Page 34 of The Demon's Little Girl
"Rovak never let you go."
The statement hits me like a physical blow, unexpected and devastating in its quiet certainty. I freeze with my mug halfwayto my mouth, staring at him as he continues with careful deliberation.
"He looked for you. For months. Every contact he had, every favor he could call in—he used them all trying to find where you'd gone." Avenor's dark blue eyes are steady on mine, making sure I understand the weight of what he's telling me. "I don't know what you thought when you left, but it wasn't that he didn't care."
The kitchen suddenly feels too small, the air too thick. My hands start to shake around the tea mug, and I have to set it down before I drop it. Because this doesn't fit with what I believed, what Xharn convinced me would happen. Rovak was supposed to have been relieved to be rid of a sullied servant. He was supposed to have moved on without a backward glance.
"He never said anything about stopping the search," Avenor continues, his voice getting quieter but more intense. "Not even after the first year when everyone else was convinced you were gone for good. Sometimes I'd catch him staring at reports that had nothing to do with business, and I knew he was still hoping one of them would have news of you."
I can't breathe properly. The careful walls I've built around that part of my heart—the part that never stopped missing him despite everything—are cracking under the pressure of this revelation. Because if Rovak had been looking for me, if he'd never given up, then maybe...
"Why are you telling me this?" The question comes out sharper than I intended, edged with the panic of having my carefully constructed assumptions challenged.
"Because I thought you should know." Avenor straightens, and there's something almost protective in his posture now. Like he's prepared to defend his decision to share information that clearly distresses me. "I don't know what happened that made you leave, and I'm not asking you to explain it. But whatever youbelieved about how things would be if you stayed—at least part of it was wrong."
He pushes off from the counter, moving toward the door with the same quiet grace he'd arrived with. But he pauses at the threshold, looking back at me with an expression I can't quite read.
"He's different now that you're back," he says simply. "More like himself than he's been in two years. Make of that what you will."
Then he's gone, leaving me alone in the moonlit kitchen with my cooling tea and the wreckage of everything I thought I knew about my own story.
I stand there for a long time, hands braced against the counter as all the careful reasons I've built for staying away crumble one by one. If Rovak had been looking for me, if my leaving had hurt him the way losing him had hurt me, then the neat narrative of shame and protection I've been carrying dissolves into something far more complicated.
The tea grows cold as I stare out the window at the familiar gardens, seeing them with new eyes. This place I ran from to protect everyone involved—maybe the protection had been an illusion from the start. Maybe the only person I'd been shielding was myself, choosing the certainty of loss over the terrifying possibility of being wanted despite everything.
The thought follows me when I finally make my way back upstairs, settling into the chair beside Nalla's crib like a weight I'll carry through whatever sleepless hours remain until dawn.
18
ROVAK
The accounts ledger sits open on my desk, numbers blurring together as my attention drifts toward the window overlooking the gardens. Again. I've read the same shipping manifest three times without absorbing a single detail, my mind too occupied with tracking sounds from elsewhere in the estate to focus on trade routes and cargo manifests.
A soft laugh drifts up from the courtyard below, followed by Nalla's delighted babbling. The sound pulls at something deep in my chest, an ache that's become constant since Liora returned with her daughter.Her daughter.Not mine, though the fierce protectiveness that flares whenever I look at the tiny girl suggests my heart hasn't quite grasped that distinction.
I abandon the pretense of work and move to the window, drawn by a force I can't name and refuse to examine too closely. Below, Liora sits on a stone bench with Nalla on her lap, pointing out aracin blossoms that have started to bloom along the garden paths. The afternoon light catches the mahogany highlights in her dark curls, and when she turns her head to follow Nalla's pointing finger, I catch the profile that's haunted my thoughts for two years.
She looks tired. The shadows under her amber eyes are deeper than they used to be, and there's a careful tension in her shoulders that never fully relaxes. Even now, playing with her daughter in the safety of familiar gardens, she holds herself like someone expecting trouble.
The protective instinct that surges through me is so strong it's almost violent. Whatever drove her away, whatever put those shadows in her eyes and that wariness in her posture—I want to hunt it down and destroy it. But I can't protect her from ghosts, can't fight enemies I don't understand.
And I can't ask. Not when she still looks at me sometimes like she expects judgment instead of welcome.
Nalla drops something—a flower, maybe—and immediately starts to fuss. The sound carries clearly through the open window, that particular note of infant distress that seems designed to bypass rational thought and go straight to pure instinct. I'm moving before I've consciously decided to help, abandoning my desk and the work I've been neglecting for days.
The gardens are warm in the afternoon sun, filled with the scent of blooming aracin and the distant sound of water from the fountain. Liora looks up as I approach, surprise flickering across her face before settling into something more guarded.
"Sorry," she says, starting to rise with Nalla in her arms. "We didn't mean to be loud. I can take her inside?—"
"Don't." The word comes out sharper than intended, and I force my voice softer. "You're not bothering anyone. What happened?"
Nalla's fussing escalates into proper crying, and I can see the exhaustion creeping into Liora's expression as she tries to soothe her daughter with gentle bouncing and whispered reassurances. The baby's tiny fists wave in agitation, and her face is getting redder by the second.
"She's been cranky all day," Liora explains over the crying. "I think the new environment is still unsettling her, but she won't nap and she won't eat properly and I don't?—"
"Here." I hold out my hands, the gesture automatic. "Let me try."
Liora hesitates, and in that pause I see a dozen different emotions flicker across her face. Uncertainty about trusting someone else with her daughter. Exhaustion that's making the decision for her. And something else—surprise, maybe, at the offer itself.
