Page 48 of Returned to the Vissigroth (The Vissigroths of Leander #6)

He looked at me over their heads, the faintest look of apology in his eyes. “Give them time,” he said softly. “They’ll come to you in their own way.”

“They already did,” I whispered, still kneeling.

From the nearby cradle, a tiny sound broke the air—a baby’s sigh.

I turned. And saw her.

She lay in a cradle filled with the softest linen, one tiny fist curled beside her cheek. Her breath was soft, and her lashes seemed impossibly long for someone so small. Her hair was a red halo across the embroidered blanket, and as if sensing me, she stirred.

Thalia crossed the room without hesitation, all the swagger from before melting into something quieter, something fiercely maternal. She leaned over, gathered Zara up with practiced grace, and turned to me.

“I think she’s been waiting for this,” she said gently, and with no hesitation, placed her daughter into my arms.

The moment Zara settled against me, something shifted.

The air stilled.

Warmth curled around my skin, not heat, not light, but something older than both. It shimmered faintly at the edges of my vision, soft and silver. Fraysa’s veil. The veil I had seen when Mallack knelt for me. When love had bound us again.

And now, it wrapped around me and the child like a quiet blessing.

Zara blinked, her eyes were just as green as Thalia's and mine. And for one impossible moment, they locked on mine. Her little hand lifted, reached for me, and brushed my cheek with the gentlest of touches.

My breath caught.

The weight of her against my chest, the delicate strength of her tiny fingers, unlocked something in me that had been sealed for decades. A memory of emotions washed over me. It felt like holding my baby again. Myccael .

The son I had loved more than breath itself. More than blood. More than life. The boy who had given me purpose when everything else felt adrift. The child I had poured everything into.

And yet…

Even in those first moments—when his skin was still slick with birth and his cry rang like broken glass in the birthing hall—I had felt it.

Something was wrong.

Not with him. Never with him.

Something in me.

A piece had been missing. A corner of my soul that should have lit up with joy had only flickered weakly. I had smiled. I had kissed his forehead. I had sworn to protect him with every beat of my heart.

But I had known. Deep down, in the marrow of my bones, I had known he wasn’t mine.

And I had hated myself for it. I had buried that truth.

I’d compensated for it because I hated that feeling.

Hated myself. I over-loved him. Smothered him with devotion, not out of duty, but out of desperate longing to fill the hollow space that his birth had ignited.

I told myself I was tired. I told myself it was the grief. That it was the weight of my station. The burden of responsibility.

But that quiet, shameful ache had never gone away.

That absence had consumed me. All. The. Time.

I had never told anyone.

Not even Mallack.

Because what kind of mother feels like a stranger to her own child? What kind of woman doubts the only joy left to her?

Me.

I had.

And I had despised myself.

But as I held Zara now, with Fraysa’s veil wrapping around us like starlight spun into silk, it happened. I realized that I was remembering things. Not the vague flickers I’d come to know since my return. Not dreams or emotions without shape. These were clear. Sharp. Anchored.

I remembered.

I remembered sitting in the nursery in the dead of night, holding Myccael while he slept and silently weeping, because the guilt was too loud to quiet.

I remembered Mallack, trying so hard to reach me.

To soothe me. But I wouldn’t let him. I couldn’t let him.

Because every time I looked at him, I saw everything we had lost. I felt like I had let him down.

I wallowed in my guilt, swamped with a grief I couldn't describe. I remembered the moments I’d stood in front of the mirror, wondering where the fire in me had gone.

How I had faded from myself.

How I had smiled in public and screamed in silence.

I remembered lying in bed one night, staring at the ceiling, thinking, This isn’t the life I was supposed to live.

And finally—I remembered my last breath.

The coolness. The stillness. The resignation. Not fear. Not pain.

Just a cessation of the endless ache that never had a name.

Until now.

Now I knew what it had been.

It had been me—missing.

The woman I had been, the one who had loved fiercely and fought louder, had died long before her body followed. And no one had noticed. Not even me.

Until this moment.

Until this baby.

This daughter.

This line of blood and soul that connected everything I thought I had lost.

I wasn’t just remembering.

I was returning.

And this time, I wasn’t going to leave myself behind.

And now… here in this room, with a child nestled against my heart—a child whose heartbeat echoed something ancient and real—I finally understood what that ache had meant. It wasn’t that I couldn’t love Myccael.

I did.

I do.

But he hadn’t come from me. Not in the way Zara had come from Thalia. Not in the way Mallack and I had once been meant to bring life into the world together. He was my son in bond. In name. In blood passed through other hands. But not in spirit.

And oh, gods, it hurt.

It hurt to know I had missed this.

That I had been denied this.

That someone had taken this knowing , this soul-deep recognition, from me—and left me with a memory stitched together with silence and guilt.

But now…

Now, holding Zara, I felt that piece returning.

Piece by piece.

Light by light.

The empty corner inside me filled with something warm and golden and whole.

This child—this sweet, blinking baby girl who knew me in a way no one had since I’d been torn from myself—she was waking me up.

She was returning me to me.

And when her fingers brushed my cheek, soft as starlight, I wept.

Silently at first. Then harder. My shoulders shook with it. My breath came in ragged sobs that broke through my composure like cracks in old stone.

I held her like she was the only truth I’d ever known.

With my free hand, I reached for Thalia. She took it without question. Her grip was steady and strong, the way only a daughter’s could be. And with the three of us—maiden, mother, crone—linked in that sacred triangle, Fraysa’s veil flared to life around us.

Not soft this time.

Not subtle.

It roared with light, silver and gold, threaded with violet flame. It wrapped around our circle and sang , filling the room with the song of lineage, of memory, of divine rebirth.

The boys were silent.

Even Mallack looked shaken.

The goddess had come to witness.

To bless what had been lost.

To restore what had been broken.

And I—I let it happen. I didn’t resist it. I didn’t question the tears streaming down my face or the way my soul cried out in both grief and joy.

Because for the first time in my second life…

I was whole.