Chapter Text
Rain never quite touched the undercity the way it did in Piltover. The sprawling levels of metal suspended in the forgotten cracks never let rain through as it fell from the sky. It came to Zaun in runoff, dripping along metal picking up the rust and grime on its way down from the shining city above. Even rainwater was contaminated by the time it reached down into the lower depths of the undercity, into the fissures where people actually lived, it came in cold drips, in runoff, in sudden narrow waterfalls from the steel canopy overhead.
Silco’s boots vibrated against the metal walkway as he made his way through the drenched fissure, his coat long dampened by the runoff which had become impossible to avoid. The Last Drop had been shut for the night, not that it ever stayed closed long. Vander had stayed in the bar to finish up any of the hundred tasks that came with running a place in the fissures. Silco left him to whatever task Vander had stayed back to give importance to.
He liked the quiet, it was why he did not stay in The Last Drop as Vander did, he preferred to have his own space. The lane to his rooms was dim even by Zaunite standards, lit only by the weak industrial glow bleeding through vents and seams in the walls. The air smelled of wet iron, old smoke, rot beneath stone. Familiar. Honest.
As Silco walked up to the door he noticed a shape, something he certainly didn’t leave there, and Silco wasn’t in the habit of getting packages. His hand had already gone to the knife beneath his coat before his mind fully caught up.
He stopped just short of the threshold.
A bundle lay there, something wrapped tight in a cloth, tucked against the wall where the least amount of water could reach. Not enough to keep it dry, but enough to show intent. Whoever had left it had not done so carelessly. Or perhaps they had simply wanted it visible. Found.
Silco stared at it for a long moment.
Then the bundle moved.
Not much. Just a twitch beneath the cloth, tiny pale skin caught in the dim light. A small noise followed, not even a proper cry, more the thin, protesting sound of a creature too tired to be loud about its suffering.
An infant.
He said nothing.
The knife remained in his hand.
There were a dozen possibilities, most of them ugly. A trap. A message. A test. A mistake. Some desperate fool’s burden placed at the wrong door. He looked up and down the empty stretch of walkway, scanning the dark recesses between pipes and ladders, the places where eyes might wait. Nothing moved but water.
The child made the sound again.
Silco crouched at last, slow and deliberate, and pulled back one edge of the soaked wrapping.
He went still.
The baby blinked up at him with heavy-lidded, pale blue-green eyes. A sharpness around them already visible despite the softness of infancy. The dark hair plastered damply to a narrow little skull. The thin face. The mouth. Even the faintly severe look of the brow, as if the child had come into the world already dissatisfied with it.
Silco’s expression did not change, but something cold and precise shifted behind it.
What a peculiar thing.
The child did not cry at the sight of him. It only blinked once more, then frowned with surprising concentration, as if trying to make sense of the figure looming above it through the rain-muted light.
Silco slid the knife away.
Who would be stupid enough, or desperate enough, to leave this here?
He checked the wrapping. Cheap cloth. Nothing embroidered. No note. No token. No mark of origin. No plea. No threat. Just a child abandoned at his door like refuse or fate.
His fingers hovered a moment before he touched the infant properly. Two knuckles brushed the side of its face, testing warmth. Cold, but not dangerously so. Damp. Hungry, probably. Furious, if the twitching mouth was any indication.
He should have walked inside and shut the door.
There were orphanages, if one could call them that. Women in the lanes who collected strays for coin or conscience. Vander, damn him, would take one look and gather the thing up without thought, all broad hands and soft pity. It would be easy enough to pass this problem to someone else.
But the child looked like him.
Not vaguely. Not in the way people sometimes imagined resemblance where there was none.
No. Unmistakably. Eerily.
Silco leaned back on his heels and studied the child. Five, perhaps six months? Very small. Undernourished. Not sickly, though. The wrists were thin but not skeletal. The eyes tracked. The skin, where visible beneath the cloth, had decent color. She had not been left out long.
Someone had wanted him to find her alive, or someone had known he would.
Silco needn’t sit alone with his thoughts for long.
Vander had left to find Silco a few minutes ago, locking up The Last Drop behind him, walking along the path he knew Silco took often.
