The thick woods muffled Hanae’s anguished screams. Raiden had chosen this location carefully. They did not want anyone near when their child was born.

“It will be a daughter,” Hanae had said. “And they will try to kill her.”

Her mother’s intuition came to pass. Hanae’s labors were joined by the first wail of a new life—a perfect glistening daughter.

Raiden bathed their tiny child with a damp cloth and placed her in her mother’s arms.

Just like delivering a calf, he thought, and then chided himself for having such a thought about his wife.

He bustled around the cabin, if it could be called that—only four ramshackle walls guarding a square dirt floor. He cleaned up the worst from the delivery and sat on an old wooden stool by his wife’s side.

Hanae spoke softly to their daughter, entranced and oblivious to the danger that faced them.

“We need to perform the Gleaming ceremony,” Raiden said, smoothing his wife’s sticky hair back from her soft brow. “We need to know.”

Hanae’s arms tightened around the child. She didn’t look at him. He could see that in that moment, she only had eyes for her daughter.

“She’s weak—she’s barely taken her first breath. Let’s wait a little longer. Until she has a chance to gain her strength.”

“My love. No daughter of yours could ever be weak. We talked of this. It must be now. We must know. Everything depends on what it shows.”

Her eyes flashed and she jerked away from his extended hand. “No.” Her voice was steel. “I won’t let you hurt her.”

“Hanae. We must. So they do not.” He stroked her cheek softly. “We swore . . . that we would not let them do to her what they did to Saeko.” Why they had named their first daughter, he didn’t know. She had only lived two days.

Hanae’s shoulders slumped, and the iron grip of her arms loosened. She turned back and offered him the bundle.

“You are right,” she said, as a tear slid from the corner of her eye to her ear, leaving a trail through the dried salt of her sweat. “But I can’t watch.”

She turned away from him, pulling her knees to her chest in a ball.

He stood before the small basin of water, resting on a rickety table on the other side of the cabin and unwrapped their daughter. She was so beautiful. Even red and wrinkled, he could tell she had her mother’s fine hands, delicate but strong. She had his square jawbone. He wondered whether she would be as stubborn as he was in his youth. But he was delaying.

He plunged her into the water and held her there, his own heart hammering in his chest like a wild beast desperate to be set free. He began counting. Ten. She flailed under the water, her tiny limbs no match for his strong calloused hands. Thirty. At sixty, he could let her up. And try to save her. Fifty. Relief and hope began to well in him.

And then a bright, white light exploded from his daughter. He stumbled back, throwing an arm over his eyes. She illuminated the cabin, shining silver light into cobwebbed corners and dusty crevices.

After a few seconds, the light died, and his daughter was herself again. Tiny, pink, floating on top of the water peacefully. He and Hanae locked eyes. She had turned over and was half sitting up on her cot. The look of helpless horror on her face was mirrored on his own.

“I knew she would be,” Hanae said softly. “A moonburner. And a strong one.”

“What do we do?”

“We hide her. We keep her alive.”