My Mother’s Name
? Ivy ?
Nobody speaks after Aurelian Vance calls me his daughter.
He says it like a fact he has carried for years. I hear it as a claim from a stranger who arrived with soldiers and my mother’s name.
Grant’s watching me from across the courtyard. Jace is watching Roman. Rowan looks like he’s deciding how much damage one sentence can do before it turns into a political fight. Aurelian only watches me.
I can’t stay in the middle of the court while every guard, clerk, merchant, and council wolf waits to see what I’ll do with a father I didn’t know I had.
“Not here,” I say.
My voice comes out rough, but it carries.
Aurelian lowers his head. “Of course.”
Grant steps forward. “Anything involving a foreign witness and the Luna should be entered into the court record.”
“No,” I say.
His brows draw together.
“This isn’t testimony,” I continue. “You’ll get your record when Rowan opens it.”
Grant looks toward Rowan, expecting him to correct me. Rowan doesn’t.
“The west receiving room,” he says. “Holt, bring the Vance credentials and the records. No clerks.”
Grant’s mouth hardens. “You’re allowing this without a crown representative?”
“I’m allowing Luna Maddox a private conversation,” Rowan says. “You’ll survive it.”
Nora appears beside Roman’s chair before we leave the court.
“Your hour is nearly done,” she says.
Roman doesn’t look at her. “I’m not leaving yet.”
“You’re not standing, which is the only reason I haven’t dragged you back myself.”
“Ivy decides whether I stay.”
Nora looks at me. Roman’s gone pale beneath the cold light, and I can see how carefully he’s holding himself. I don’t need him to speak for me or stand between me and Aurelian. I need him here because I don’t want to hear this alone.
“I want him with me,” I say.
Nora studies both of us, then points at Roman.
“Twenty minutes. If he worsens, he leaves.”
“That’s fair,” I say.
Roman’s mouth shifts faintly.
Nora gives Roman a hard look, then turns away.
The west receiving room is smaller than the council hall and warmer than the courtyard. A fire burns low in the grate. A long table runs through the middle of the room with six chairs around it, though only three are needed.
Aurelian’s guards remain outside with the blue banner. Without them, he looks less like the man who crossed the gates under a foreign claim and more like someone who hasn’t slept properly in years.
Holt sets the dark leather case on the table, then leaves with Rowan. The latch clicks behind them.
Roman’s chair is placed beside mine. Aurelian stays across the room.
Then I ask the question that’s been pressing against my throat since the courtyard.
“Did you know I existed?”
Aurelian’s face changes.
“I knew Willow was carrying a child,” he says. “I didn’t know whether that child survived long enough to be born.”
I grip the edge of the table.
“Then why did you call me your daughter?”
His eyes come to mine.
“Because you look like her,” he says. “Because my wolf caught her scent in you. Because the dates fit.”
“That isn’t proof.”
“No. I shouldn’t have said it as if it were settled.”
Roman’s hand rests near mine on the table. He doesn’t touch me.
“Holt can verify the blood record,” Aurelian says. “You don’t owe me an answer before then.”
I don’t answer him.
“What happened to her?” I ask.
Aurelian looks down at the leather case before he speaks.
“Willow learned the crown was watching her, watching me, and watching the routes between our territories.” His mouth tightens. “She was going west before the child came. I was supposed to meet her at the river crossing with a small guard.”
“You were supposed to meet her.”
“Yes.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No.”
He lets the answer stay between us.
“The raid happened before I reached the crossing,” he says. “By the time my people got through the settlement, the first reports said there were no survivors. Later reports claimed she’d been seen near the river, and then those reports disappeared too.”
“You searched for her?”
“For years.”
“Then why did you stop?”
Aurelian takes that without looking away.
“I stopped finding anyone who knew where she went,” he says. “I never stopped wanting the truth.”
“That sounds like the same thing.”
“It failed her either way.”
The fire shifts behind me. I think about my mother moving through winter with a child she hadn’t met yet. I think about someone changing reports until there was no clear trail left behind her. I think about every time I asked where I came from and was told there was nothing worth knowing.
“The Brooks never told me her name,” I say. “They told me she died. That was all.”
Aurelian’s jaw tightens.
“Did you know I was with them?” I ask.
“No.”
“Did you know they had me?”
“No.”
“I knew the Brooks name appeared in crown ledgers,” he says after a moment. “I didn’t know what it meant. I didn’t know they were connected to Willow until I began gathering records for this testimony.”
“You started looking because you were coming here.”
“Yes.”
“To speak against Grant.”
“Yes.”
He hadn’t come looking for me; he’d come to make Grant answer for what he did.
At least he doesn’t lie about that.
Aurelian turns toward the leather case.
“I brought evidence from the western archives,” he says. “Original patrol orders, altered route reports, crown courier accounts, and witness records that should never have been changed. There are enough pieces to show the raid was arranged, not random.”
“And Willow?”
His hand rests on the case.
“Her route marker appears in one of the ledgers. It won’t tell you everything, and it won’t bring her back, but it proves she was there. It proves she was moving west, and it proves someone knew exactly where to cut her off.”
The room feels too warm. I’ve spent my whole life with no version of my mother except dead. No face. No story. No name. Nothing but silence everyone else expected me to accept.
Now there’s a ledger that says she existed long enough to be hunted.
“You’re planning to use her death against Grant,” I say.
“I’m planning to use the truth against him.”
“He’ll say it’s foreign lies.”
“Then Holt compares them to the records here,” Aurelian says. “Grant made sure no one person held enough proof. Together, the records may.”
What he’s offering is evidence, not a family.
“Taking this doesn’t mean I believe you.”
“I know.”
“Or forgive you.”
“I know.”
“And it doesn’t make this a reunion.”
Aurelian’s expression tightens, but he doesn’t look away.
“It won’t be the end of it,” he says. “It’ll only be the first truth you were denied.”
I look down at the records.
“What else do you know about Willow?”
Aurelian is quiet for a moment.
“She was stubborn,” he says. “She hated being told a border was the same thing as a wall. She could make a whole room listen when she was angry, even when she barely raised her voice.”
The words are simple. They hurt anyway.
“She knew the risk,” he continues. “She still chose to protect the child she thought the crown would use against us.”
“She didn’t know me.”
“No,” he says. “But she wanted the child. She was planning for you.”
That’s too much to hear from a man I’ve known for less than an hour.
I pull the records closer to my side of the table.
“I need these,” I say.
Aurelian nods once.
“They’re yours to review. Holt can verify every seal.”
He doesn’t reach for me or ask me to call him anything. He doesn’t ask whether I want to know where he lives or how many people wait for him across the border. Roman finally speaks.
“You can leave the answer for later.”
His face is pale, but his eyes are steady.
“I know.”
“Do you want Rowan to delay the hearing?”
“No.” I rest my hand on the leather case. “I want the truth entered before Grant finds another way to bury it.”
Roman nods.
“Then that’s what happens.”
Aurelian steps back from the table.
“I’ll be in the council rooms until Rowan calls the hearing,” he says. “After that, I’ll leave you alone unless you ask otherwise.”
He pauses near the door.
“Willow was brave,” he says quietly. “She should’ve had the chance to tell you herself.”
After the latch clicks shut, I open the case.
The first stack is tied with blue cord. A thin ledger lies beneath it, its cracked leather spine holding pages yellowed at the edges. I turn it carefully until I find the marker Aurelian described.
The entry lists a river route and a weather mark, then a woman’s name in faded ink. Willow.
My mother’s name.
I pull the ledger toward me and leave everything else Aurelian is offering untouched on the table.