Vael died in the spring, six years after I fell through her wall.

She went the way she’d always said queens go. Quietly, and without fear, and only once she was certain the song would carry on without her. By then her daughter had risen from the brood I’d laid — a tall, fierce, pearl-and-copper queen called Ysolde, with Vael’s deep gold eyes and none of her patience. The hive had grown strong again around her. The walls of the eastern reach blazed from end to end. The old dark brood halls, the ones Kesh had sealed alone for thirty-one years, had been opened and cleaned and filled with light.

Vael lived to see all of it. She used to lie on the dais with her mended wings spread and simply feel it, every hall and tier and tunnel, the way she’d told me she once could. The way she’d thought she never would again.

On her last night, she asked for the two of us.

We lay with her in the gold, the way we had on the night of the claiming. She held my hand. She sang to us, soft and low — the same song I’d heard on my very first day in the tunnels. It never once frayed.

Just before dawn, she pressed her lips to the inside of my wrist, right over my pulse. Exactly where she’d tasted me the very first time.

“Loud little bird,” she murmured. “Thank you for falling.”

Then the song went quiet, and she was gone.

I felt it go out of the hive like a held breath released. Every column and cell and tunnel. For one long, aching moment, the whole hive was silent.

Then Ysolde took up the song, and it went on.

That was two years ago, now.

Kesh and I didn’t stay in the old hive after. It was Ysolde’s, and it needed to be. A queen doesn’t share her song. And besides, by then we had a song of our own.

We built our hive at the top of the shaft.

It had been my idea. The place where I’d climbed out into the sunset and stood at the edge of the drovers’ road and felt how quiet the world was. I wanted our children to grow up somewhere they could see the sky. Kesh had agreed at once, because by then he’d agreed to almost everything I’d ever asked him. Then he and the smaller ones who’d chosen to follow us had spent a whole year carving and growing it, deep in the rock just beneath the moor.

It was small, still. Only a few dozen halls and tunnels. But the walls glowed warm gold and soft rose where the light came down through openings onto the grass above. In the evenings, you could stand in the central chamber and look straight up into a circle of sky.

And it was full of our brood.

There were eleven of them now. Eleven sparks that had kindled in me over six years and been born into my arms, one by one. They were neither human nor hive but something wholly their own. Some had Kesh’s faceted eyes. Some had mine. Two had wings. Our eldest, Ash, had my stubbornness and Kesh’s antennae and a habit of drawing maps on every wall she could reach. The youngest was barely four months old, and still slept tucked against my breast most nights, humming.

All of them sang. Their song wasn’t the old hive’s. It was ours — my heartbeat and Kesh’s hum and something none of us had ever heard before, woven together. It filled every hall.

I’d never been lonely a single day since.

That evening, on the second anniversary of Vael’s passing, I climbed out onto the moor.

I did it every year. Up through the central chamber, through the opening in the grass, into the cool wind and the late gold light. I sat in the heather on the lip of the shaft, the way I had six years ago, and watched the sun go down over the drovers’ road.

The moor wasn’t silent anymore. Not to me. I could feel our hive humming beneath me, warm and steady. The children’s bright small voices. The smaller ones tending the walls. And faint, far down, the old hive and Ysolde’s song.

But I always missed one voice.

I was still sitting there when I felt Kesh rise up behind me.

He’d learned to come into the light, in the years since we’d built here. It had taken a long time. The sun made his faceted eyes ache, and he didn’t like the open sky above him. But he came out for me, on the evenings I asked. And on this evening every year, he came without being asked.

He sat down in the heather beside me and folded me into his arms. All four of them. He didn’t say anything.

I leant back against his chest and watched the sky go rose and gold.

“She’d have liked this,” I said at last. “The sky.”

“She would have hated it,” Kesh said. “Too bright. Too open. Nothing to hold onto.” His antennae brushed my hair. “But she would have liked that you love it.”

I laughed, and it came out wet. He held me tighter.

We sat for a long time. The sun slipped under the edge of the world. The first stars came out. Below us, the children’s song softened into the slow, sleepy hum of evening.

Then, gradually, I became aware of something else.

Kesh’s scent had changed.

It was subtle at first. Just a thread under the familiar resin and smoke. A deepening, a darkening, slow and warm. But it grew. Thickening in the cool night air until it wrapped around me like his arms.

I knew that scent. I’d been learning it for six years.

I turned in his arms and looked up at him. “Kesh.”

His faceted eyes were dark in the starlight. “I know,” he said quietly. “It is the wrong night. I am sorry. I cannot—”

I put my hand over his mouth.

“It’s not the wrong night,” I said. “She’d have laughed at you for thinking so.”

He was still for a moment. Then his hum rose, low and rough, against my palm.

I took my hand away and kissed him.

