shrugged. "I didn't know your birders would be here. I was just thinking of what wasn't where we were."
He looked at Mel. "Do you know how they got the babies? That might tell us something. Would they have been hidden somewhere, or could they have just stumbled over them?"
Mel rolled her lips into her mouth. "Scy, Dana, or Bubbe was with them all the time, but Dana, as I said, was gone, and when she heard the explosion, Bubbe came up to help me."
Leaving my mother alone. But my mother should have been enough. Two humans shouldn't have been able to get past her.
Mel continued, "Bubbe said the babies were asleep when she left, alone with Scy in Mother's workout room."
"So they got the babies away from my mother somehow."
Mel nodded, looking unsettled. "Or lured her out and stole them while she was gone."
I looked at Jack. We had seen the birders. We let them go past us. We could have stopped them, stopped everything.
He moved his head slightly, telling me there was no reason to explain that, that it didn't change the outcome.
I bit back the confession, but it boiled and churned inside my stomach, mixed with the rest of the guilt stewing there.
"When I came around the corner, my mother was in the stairwell. The birders warned her to stay put, but she didn't."
Mel smiled. "She was a warrior."
"And a mother." I'd seen Mel when she thought someone had killed her son. I'd thought the crazed emotion that had overtaken her was a Mel thing, but now I realized my mother had felt it too. It made me uncomfortable, wondering if I'd misjudged her all along. I'd never had to balance being on the high council with raising a future queen. Maybe she'd cared for me more than I knew.
Or maybe I just wanted to believe that now that she was gone.
"What happened then? Did you see where the birders went? If there was anyone else with them?" Mel asked.
I shook my head. The dirt had provided a perfect cover for their getaway.
"This was not all some strange coincidence. We have to assume they wanted the babies. That this was all planned."
My lips thinned as I pondered my next move.
I wanted to revenge my mother's death, but every moment the high council's rule to kill infant sons stood, a baby might die. Which would my mother think was more important?
I forced my mind to focus, to push emotion aside. The answer was obvious; my mother had died trying to save two infants. If I let even one die now, it would be an insult to everything she'd been trying to accomplish.
Somehow I had to do what my mother had failed to do. I had to change the high council's rule.
And then I'd kill the bitches who took her life.
As soon as the decision firmed in my head, I began moving forward. Mel grabbed me.
"You can't leave."
"My mother is dead. There's no reason for me to stay here."
"What about your brother?" she asked.
I blinked, confused for a moment. Then realization hit me. . the baby. My mother had been caring for him. Would that responsibility fall to me now? I stiffened. A child wasn't in my plans, never had been.
"His father will take him." Jack watched us, his eyes moving back and forth in his face.
His father. . I looked at Jack. "The man helping. . with the concrete." Jack had told me the bird was the baby's father, but somehow once I'd put my mother into the picture, I'd forgotten him.
He nodded. "He met Scy a few years ago. She didn't know he was a son at first."
"But she did before she got pregnant." No one had said it, but I knew it was true. My mother had wanted her children to be strong. . the strongest. She had wanted it for me and she would want it for this child too. What better way than to give him a son as a father?
Jack's gaze dropped for a second, but then rose. "I don't know when she found out. Mateo hasn't told me."
Mateo. He didn't like me; it was obvious from how he looked at me. It made me wonder what my mother had told him about me. . Then I remembered he knew me not as my mother's daughter but as the queen who had hunted and, he thought, tried to kill his child.
I stared at Jack, unsure how I felt about turning the baby my mother had been so determined to save over to a son who hated me. I shouldn't care. If asked, it's what I would have said was the best solution. . give our male children to the sons who wanted them. . but now faced with it. . it felt wrong.
I pressed the pads of my fingers into the heels of my hands. I couldn't afford to quibble about it now. Even if I knew word one about caring for an infant, I couldn't do what I had to do with a baby strapped to my back. Maybe my mother could have, but I wasn't her.
I accepted Jack's proposal with silence and looked back at Mel.
"My mother's position on the high council is open. She couldn't convince them that things need to change, but maybe someone else can."
"You would try to get on the council?" There was reservation in Mel's voice. I knew what she was thinking-the council was the enemy-but according to what my mother had told me, they weren't.
But I wasn't a queen. I wasn't sure where I stood with the Amazons right now. To think of joining the council was ludicrous.
That didn't mean, however, that I couldn't try to open their eyes to the fact that the sons weren't their only enemy. It might be enough to convince them killing infants wouldn't keep them safe from attack.
I returned my focus to Jack. "Will you help me find the birders?"
Confusion flitted across Mel's face. "I thought-"
But Jack held my gaze. "I will."
He knew what I was asking. I didn't know how he knew when Mel didn't, but that didn't matter right now, what did is that he'd agreed to be my ally. He'd agreed to fight my enemy.
The Amazons, some at least, would respect that. Another plus in my case to not demonize the sons.