Chapter 12 #2
She’s in one of the open alcoves off the courtyard, half crouched, one hand braced on a small chair while she says, “No, sweetheart, that is not how shoes work.”
And there’s a child in front of her.
Very small. Maybe two, maybe a little older. Sturdy little thing in soft gray trousers and a green shirt with one sleeve rolled halfway up because apparently he objected to symmetry. He’s holding a boot in both hands and glaring at it like it has insulted his ancestors.
I smile before I even mean to. “That’s about right, mate,” I murmur.
Then the child looks up.
And the whole world goes weird around the edges.
Golden eyes.
Not just light brown. Not amber. Golden.
A delicate wash of red-gold scales brushes his cheeks and peeks along one forearm where the sleeve is pushed back. Fine, luminous, unmistakable.
Vakutan.
Or half.
Everything in me goes still.
Tilda takes the boot from him, laughing softly. “You cannot negotiate with footwear.”
He says something too quiet for me to catch, and she leans down, presses a kiss to his temple, then settles onto the padded bench and pulls him into her lap. He folds into her like he belongs there. Like he’s done it ten thousand times.
I should leave.
Instead I stand rooted at the edge of the alcove entrance, staring like a man who has just been hit in the face with a memory he didn’t know his body still kept.
Golden eyes.
Red scales.
Half-Vakutan.
My mind does the arithmetic before my conscience can interfere.
No.
Maybe.
No.
The child turns his head, catches sight of me, and goes very still.
For one strange suspended moment, we just look at each other.
He has the grave, assessing stare some children get when they’re trying to decide if an adult is safe, stupid, or useful. There is nothing blank in that gaze. Nothing fuzzy. He’s watchful as a little hunter.
Then Tilda follows his attention and sees me.
Every line of her body changes.
The softness goes out of her face so fast it’s like watching a door slam in a storm.
She stands in one swift motion, the child gathered to her hip with practiced ease.
“Bron.”
I lift both hands. “Easy.”
Her expression could strip paint. “What are you doing here?”
Now, there are many possible answers to that question. None of them are smart.
“I was walking,” I say.
“In the family wing.”
“I contain multitudes.”
“Bron.”
The child is looking between us now, one hand hooked in the collar of her shirt. Up close, the scales along his cheek catch the light like lacquered embers. His eyes are huge. Gold and solemn and impossible.
Something in my chest gives a hard, ugly thud.
I try for lightness and miss by a mile. “You’ve got a kid.”
That was obvious. Brilliant work, Bron.
Tilda shifts him higher on her hip. “This is none of your business.”
The child keeps looking at me. Not frightened. Just intent. Measuring.
I can smell lotion, warm fabric, the faint mineral scent of scales after bath oil. Beneath that, Tilda’s skin—clean soap, stress, that sharp little citrus note from the compound laundry. Domestic smells. Close smells. Intimate in a way that hits me much harder than it should.
I look at the kid again.
My own voice sounds strange to me when I say, “He’s Vakutan.”
Tilda’s jaw locks.
“Partly,” I add, because suddenly precision feels like the only thing keeping me from saying something catastrophic.
Her eyes flash. “You need to leave.”
The child lifts one small hand and pats her shoulder as if she’s the one who needs calming. Then, in a soft rough little voice, he says, “Mama?”
That word lands in me like a dropped stone.
Mama.
Tilda softens for him instantly. “It’s okay, baby.”
Baby.
I swallow.
“Who’s his father?” I ask before I can stop myself.
Wrong thing.
Wrong time.
The temperature in the whole alcove seems to drop ten degrees.
Tilda stares at me like she is very seriously considering whether she could kill me with a padded toy block and still make dinner.
“That,” she says, each word clean and hard, “is not a question you get to ask.”
The child watches us with those impossible golden eyes.
I hear myself say, quieter, “Tilda.”
“No.”
One word. Flat as a locked door.
But now I’m looking and looking and I can’t stop. The scales. The eyes. The age. The timing clawing its way up out of memory whether I invite it or not.
When did she leave?
How long after?
How old is he?
No. No, that’s insane.
Except my body does not seem to think it’s insane. My body is all alarm bells and old ghosts and ugly hope, and hope is a vicious thing. Hope will put its hands around your throat and call it salvation.
The child speaks again, peering at me from the safe height of Tilda’s shoulder. “Who dat?”
My breath catches.
