"That's the question, isn't it?" Nina offered a wry smile and sank back with a quiet sigh. "I keep waiting for Zoya to show up and throttle me," she confessed. "To tell me how stupid I've been but--"

Nina looked down at her stomach, which had not changed at all yet, but she was intimately aware of all the quiet changes her body was making.

"I don't know. I suppose it will all depend on how he reacts to this," she confessed. "I have to tell him. But if he's agreeable, I don't see why not. And maybe even if he isn't... as long as I'm not alone, I think I'd be alright. I'm not afraid of having a baby, I just-- I never expected that I would lead the kind of life that would allow for it. Not so soon." Even if she knew plenty of other girls her age, in Ketterdam and in Ravka, that had children.