Page 66 of The Monster's Daughter

“And it’s inside her.”

CHAPTER 37

BELLA

Natalie’s breathing is shallow but steady, a fragile rise and fall against the crisp white sheets. Her lashes tremble; every so often her eyes flicker silver under her lids like a bad signal on an old screen.

She’s here. She’s alive.

But she’s nothere.

Her skin’s too cool under my palm. Her tiny fingers twitch but don’t hold back. It’s like hugging a hologram, like my daughter’s already halfway gone.

The room smells like antiseptic and copper. The med-bay lights are too bright, a clinical glare that makes everything feel like a nightmare inside a snow globe. I want to smash it all just to see if the sound brings me back to myself.

“Vitals nominal,” the doctor drones. His voice is slick and smug in that bored-specialist way. “All tests normal. Only anomaly is a small nanite concentration in the thoracic cavity. It’s not active.”

“Not active?” My voice cracks. “Dormant doesn’t fucking twitch in its sleep.”

He blinks at me like I’ve spoken a dead language. “Mrs. Corvain, your stress is understandable?—”

“It’s notMrs.anything. And you’re telling me the thing living in my kid is a non-issue?”

He spreads his hands like a bad conjurer. “We’ve done what we can. If it’s nanite residue, it’s inert.”

My metal fist slams the table before I even know I’m moving. The whole surface jumps. “Get out.”

He leaves, muttering something about patient hostility.

The door clicks shut.

I lean over Natalie, pressing my forehead to hers. She’s warm enough now. Her breath smells faintly sweet, like the syrup Kage bribed her with at breakfast. Tears sting my eyes.

Kage stands in the corner, huge and silent, his claws flexing rhythmically like he’s counting seconds he wants to kill. His expression is carved from stone, but I can see the edges where it’s cracking.

“What are you doing?” I whisper.

“Calling in debts,” he says without looking at me. His voice is low, guttural. “Researching containment protocols. Rogue-code entities. Anything.”

“Anything,” I echo. My throat’s dry as ash. “You think it’s really… Nulegion?”

He finally looks at me. “I don’t think. I know.”

The world tilts.

The name feels like a knife. Nulegion. The ghost of the war. The thing that burned our lives down and left us breathing anyway.

“It didn’t die,” he says flatly. “It moved. It’s been hiding. Watching. Waiting. Growing.”

I press a trembling hand over my mouth, my other arm holding Natalie closer. “Inside her,” I murmur. “All this time.”

He nods once.

I want to scream. Rip the walls apart. Punch through the window until my knuckles bleed. Instead, I stroke her hair,humming a lullaby under my breath—the same one my mother used to sing when the storms rolled in over the plains of Orsith.

Her eyelids flutter at the sound, just for a second. Silver gleam. Then still.

My voice breaks halfway through the second verse.