CHAPTER 2 — The Word That Split the Night

At the hospital, the sliding doors hesitated, then opened in a slow stutter. The fluorescent lights inside buzzed in a way that made Maya tense. A nurse stood up immediately when she saw Ivy limp in Maya's arms.

"What happened?" the woman asked, moving closer.

"I—I don't know. She had some kind of episode. The whole building lost power. She wouldn't wake up."

The nurse guided her to a bed, calling for a doctor before Ivy was fully laid down. Someone gently pried Ivy from Maya's hold, whispering apologies as they did.

Machines flickered the moment they switched on. A monitor blinked, went dark, came back with a distorted heartbeat pattern Maya had never seen.

"What's wrong with it?" one nurse asked.

"It's not the machine," the doctor murmured.

Maya felt the words more than she heard them.

He pointed toward the screen. "Her vitals aren't following normal rhythms."

Maya swallowed. Hard. "What does that mean?"

"I don't know yet," he said honestly. "But something in her system isn't reading right."

A cold weight settled in her chest.

Another tremor went through Ivy's body—small this time, barely there. Her eyelashes fluttered.

"Mama?" she whispered.

"I'm right here." Maya sat beside the bed, taking Ivy's hand in both of hers.

Ivy's eyes opened halfway. The amber glow hadn't left entirely. "He saw me," she murmured. "He's coming."

Her fingers loosened. Sleep tugged her under again. Maya lowered her forehead to Ivy's arm, trying to steady her own breathing. The monitor beside them flickered once more.

The minutes crawled by. A nurse came in twice, fiddling with wires and mumbling about faulty leads. Maya didn't bother arguing. The machine wasn't the problem.

She kept touching Ivy—smoothing her hair, adjusting the blanket, holding her hand—anything to keep her tethered to the room. It made the fear quieter. Not smaller, just quieter.

Then the hallway outside went still in a way hospitals shouldn't.

The footsteps that followed weren't rushed or casual. They carried a specific weight—a gravity Maya felt in her marrow before she understood why.

She lifted her head, every muscle in her body going tense.

No.

The word was a prayer and a curse all at once. Seven years. Seven years of running, of hiding, of building a life small enough to stay invisible. Seven years of looking over her shoulder and teaching Ivy to never use her full strength, to never let the amber show, to never draw attention.

And now he was here.

The door pushed open.

Maya's skin prickled with recognition before her mind caught up. She knew the shape of him in the doorway—the breadth of his shoulders, the way he moved like gravity bent around him instead of the other way around. Seven years. Seven years of convincing herself she'd moved on, and one look at Alec Stonehaven undid every lie she'd told herself.

For a heartbeat, neither of them moved.

The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead. The monitor beeped its unsteady rhythm. But the air between them felt charged, electric—the same way it had in the greenhouse all those years ago when he'd lean too close and she'd forget how to breathe.

He looked older. Harder. Exhaustion carved into the lines around his eyes, a heaviness in his jaw that hadn't been there before. But his eyes—God, his eyes were exactly the same. Grey-green and intense and looking at her like she was the only thing in the room that mattered.

Then his gaze shifted past her to Ivy, and everything about him changed.

His whole body went rigid. The color drained from his face. Maya watched him take in the dark curls spread across the pillow, the small chest rising and falling in shallow breaths, the too-pale skin and twitching fingers.

She saw the exact moment he understood.

His throat worked. His hands curled into fists at his sides. Something raw and devastating crossed his expression before he locked it down.

"Alec." Her voice came out steadier than she felt.

He flinched at the sound of his name. Blinked slowly, like he was trying to convince himself this was real. When he finally looked at her again, there was something broken in his eyes.

"You got the alert," she managed.

"They didn't give me names." His voice was rough, barely controlled. "I wasn't expecting..." He looked at Ivy again, then back to Maya. "This."

Maya's heart hammered against her ribs. She wanted to explain, to defend, to run—but her body refused to move.

Alec stepped closer to the bed. Slow, careful, like he was approaching something holy. Or something that might shatter.

Every instinct Maya had screamed at her to put herself between him and Ivy, but she couldn't move. She could only watch as he took in every detail of their daughter—the paper crown someone had set on the bedside table, the birthday bracelet still on her tiny wrist, the way her hand was curled loosely in Maya's.

His gaze dropped to Maya's left hand for just a second. No ring.

The observation seemed to hit him, something flickering across his face too fast to read.

"She wasn't supposed to exist," Maya whispered before she could stop herself.

Alec's jaw tightened. "And yet she does."

"I didn't know if she'd survive. I didn't know what she was. I didn't know what the Council would do if they found out—"

"The Council." He said it like a curse. "You thought I'd let them near her?"

"I thought you'd have no choice." Her voice cracked. "You were the heir, Alec. Your father controlled everything. The Council would have taken one look at a half-blood bastard and—"

"Don't." The word was sharp. "Don't call her that."

"That's what they would have called her." Maya's hands were shaking now. "Right before they decided whether to take her from me or kill her outright."

The truth of it hung in the air between them, ugly and undeniable.

Alec's shoulders sagged slightly, like the weight of it was too much to hold. "You think I would've let that happen?"

Maya's throat tightened. She wanted to believe him. Part of her—the part that had never stopped loving him—did believe him.

But belief didn't change reality.

His face went carefully blank. "I thought you left me."

"I did." She stood now, needing to move, needing space. "But I left to save her. I had no other choice."

"You could have trusted me."

"I was eighteen and terrified and pregnant with something I didn't understand. You were gone—wherever they sent you for your Rites of Passage—and I was alone, throwing up in the servants' bathroom, trying to figure out how to keep us both alive."

"I came back," he said, his voice rough with something between anger and grief. "I looked for you. For months. I thought—" He stopped, swallowing hard. "I thought maybe you were dead. That was easier than believing you'd just chosen to disappear."

Guilt twisted in her chest, sharp and familiar. "I had to."

"Did you?" He took a step closer. "Or did you just decide I wasn't worth trusting?"

"I decided she was worth protecting." Maya's voice shook. "From your world. From the Council. From everything that would have destroyed her the moment they knew she existed."

The silence between them felt like seven years compressed into a single moment.

Then Ivy stirred.

Maya moved automatically, leaning over her daughter. "Baby? It's okay, sweetheart."

Ivy's lashes fluttered. Her eyes opened halfway, still clouded with sleep and whatever strange power had seized her earlier. The amber glow pulsed faintly beneath the brown.

Her gaze drifted, unfocused at first, sliding past Maya to the man standing at the foot of her bed.

Maya watched her daughter's expression change. Soften. A look of ancient, wordless recognition crossing her small face—something that shouldn't be possible, something Maya couldn't explain.

"Hi..." Ivy's voice was barely a whisper.

Then she said it.

The word that would change everything.

"...Daddy."