"They're yours," he said, voice rougher than ever, steadying himself well enough to give her a wild smile. To catch her eyes. "They're all yours. Shamash and Ishtar—the boy and the girl. And—Aly—we were wrong about—Yseult was carrying a girl, carrying Ishtar, Shamash is the child of Verla," he said all this in a rasping gabble, breathless about this one fact as if it were something wonderful. But then that faded; he winced like he'd been stabbed in the gut, hastened to say, "He needs food, both need food, but he's—older, by a few days I think, I don't know."

Unwilling to explain further, trusting that she wouldn't wait to wring the story out of him before she acted.