Lucian
“How come my grandmother didn’t have a Neevian name?” I asked, still turning pages in the photo album, absorbing pieces of a history I never knew I had.
Lydia smiled faintly. “She did. Her name was Miriam. But your grandfather thought it was a handful and started calling her Maria. Eventually, the name just stuck.”
I shook my head, stunned. The way pieces of my lineage had been repackaged—softened, diluted—without anyone ever telling me.
Lydia’s gaze shifted, and her tone changed. “Your father has… cared for us over the years. Quietly. He begged us to come live with him at the Nighthorn mansion after the war. But by then, he’d already married that woman.”
Her words dripped with disdain.
“We decided to stay away,” she said. “That woman… she wasn’t kind. We knew she’d make our l
