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Sophie nodded. “You made it sound like eggs weren’t really a part

of it.”

“They’re not,” Tarina agreed. “At least not the way you might be

picturing them. Our young do not develop inside any sort of shell, like

birds or reptiles. Instead the process is much closer to marsupials.

And what I mean by that is, our babies are born at an incredibly early

stage—but instead of moving to a pouch to develop, they’re implanted

into a hive, where they can finish developing and grow to a proper

size.”

“A hive,” Sophie repeated, her mind immediately conjuring up

images of giant beehives filled with thousands of unborn trolls

thrashing around inside honeycomb shells waiting to burst into the

world as violent newborns—and she really hoped her brain was wrong.

“So . . . you’re thinking we’d put Silveny’s babies into the hive and let

them finish growing in there?”

Tarina nodded. “The hive should be able to provide them with

everything they need to reach viability.”

“Okay, so . . . how do we do that?” Sophie wondered. “We can’t

move Silveny—”

“No, we’ll need to retrieve two of our transport pods.”

“Transport pods.” Sophie knew she needed to stop repeating

everything Tarina was saying like a parrot. But her brain seemed to

require that extra second to process.

“Think of them like portable wombs,” Tarina told her. “Something

our scientists invented in order to ensure that every baby reached the

hive with enough time to be safely implanted with the rest of the

colony. Before them, we used to lose a few babies every year. It’s

strange how nature sometimes isn’t enough, don’t you think? Strange

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