“Well-?” Vander walked up slowly in the way he always did, a little perplexed to find his friend crouched on his own doorstep, “You vanish in a mood and now you’re loitering outside your own-”
Vander stopped when he noticed what Silco was crouched over, he squinted, not quite believing his eyes in the wet darkness the undercity supplied;
“What in the hells…”
“An infant,” Silco said dryly.
“Yes, I can see that.”
“Then your eyesight remains serviceable.”
Vander ignored that. He crouched too, knees cracking faintly, and stared at the child. His face shifted in that open way of his, surprise first, then concern, then something far too close to tenderness for Silco’s liking.
“Was she crying?”
“Barely.”
“She’s freezing.”
“She is wet,” Silco corrected.
Vander shot him a look. “That’s not better.”
The baby, perhaps offended by the deep rumble of Vander’s voice, made a small face and flailed one fist free of the wrapping. The motion was weak but indignant.
Vander huffed a quiet laugh. “Got some spirit.”
Silco said nothing.
Vander looked between the child and Silco, then looked again, slower this time. His brows drew together. His expression changed.
“Oh.”
Silco straightened slightly. “Yes.”
“That’s…” Vander rubbed a hand over his beard. “That’s a bit unsettling.”
“At last, we agree on something.”
Vander glanced back down. “You think—?”
“I think someone left an infant on my doorstep.”
“You know what I mean.”
Silco’s mouth thinned.
He did know what he meant. The possibility had lodged itself in his mind the instant he’d seen her face. Not because he was sentimental enough to leap toward fatherhood at the sight of a similar nose, but because Zaun was a city built on consequences. On forgotten nights. On people using one another and surviving the result. He did not make a habit of losing track of his own life, but he had not spent every year cloistered like a monk, either.
Even so, the timing, the placement, the deliberate nature of it, it felt less like chance and more like delivery.
Vander exhaled. “Felicia’ll want to see her.”
That pulled Silco’s eyes away from the child and onto him. “Why.”
“Because she’s not blind, and because she’s got sense where you’ve got knives for bones.”
“I have perfectly sound bones.”
“Mm.”
Vander reached out, then paused. “Can I?”
Silco hadn’t the slightest clue why Vander was asking him for permission. Nevertheless he should have said no on principle, Vander got attached too easy. Instead he gave a curt tilt of the head.
Vander slid his hands beneath the bundle with absurd care, as though afraid the whole thing might unravel. The baby startled at the movement, face screwing up for the first time in earnest. A wet, sputtering cry escaped her, small and furious. Vander bounced her awkwardly, immediately out of his depth.
“There it is,” he muttered. “That’s healthier.”
Silco rose to his feet. Vander stood with the child in his arms, looking profoundly unsuited to the task and yet somehow natural in it. It was irritating.
The baby’s eyes opened again between cries.
They landed on Silco.
Even in Vander’s arms, she fixed on him with a strange, solemn intensity infants were not supposed to possess. Then one tiny hand emerged from the cloth and reached blindly outward.
Toward him.
Vander noticed. Of course he did. “Huh.”
Silco held still.
Again the hand opened and closed in the damp air, demanding something it lacked the vocabulary to name.
Vander’s mouth twitched. “Well. Seems she’s got a preference.”
“Hardly. She lacks motor control.”
“Sure.”
The rain drummed above them.
For one absurd second Silco considered turning, unlocking the door, and leaving Vander to solve the whole affair. But the child made that thin sound again and continued reaching.
Silco reached forward and carefully took the child into his arms.
It was a calculated action, he told himself. Simpler than arguing. Simpler than listening to Vander blunder his way through handling an infant in the rain.
She weighed almost nothing.
Too little. Startlingly little. Her heat bled through the soaked cloth in weak patches, fragile as a guttering flame. She quieted almost immediately in his arms, though not fully. The cries fell into soft huffs. Her fist, still half-curled, caught against the front of his coat.
Vander was looking at him with an expression Silco despised.
“Don’t,” Silco said.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were about to.”
Vander’s grin was brief and deeply unhelpful. “You gonna stand out here all night with her?”
Silco looked down at the child.
