In the days after, Cress, Iola, and Brenna did something none of them had done before in quite this way.
They began sharing more of the weight.
It was Brenna's idea first, raised quietly over breakfast the morning after the night the seal had pulled. "We are four chairs for a reason," she said. "Not three and a half, with Aria carrying extra because of what is growing in her. Let us take more, for these months. Not all of it. But more."
Aria had argued, at first, out of habit more than conviction.
"You do not need to carry my burden for me."
"It was never only your burden," Iola said gently. "That was the entire point of dividing the seal in the first place. Cress did not ride eleven days on a donkey so you could go on holding more than your share out of stubbornness."
So they tried
