A Witch's Beauty (Daughters of Arianne 2)

Raphael caught her deftly, holding her beneath the water's surface. Mina knew a merinfant took additional moments to orient its gills and lungs, so they couldn't breathe above water for the first few moments. The healing angel made use of the time to clean off the afterbirth, clean out the nostrils and mouth. Since Jonah was still holding his wife, Raphael looked to Mina. "I think she wanted you to hold her first."

Mina nodded. Conscious of the anxious gaze of a mother and the tension of a father, she slid her hands beneath the small body, still attached to her mother by the umbilical cord. Something soft and downy pressed into her palms, and she realized she was feeling tiny fledgling wings. Gods. A merangel. As she looked down, the baby's blue eyes opened, stared at her.

She couldn't help it. Not knowing the how or why, tears began spilling down her cheeks. David was holding her shoulders, steadying her, giving her the love that was so easy to him, so precious to her.

"All right, then. Let's take her up." Raphael, rather than taking her away, put his hands beneath Mina's and together they brought the baby up. Blinking through her tears, Mina focused, focused hard. She didn't find the trace of dark shadowing that had been the sigil of the self-destructive magic within every daughter of Arianne. It just... wasn't there. She shifted her glance to Anna's white face, shook her head.

"She'll be a shifter, like you, but whatever magical ability she'll have will be pure. And learned." She swallowed, wondering why her voice was trembling, why she was willing to offer hope, which she'd never believed in before. "It's a very good sign the curse is broken."

"Oh. Oh, thank the Goddess." Anna's face began streaming as Jonah's arms closed over her, his face pressed into her neck as she slid her fingers into his hair and tightened fiercely, the two of them taking the hope she offered and making it part of the love they already shared.

While they did that, Raphael guided Mina to lay the child on Anna's breast. Even the Prime Legion Commander looked somewhat choked up as they released each other to greet their daughter for the first time. He touched her tiny hand with one enormous finger.

Anna looked at Mina again. "If the curse is truly broken, then it would be broken for you as well. You no longer are bound to protect me."

Mina shrugged. "And a great deal of trouble you've been. I gladly turn you over to Jonah."

But when Anna smiled, lowering her attention to her daughter, Mina looked at the two of them, and knew Anna was wrong. "You looked after me, with no curse to compel you to do it," she said slowly. "You made sure Jonah sent David to me. You visited me, wouldn't let me be, even knowing all the time what I was." When Anna raised her gaze, Mina locked onto it with her own. "You assume that curse has ever been able to tell me what to do. I'll protect you if I want to, and you can't stop me."

The mermaid princess smiled again, the type of smile that made Mina look away, but not before she saw a look on Jonah's face that she was sure she misinterpreted, since it gave her the alarming sense he might reach over and embrace her in a flood of new father sentiment. She dropped back behind David, quickly, saving them both.

Thankfully, he shifted that look toward her angel. "Lieutenant, will you cut the cord?"

David started, then nodded. "I would be honored, my lord."

Out of habit, he always wore at least one of his daggers. When he drew it, Mina shifted so they were side by side. Anna lifted the baby and extended her again. "Hold her while he does it, Mina."

As Mina took the small body, and David bent over her, Anna spoke again. "We want you to be her godparents."

As one, David and Mina looked up.

"Jonah," David spoke, his voice thick with emotion. And Mina, wondering at more tears coming from her eyes, thought that between her and Anna, they'd be affecting the water level in the spring soon.

"And promise me, if something happens-" Anna continued.

"It won't." This came, adamantly, from three voices. Jonah, David and Mina at once, making Anna blink away renewed moisture, but she lifted her chin resolutely. "I want to believe it won't. But if it does, promise you'll step in, be her mother, Mina. I know you think you can't, but you can. You and David can, together. I know it. Promise."

Mina looked back down at the tiny infant with huge blue eyes. Her mermaid tail had the coloring of Anna's. But she had a dark mop of hair already, her father's. As well as the little wings. Mermaid and angel.

There was nothing more pure than a child, so she remembered to up the strength of her shields as something filled her heart to bursting. Was this love? Perhaps it was. Stripping yourself bare, willing to take the chance that you would hurt someone by trying to take care of them, because the alternative, indifference, was worse.

Still holding that tiny, squirming creature, she watched David capably sever the cord between mother and child under Raphael's guidance. Those beautiful hands, that serious expression, the core tranquility in those warm brown eyes. As she looked into his face, she found she might have the courage to believe it was true and real. And say to him what she never had.

"I love you, too."

He raised his head, staring at her face with such raw emotion, she couldn't handle it. She looked back down at the baby, and when she did, the baby scrunched up her face and made her first attempt at a Jonah-intimidation stare. It was so like him, she couldn't help it. She laughed.

David couldn't breathe. So overwhelmed by the gift of her words, her joyous laugh made this moment everything he could ever want.

And because his seawitch was a young Goddess, as she laughed, the water in which they were resting started to sparkle, the blue of a Caribbean sea spreading across it. White water lilies appeared, scattering all around them, delighting the infant and her new parents.

"Yes," Mina said, encompassing them all in her mysterious, bicolored gaze. "We'd be honored to be her godparents."