Page 21 of The Dark Elf's Found Family
"It's beautiful, sweetheart," I manage, though my voice comes out rougher than intended.
"It's what I think the shop could look like in spring," she explains, her eyes bright with excitement. "With a real garden out front and maybe more space for people to sit and read. Nya helped me with the perspective."
I look at the careful way she's drawn the man figure—tall and lean, with long dark hair and gentle hands. The woman behind the counter has ink stains on her fingers and a smile that looks genuinely happy. The girls in the garden are laughing, their faces turned toward each other in obvious affection.
It's a future I haven't dared to imagine, rendered in charcoal and hope by my ten-year-old daughter.
"We could ask Dad if gardens like that are possible," Nya says quietly to Rhea, and the casual way she includes Ciaran in their planning makes my chest ache with longing I'm trying so hard to suppress.
I watch them return to their sketching, adding more details to their imagined spring paradise, and feel the careful walls around my heart developing cracks I'm not sure I know how to repair.
Maybe I don't want to repair them.
Maybe, despite every lesson experience has taught me, I'm ready to risk hoping again.
12
CIARAN
Nya lies curled beneath the inn's rough wool blanket, her small body trembling despite the heat radiating from her skin. Her slate gray complexion has turned ashen, almost translucent, and each breath comes in shallow, rapid pants that remind me too much of those first terrible months after her birth.
I pace the narrow space between the beds, my hands clenched into fists to stop them from shaking. The room feels suffocating, the walls pressing closer with each labored breath she takes. I've already given her the last of the powder—the carefully measured dose that usually helps calm these episodes—but her symptoms haven't eased. If anything, they've worsened in the past hour.
"Dad?" Her voice is barely a whisper, so faint I have to lean down to hear her.
"I'm here, sweetheart." I brush a strand of damp hair from her forehead, my fingers coming away wet with fever sweat. Her skin burns against my palm, too hot, too fragile.
She closes her eyes and turns her face into the pillow, and the helpless sound she makes—half whimper, half exhausted sigh—cuts through me like a blade.
Not again. Please, not again.
The memories surge up unbidden, dragging me back to those endless nights in our Kyrdonis mansion when Nya was barely months old. Syrelle sprawled across our bed in a drug-induced stupor, reeking of aviid powder and expensive perfume, while our infant daughter writhed in my arms, her tiny body fighting poisons that had leaked through her mother's blood during pregnancy.
I remember the way Nya's newborn cries would turn into terrible, rattling gasps that made my heart stop. How her perfect features would contort with pain she was too young to understand, her violet eyes—so much like mine, so unlike Syrelle's indigo ones—wide with confusion and hurt. The healers who came and went with their grim expressions and careful words, explaining in clinical terms how the aviid had weakened her magical channels, how her body would always struggle to process the mana that flowed through every dark elf's veins.
"The magic sickness may manifest in episodes throughout her life," one of them had told me, his voice professionally detached while my world crumbled around my ears. "Fever, fatigue, breathing difficulties. There are remedies that can help, but no cure."
I'd held Nya against my chest that night, feeling her fever burn through the thin fabric of her nightgown, and sworn I would never let anything hurt her again. That I would find a way to keep her safe, healthy, happy.
But I failed then too, didn't I? All those months watching Syrelle spiral deeper into her addiction, telling myself she would change for Nya's sake, that motherhood would cure her of her need for constant stimulation and escape. Even after the healersconfirmed what the aviid had done to our daughter, Syrelle continued using. Continued hosting her glittering parties, continued disappearing for days at a time while I juggled my writing and caring for a sick infant.
"She's not my problem anymore,"Syrelle had said once, high and cruel, when I'd begged her to at least hold Nya while I prepared her medicine."You wanted a child so badly—well, now you have one. Figure it out yourself."
I should have left her then. Should have taken Nya and run before Syrelle's final, fatal mistake six years later. But I was a coward, clinging to the fantasy that Nya needed her mother, that somehow I could save them both.
I couldn't save Syrelle. But I won't lose Nya too.
"Dad, it hurts," she whispers, and her small hand finds mine where I'm gripping the edge of the bed. Her fingers are cold despite the fever, so small and delicate I'm afraid I might break them just by holding on.
"I know, sweetheart. I know." I squeeze her hand gently, trying to pour all my love and reassurance into the simple contact. "The medicine will help soon."
But even as I say it, I know it's not enough. The last dose should have worked by now, should have eased her breathing and brought down the fever. Instead, she seems to be getting worse, her breathing more labored, her skin growing paler by the hour. And now I'm out of the powder that's always gotten her through this.
A knock at the door jolts me from my spiraling thoughts. I freeze, torn between hope and irritation—I can't deal with Syla's well-meaning concern right now, can't pretend that everything is manageable when my daughter is suffering and I'm helpless to fix it.
But when I open the door, it's Brynn standing there with Rhea at her side. Her hazel-green eyes immediately search myface, reading the worry I've been trying to hide, and something in her expression softens with understanding.
"We hadn't seen you," she explains, her voice careful but warm. "We wanted to check in."
