Page 294 of His Sunshine Baby

She stays quiet, whether it’s because of another contraction or because she doesn’t want to say it. I’m choking up right now too. All those tragic events are unfolding under a new light now. Though I resent Sylviana for keeping quiet, I’m starting to understand why she did. She’s on the verge of tears too, looking awfully sorry.

“The day Nora was born, Princess Lilyan and my mother just couldn’t keep the barrier up for much longer. A few hours later, the vampires entered our city. They had beenaccumulating for months outside, there were too many of them. Princess Lilyan only had a few minutes with Nora. She was exhausted after the birth, so she asked my mother to pass her power to her daughter. I was with her until the end. I was holding Nora in my arms when Lilyan…”

She’s crying for real now, and I feel my own tears coming too. I feel Nora’s heart, echoing my own, breaking slowly as we both finally listen to the truth about our parents’ death…

“Your parents, Selena, and my mother, they told us to run away. Gabriel told your mother to take you and go. Althea was a human, she couldn’t fight. You were just two years old back then. Althea was the bravest woman I ever knew. She told you not to cry, soothed you, and ran with me. It was the most terrifying night of my life. We spent such a long time hiding, running, hiding again, desperate to find a way to escape. At some point, it became clear she was easier to track because she was human. She told me to run away, because she… she knew Nora and I would have died. So, I parted ways with her, and I used my limited powers to hide us as I could, and run, carrying Nora with me.”

I can’t believe it… Sylviana wouldn’t have been older than ten years old back then. She managed to run away, carrying newborn Nora with her, saving both their lives!

Meanwhile, I don’t know how, but according to Reagan, my mom and I managed to survive until the fight was over. How? Sylviana doesn’t seem to know either.

“When I arrived at the scene,” says Nephera, “everything was over. My home was burned to ashes. Mother had sacrificed herself, in a desperate attempt to save the twins’ children. I hid from the remaining vampires, who were still fighting the survivors or feeding themselves, and crawled all the way to our source of magic there. I stayed for as long I could to replenish mymagic, and while I did, I found something. The traces of another younger witch.”

Her glare at Sylviana makes no mistake as to who she recognized.

“I couldn’t believe my mother had another daughter while I was gone! I knew you were a young Earth Witch, I looked through my mother’s things, the few she didn’t burn to ashes. I tried using my magic to find you, the twins, or their children, but you were all gone!”

Reagan had probably taken me away prior to Nephera’s arrival on site. She said she arrived shortly after the fight was over too. Thank Moon Goddess we left this hell before that crazy woman showed up.

“I was so furious,” she continues. “I was finally back home, to the place I had left so many years ago, but only to find everything burnt, destroyed! After everything I went through, after all my suffering, my own mother had died to save someone else’s child! She hadn’t saved me when I endured the vampires’ venom for weeks, but she killed herself for Lilyan and Gabriel Bluemoon! For their children to live! I resented those wretched twins even more than the vampires!”

Moon Goddess, that woman is… damaged. I can see the madness in her eyes. She’s completely broken inside. She suddenly points a finger at Sylviana.

“And you! Knowing she replaced me with another daughter. No wonder she never cared about me for twenty years!”

Sylviana shakes her head frantically. I’ve never seen her so shaken up before, but for once, she looks her age. Her voice is so hoarse right now, I can barely recognize it.

“You’re wrong! Nephera, our mother believed in you until the end,” she says, sobbing erratically. “When everything happened, I went south. I knew that’s where Mother had sent my older sister with Cynthia. I walked for days with Nora, hidingin human towns and trying to find Silver City, until I finally reached it many weeks later. But I couldn’t find any trace of you or even a pack called Blue Moon. I didn’t know they had been renamed the Sapphire Moon, I had never met any of them. I was young, I didn’t know what to do. It had been over thirty years. Cynthia had died, there was no trace of my older sister or any witch being around, I just didn’t know whom to ask without putting us at risk. All I knew was that I had to keep Nora’s identity a secret. Vampires could still chase after us. I don’t know if it was my fear as a child or my instincts that made me think that way…”

She was so young. I have no idea how I would have reacted if I had been left alone. I was lucky Reagan found me and brought me here. In a way, Sylviana had the same reasoning, but she was a child witch, no matter how mature she was, with little knowledge of the world and a newborn baby to take care of. It’s already a miracle she got to Silver City at all, but basically anyone that could have helped her once she got here was gone… Nephera was gone. There was no way she knew what had happened to her older sister, they had never even actually met!

“Even as a witch,” says Sylviana, “it was hard to take care of Nora, I was way too young. I used my powers to find what would be the best home for her. I knew I had to conceal her identity, so it didn’t matter which pack it was, as long as she could grow up with her kind, with werewolves, as if she had been born there. I knew werewolves care for their own, especially the pups. So I left her on a doorstep, with a note to ask those people to take care of her, with her name and birthday, trusting my magic would help me pick the best home for her.”

“Holy fuck.”

“She didn’t find the best home for Nora. She found her actual biological father’s home!”

“Moon Goddess,”says Nora.“Alec said I had appeared on their doorstep when I was a newborn. I thought… I thought my dad had brought me there for them to raise me without his wife knowing I was his!”

“Turns out the guy, I mean, your father really didn’t know. Sylviana’s magic did the job, picking the house with your actual kin in it. This is crazy…”

“He probably realized later that you were his real daughter though, just like his wife. I wonder if he even knew that your biological mom had you.”

I’m just as speechless. I can hear Nora’s crying, I can’t tell if it’s sadness, relief over her father’s truth, or due to her contraction pains. Her family’s story, and Sylviana’s, is even sadder than I thought.

Nephera doesn’t seem sorry one bit though. She is looking at Sylviana with eyes of utter disgust.

“It took me a while to find them. First, I had to fight the vampires. Trust me, I enjoyed that the most. They are surprisingly weak to water magic, you know. So, once I had replenished my magic enough, hiding in our mother’s lair, I decided to use those vermin the same way they had used me. I corrupted them slowly to my side, making their Vampire Queen my slave, poisoning her mind. She already hated the werewolves, it was almost too easy to persuade them to target the Royals that had escaped. I have never imagined that you would have brought the children back to Silver City. How ironic was that! I spent such a long time searching for you, I even thought you might have died.”

I don’t know much about magic and stuff, but Sylviana being an Earth Witch, I’ll bet she surely wasn’t the easiest to find in the forests from our birthplace and here. Between the time Nephera took to conquer the vampires and the time it took her to search for her sister and us, it probably saved us a few years.

“I had almost given up, you know, when I felt it. A wave of Moon Energy, an awakening to the Moon’s power. So similar to Lilyan or Diane’s signature aura. It came from the south. Never in a million years did I think you would have been able to reach Silver City, Sylviana.”

Nora’s power.

Nora’s sudden awakening to her wolf was what guided Nephera right here. She went from a quiet girl to fully opening her Royal potential. Everyone in Silver City felt the Luna’s slow rise… No wonder that witch felt something. Nephera sneered.

“You’re more talented than I thought, Sylviana. You made sure I couldn’t find her until she would be strong enough to fight me, didn’t you!”

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