Tannar began to stay at work longer, finding reasons to be out of the house.
When he started taking regular business trips shortly after Aelin’s second birthday, Silva felt nothing but relief. Shehopedhe was having an affair. She kept track of how often his hands sought her out in their bed, fewer and fewer times with each passing month, until she had to count the weeks back to remember when the last time had been. There would be no shock of finding out he’d found someone else. Shehadgotten lucky, no matter how she otherwise felt.
It would make their inevitable unbinding easier, if nothing else.
Especially now that the whispers had taken on new life, completely outside of her control.
Her little miniature wasn’t her miniature at all, once her round baby features began to melt into their true shape. She no longer resembled Silva, beyond the soft lavender of her skin and identical hair color. She no longer resembled Silva and only partially resembled Tate. Her features had a sharper edge, more pointed, more refined.
Youdid that with the witch’s potion. She had not disclosed to the witch in Cambric Creek that Tate was part fae.Allowing everything else to rise to the top.She had been too panicked over the possibility of being turned out of Elvish society to think beyond that. That, and if she were being truthful with herself, she’d been afraid of being turned away from the witch’s door outright.
It made her gut clench in panic and her stomach twist to recall the face she’d seen only one time in her life . . . and then a dozen times more in her nightmares. Aelin was tiny and perfect and almost painfully beautiful, andverymuch like the beautiful man standing in the woods, a face Silva couldn’t forget if she tried.
It certainly wasn’t going to help the whispers.
“I don’t know how you can just stare at her like that. She gives me a headache.”
Silva rounded on Tannar with a horrified gasp the evening he said such a terrible thing. “How could you say something like that?!”
He had the grace to look abashed, shrugging helplessly. “I don’t know! It doesn’t happen every time, and never when I’m feeding her or anything . . . but if I look at her too long, I don’t know, it’s like a nail in my brain.”
“Then why haven’t you made an appointment to get your eyes checked?! If you can’t focus on something without getting a headache, maybe it’s a pinched nerve! Or . . . or you might be developing an astigmatism!”
Tannar said nothing further, softly huffing to himself as Silva turned away angrily. She could happily stare at her little girl all day and night, and never look away.
When the phone in the bedroom rang just a few days later, the question that had been scratching at her brain demanded an answer.
Tannar had questioned its presence, the first time he’d found the cell phone that was neither his nor Silva’s, plugged into a charger she’d placed behind the baby’s dresser, the phone slid under the antique jewelry box on the dresser’s surface, which she kept locked at all times. An old phone, she’d explained, one that she was unable to access, kept only because it was a number some elderly relatives still had.
She could tell he hadn’t believed her. Ironic, as for once, it was technically the truth.
She interrupted the manic chatter immediately upon answering, deciding she needed to see with her own eyes the thing she suspected. “Is there someone there who can help you download this app? There’s someone I’d like you to meet.”
When the call resumed via video chat, the elf on the other side of the screen was a revelation. Silva didn’t know what she’d been expecting. An elf her own mother’s age, perhaps. Perhaps more akin to her grandmother, if not older. Someone with a lined face and platinum white hair, a refined dowager in her jubilation years.
Instead, the lovely Elvish woman on the other side of the phone scarcely looked a decade older than Silva herself. Golden hair in a fat braid falling over her shoulder; high, sharp cheekbones, a swan-like neck, and a long, angled jaw. Her skin was the color of wisteria, making her honey-gold eyes glow. Most interestingly, Silva thought, was her smile. Sharp and glinting. Her teeth were unlike Tate’s, unlike that beautiful fae man she’d seen beside that shining little pool, but completely unlike a typical Elvish mouth.
If her daughter were a miniature of anyone, Silva thought, it wasthiself on the other side of the sea.And she’s a miniature of her fae father. She felt queasy at the thought, but attempted to hide it from them both.
“Oh, she’s absolutelygorgeous. The most perfect little dear in the world.”
Silva didn’t understand the way his mother’s mind had splintered, in that she had a hard time remembering her son, but seemed to tearfully know immediately, instinctively, that Aelin was his child.
After that, the video call between the three of them became a standing monthly appointment, with Aelin asking when they would talk toKikiagain, and an unending line of packages arriving on their doorstep with a Malin Head return address.
Sweaters, dresses, dainty little hats, the sort of things one might purchase at an exclusive trunk show at one of those high-end children’s boutiques the other mothers at the club regularly attended. Better made, one-of-a-kind, a bespoke wardrobe thatonly made her sweet baby even more adorable, commented on by several mothers in the play group at the club.
“I just love that sweater she had on earlier this week, with the little lambs? Did it have a name? Is that from Lily & Lace? I would love to pick one up for Taylee.”
Silva smiled serenely, internally cringing at the name. The elves here chose names likeEmberleighandMakartyfor their babies, rather than anything that resembled a traditional Elvish name. She told herself it was their life and not something that affected her or her daughter in any way, but Silva winced internally every time one of the mothers in the group called out for their little one.You reallyarea snob.
“Oooh, I’m so sorry. It didn’t come from a shop. It was made for her.”
She watched as two of the other mothers present shared a swift, pointed glance.Home online shopping, spending his money, probably having an affair with a human.They had gossiped about her before Aelin was born, and now it was worse.
Her daughter had been born too early, looked nothing like Tannar, only barely resembled Silva, and, according to Tannar, wasodd.
He’d been aggravated after a Sunday they spent at the club for a fundraiser event.