Tilda doesn’t look away from me when she answers. “Nobody you need to worry about.”
Nobody.
That one goes in under the ribs.
I almost laugh, because fair enough. If anyone has earned that, it’s me.
Still, I can’t make my feet move.
The boy—because he is a boy, and because there is something about seeing that scale pattern on a little body that makes my brain feel split open—tilts his head. The light catches one eye. Gold like mine. Not exactly mine. But close enough that my skin goes cold.
I hear my own pulse.
I hear children playing farther out in the courtyard.
I hear a caretaker calling someone named Lio away from a climbing wall.
I hear Tilda’s breathing—controlled, shallow, furious.
And under all of it, I hear the terrible click of pieces trying to fit together in my head.
We were together.
She left.
No explanation worth a damn.
She vanished.
Now there is a child with Vakutan traits and her eyes—
No. Wait.
I look harder.
Not her eyes.
Mine.
Or close enough to make me sick.
“Tilda,” I say again, and this time there’s no teasing in it. No grin. No easy polish. Just the name. “How old is he?”
Her expression shuts down even further. I didn’t know that was possible. “Leave.”
“How old is he?”
“Bron.”
That’s it. Just my name, but packed so tight with warning it might as well be a blade.
The child flinches at her tone, and shame flashes through me hot and immediate. I take a step back at once.
“Hey,” I say softly, and this is for him now, not her. “No, no, it’s all right, little man.”
Tilda’s face changes again when I speak to him. Not soft. Not exactly. Worse.
Protective.
Terrified.
That, more than anything, strips the stupid from me.
Whatever this is, whatever I think I’m seeing, she is scared of me knowing it.
Which means she already knows what I’m asking.
The silence stretches.
Then she turns away from me, one arm around the boy, one hand at the back of his head, and starts for the far corridor leading deeper into the family suites.
I stand there like I’ve forgotten how ankles work.
At the threshold she stops just long enough to look back over her shoulder.
Not for drama.
Not for one of those loaded half-pauses television loves.
Just a look.
Cold. Tense. Furious. And under all of it, something raw enough to make my stomach drop.
Then she says, very quietly, “Do not follow me.”
And she disappears around the corner with the child on her hip.
The alcove feels suddenly enormous and empty.
I stay where I am because moving seems ambitious.
A caretaker passes behind me pushing a supply cart full of folded blankets and doesn’t even glance my way. Somewhere in the courtyard, one of the children shrieks with laughter. A fountain gurgles gently in the middle distance, cheerful as a threat written in pastel.
I drag a hand over my mouth.
“No,” I say to absolutely no one.
Then, because the word has no authority over what’s happening in my skull, I say it again.
“No.”
Golden eyes.
Red scales.
The age of him.
The way she looked at me.
The way she answered too fast and not at all.
The way my whole body knew before my brain could build a defense.
I start walking without picking a direction, just moving because the alternative is standing there and detonating. Out through the commons, past the fountain, around a seating cluster full of toys. My shoulders feel too wide for the air. My skin feels hot and wrong.
Could he be mine?
The thought is monstrous. Glorious. Terrifying.
Impossible.
Possible.
I hate both answers.
By the time I hit the corridor back toward contestant housing, my heartbeat has gone from startled to violent.
Every memory I have of Tilda comes back with teeth.
Her leaving. The silence after. The months I spent telling myself she was done with me because she was smarter than I was, steadier than I was, finished with being dragged through my chaos.
Never once—
Not once—
Did I think child.
I stop dead in the middle of the hall.
A camera drone swivels toward me. I stare at it until it veers off, apparently deciding there are easier meals elsewhere.
Then I laugh once, low and unbelieving.
“If that kid is mine,” I say under my breath, “I am going to lose my entire mind.”
Which, to be fair, assumes I still have one to lose.
Because now every detail feels suspect. Every absence. Every evasion. Every time she’s cut a conversation short. Every time she’s looked wrung out and refused to tell me why. Every time she’s vanished into the family wing and come back with her face rebuilt from scratch.
A child.
Her child.
A half-Vakutan child.
I lean against the wall and close my eyes.
I can still see him.
Small hand in her shirt.
Scales like burnished copper.
Those eyes.
Gods.
When I push off the wall again, I know two things with absolute clarity.
One: Tilda is hiding something that can blow my life apart.
Two: I am not going to be able to think about anything else until I know if that boy is my son.