Six years, and kissing him still felt like the first time in the old brood hall. That same starving, desperate hunger, as if every time he’d been certain he’d never get to do it again. He drew me into his lap and kissed me back with his whole body, all four hands sliding over me, his antennae sweeping my face. He tasted of smoke and storm and the cool night air.

When he broke away, we were both breathing hard.

“Here?” he asked. His voice was rough.

I glanced around at the open moor. The endless sky. The stars.

“Here,” I said.

He laid me down in the heather.

He undressed me slowly, under the stars. The night air was cold on my bare skin, and he was so warm. He covered me with his body and his half-spread wings, so only the starlight touched me. His hands moved over me with six years of knowledge. Every place that made me gasp. Every place that made me shiver. Every soft new curve that eleven children had left on my body, which he touched with a reverence that still made my eyes sting.

He kissed his way down my body. My throat. My breasts. The soft round swell of my belly, where he lingered, his antennae trembling against my skin.

Then lower.

He’d learned that, too, in six years. How to use his mouth on me. How to make me arch and cry out and clutch at the heather. His tongue was long and clever and warm, and he took me apart slowly, patiently, with all the devotion he’d once given to duty, until I was sobbing his name to the stars.

When he rose over me again, I pulled him down to me with shaking hands.

“Now,” I said. “Kesh. Now.”

He pushed into me slowly.

I’d never get used to it. The ridges of him, sliding into me one by one, stretching me so deep and so full. The way he always stopped once he was fully inside me, his forehead pressed to mine, shaking. As if he still couldn’t believe I’d let him.

“Wren,” he breathed. Like a prayer.

Then he began to move.

Slow, at first. Long, deep strokes that I felt all the way through my body. His hum built and built until I felt it in my teeth. I wrapped my legs around him and met him, and the pleasure rose like the tide, slow and inevitable.

But it didn’t stay slow. It never did, with us. Not anymore.

He began to move faster. Deeper. His wings flared wide behind him, blotting out the stars. His hands gripped my hips, my waist, my breasts, everywhere at once. And his scent — it came off him in a flood, thick and dark and sweet, and my body answered it the way it always did. That deep, warm ripening, blooming low in my belly. Opening. Readying.

I knew what it meant. So did he.

He slowed. Looked down at me. His eyes were wet.

“Twelve?” he whispered. Asking.

After six years and eleven children, he still asked. Every time.

I laughed, and pulled him down to me, and kissed him.

“Twelve,” I said against his mouth. “And thirteen. And as many as you want, my love. Fill this hive.”

The sound he made was nothing I have words for.

He took me hard and deep and desperate then, under the open sky, with the heather crushed beneath us and the stars wheeling overhead. I held on to him with everything I had. When I broke, I cried out so loud that I felt our whole hive wake beneath us. Every child. Every worker. Every wall flaring gold.

And when Kesh followed me over, with a roar that echoed across the empty moor, I felt it.

Three sparks. Small and warm and slow. Kindling deep in my belly, right where all the others had.

Not one. Three. Kindling one after another, like lamps lit down a hall.

Kesh went utterly still above me. His lower hands spread over my belly, and I felt him find them — one, two, three small warm lights, burning side by side.

“Three,” he breathed. His voice broke on it. Then his hum rose, rough and wild, and he pressed his forehead to mine. “You said as many as I wanted.”

“I did.”

“Then I am not done.” His hands tightened on me, desperate and reverent at once. “Not tonight. Not for years. I will fill this hive with them, Wren. Every hall.”

I laughed, breathless and shaking, and pulled him back down to me.

Beneath us, our hive began to sing.

It started small. Just one voice — Ash’s, I thought, bright and stubborn and loud. Then another joined. And another. Until all eleven of our children were singing, and the smaller ones with them, and the walls were humming. The song rose up through the shaft and out into the night, so strong I could feel it in the ground beneath my back.

And far away, faint and deep, the old hive answered. Ysolde’s voice, fierce and proud, singing back across the dark.

It was the same song. I realised it as I lay there in Kesh’s arms, under the stars, with three more of our children kindling inside me. Vael’s song. The one I’d heard on my very first day. It had passed to Ysolde, and to us, and to our children.

It had never stopped.

It had only grown.

Kesh pressed his face into my neck. His hum rumbled through me, warm and deep and steady.

“Loud little bird,” he murmured.

“You love it,” I whispered.

“Yes.” His arms tightened around me. All four of them. “I have always loved it.”

We lay there until the cold drove us inside. Then he carried me down into the warm gold of our hive, through the halls I’d mapped and the tunnels our children had filled with their drawings. Past Ash’s latest masterpiece on the central chamber wall — a map of the whole hive, smudged and earnest, with all eleven of her siblings drawn in as tiny stars.

In the corner, very small, she’d drawn three more.

I stopped Kesh with a hand on his arm. I stared at it.

Then I laughed until I cried, because of course she’d known. She was mine, after all. And she was his. And she was the hive’s.

Across the top of the map, in her careful childish letters, she’d written one word.

Home.