Elira had never forgotten the night she bled on the cold tiles of that hidden estate. The night she birthed a daughter with no name — and never held her. Not once.
She remembered Golderdy’s hands. The way he took the child before she could even hear her cry. The way he whispered, “She didn’t make it,” as if it was some soft mercy instead of the sharpest betrayal.
But she had felt it.
The pull. The snap in her soul. That child had lived.
And now that child had a name.
Amelia.
Not Amira — Amelia.
The little girl with storm-colored eyes who had been left on her doorstep wrapped in a tattered white blanket, eyes too wise, mouth too quiet. She was a year and a half now, just beginning to form words, but every sound out of her mouth felt like a haunting.
Because Elira knew.
That was the
