When she stood up to step into the copper tub, the change in her body was clear in the amber light of the oil lamps.
The lean, hard girl he had brought out of the south was gone; her belly was a broad, smooth dome now, the three lives within her stretching the white skin until it looked almost translucent under the steam.
Her hips had widened, her breasts fuller and heavy above the water line, her whole silhouette turned round and heavy with the cargo she was carrying through the dark.
The sight of her hit Soren somewhere behind his ribs, a sudden, hot ache that made his eyes smart before he could blink the steam away.
She is the most beautiful thing the earth has ever grown, he thought, his throat closing up as he reached down to lift her over the copper rim. In any shape she takes, in any light they give us, she is everything.
"I can walk," she whispered, her fingers catching the wool of his sleeves as her feet cleared the floorboards.
