Page 30 of Monster's Secret Baby

She kneels among the plants, those same hands now burying scraps beneath the soil. Her lips move silently as she works—talking to the plants? Singing, perhaps? I strain to hear, but I'm too far away.

"There," she says finally, audibly. "That should keep you fed through the week."

I nearly step forward then—nearly reveal myself—but something stops me. The vulnerability in her posture, perhaps. The peace in her face as she looks up at the darkening sky.

I've never seen her alone like this, truly alone. In New Solas, she was always surrounded—by other servants, by expectations, by the weight of her station. Here, she seems... free. And the thought tears at me, that freedom might mean freedom from me.

On the second day, I notice something that turns my blood to ice.

She's not alone after all.

A child—a little girl with wild curls like Harmony's but eyes that strike me with their familiar silver—darts from the back door, flinging herself against Harmony's legs.

"Mama! Mama, look what I made!"

I freeze, feeling as if I've been struck by lightning. The breath tears from my lungs in a sharp, painful gasp.

A child. Harmony has a child.

The little girl clings to Harmony's legs, her small body practically vibrating with excitement as she holds up some crude creation—a clay figure, I think, though it's hard to make out from my vantage point. What isn't hard to see are those eyes—brilliant silver, like mine, like looking into a mirror. But they're set in a face that looks so much like Harmony, with skin several shades darker than mine, curls wilder than mine ever was.

"What's this?" Harmony crouches down, taking the little sculpture with careful hands. "Oh, Brooke, it's beautiful! Is it a lunox?"

"No, Mama! It's a zarryn! Joss showed me how to make the tails." The child—Brooke—gives an exasperated sigh far too adult for her tiny body. "See the two tails?"

I count back in my head. Five years since Harmony vanished. This child can't be more than four. The timing... the timing could fit. But my mind rebels against the possibility, already building walls around the hope before it can take root and destroy me all over again.

She can't be mine. She looks too much like Harmony to really tell. And where are her wings? I search the child's back, but there's no sign of even the smallest nubs that would mark a xaphan offspring. Not mine, then. Which means Harmony found someone else. Quickly.

The thought burns through me like acid, eating away what little sanity I've managed to preserve these past five years—which is honestly nonexistent. I'm just a mad man being driven further insane.

Harmony's laughter drifts through the evening air. "Of course it's a zarryn. I see it now." She tucks a curl behind Brooke's ear, a gesture so tender it makes my chest ache. "Did you thank Joss for teaching you?"

Who the fuck is Joss?

Someone who I have an itch to fucking kill now.

"Uh-huh." Brooke nods, bouncing on her toes. "He says I'm the best clay-thrower he's ever seen for someone my age."

"Well, he'd know." Harmony's voice carries that unmistakable thread of pride that only belongs to a mother. "Let's put him somewhere safe to dry, shall we? Then you can help me pick some brimbark for dinner."

I watch, transfixed, as they move through the garden together, the little girl chattering endlessly, Harmony responding with infinite patience. There's an ease between them, a rhythm that speaks of years together, of routines well-established. A life built.

A life that doesn't include me.

Magic thrums in the air around them—no, around the child specifically. I can feel it even from here, a low vibration that makes the hairs on my arms stand on end. The girl has power. Untrained, wild, but undeniably there.

Human magic is rare, but not unheard of. Whoever fathered her must have had abilities.

But as the child turns, laughing at something Harmony said, I catch a glimpse of golden sparks dancing from her fingertips when she points excitedly at something in the garden. Gold. Not the earthy brown of human magic, nor the green of nymphs. Gold like fire. Gold like lightning.

Gold like xaphan magic.

I squeeze the geode in my pocket so hard I feel it cut into my palm. The pain grounds me, keeps me from launching into the air and flying down to them right now.

Logic tells me this child can't be mine. She lacks wings, looks nothing like me except perhaps those eyes, and Harmony left me. But logic has been my enemy for five years now. Logic told me Harmony was gone forever. Logic told me to give up the search and bind with Lilleth.

Fuck logic.

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