She was studying him now in that unfocused infant way, lips parted, face still damp from rain and tears. Unpleasantly trusting. Her resemblance to him seemed even sharper up close, enough to make something old and bitter stir in his chest. Not affection. Certainly not that. Recognition, perhaps. The sick sort, the involuntary sort, like seeing one’s own features reflected in black water.
“Open the door,” he said.
Vander did.
Inside, the rooms were no warmer than they had a right to be, but at least they were dry. Vander lit another lamp while Silco laid the child on the table with more care than he would ever admit. The wrapping came away in layers, revealing a thin little body in mismatched baby clothes, a patched undershirt, one sock missing, a bruise-yellow stain on the hem where old milk or runoff had dried.
“She’ll need food,” Vander said.
“She’ll need a bath.”
“She’ll need both.”
Silco gave him a look.
Vander raised his hands. “Right. I’ll go get Felicia.”
That made Silco pause. “Now?”
“She’s five months pregnant, not dead.”
“She’ll be asleep.”
Vander barked a laugh at that. “You think anybody sleeps easy in the lanes?”
Before Silco could answer, the child sneezed.
A tiny, ridiculous sound.
Both men looked down at her.
Then, to Vander’s delight and Silco’s profound displeasure, she sneezed again.
“Maker,” Vander muttered, smiling despite himself. “She’s real.”
Silco stared.
The child blinked at the ceiling, then at him, then made a face so severe and offended by existence that for the first time in years, something dangerously close to amusement threatened to surface in him.
It did not reach his mouth. But Vander saw it anyway. He always saw too much.
“I’ll get Felicia,” Vander said again, gentler now.
He left before Silco could object.
That left Silco alone with the infant.
The room settled into a hush broken only by rain and the occasional groan of old pipes in the walls. The child squirmed on the table, grimacing at the absence of warmth now that she’d been unwrapped. Silco took a dry cloth from a shelf and, after a moment’s consideration, began wiping the damp from her face with slow, precise strokes.
She stared up at him.
“What exactly are you?” he murmured.
The child had no answer, naturally.
Just that same fixed gaze. Sharp. Quiet. Intent.
As if she were assessing him in return.
Silco dried one small hand. The fingers reflexively curled around his thumb.
His breath caught so slightly it would have been impossible for anyone else to notice.
He looked at the hand latched to him.
Then at the face.
Then at the door.
No note. No mother. No explanation. Just a child with his eyes around the edges and his shape in miniature, dropped into his life by some unseen hand with either terrible nerve or terrible faith.
He could still hand her over when Vander returned. Could still make this someone else’s problem.
But he already knew he would not.
Silco slid one finger beneath her grip, testing it. Astonishingly stubborn for something so small.
Felicia had learned, over the years, that Vander only came knocking that late for three reasons.
Someone was hurt.
Someone was dead.
Or Silco had done something unreasonable and Vander needed a second pair of hands before the unreasonable thing got worse.
So when the knock came, low and careful against the doorframe, she was already awake.
The rain had seen to that.
It rattled through the old gutters above the lanes, not falling so much as spilling, running down the walls in dirty silver lines. Somewhere nearby, water poured from a broken seam in the canopy hard enough to sound like a river. The whole building smelled damp. Metal, old stone, wet cloth, and the faint sourness of the lower levels after too much runoff.
Felicia pushed herself upright with a soft breath, one hand settling automatically over the small roundness of her stomach.
Five months along, and already this one had opinions.
Violet was asleep in the other room, curled in a heap with one arm thrown over her face like she had personally fought the entire city and won. Felicia glanced toward her, listened for the steady little breaths, then reached for the shawl beside the bed.
The knock came again.
“Felicia?” Vander’s voice, quiet but carrying.
She opened the door before he could knock a third time.
Vander stood outside dripping rainwater onto the floor, shoulders hunched like he was trying to make himself smaller and failing spectacularly.
She looked him over once. No blood. No obvious wounds. Face tense, but not grief-struck.
“Who died?” she asked.
“No one.”
“Who’s hurt?”
“No one. Not exactly.”
Felicia stared at him.
Vander rubbed the back of his neck. “Silco found something.”
Of course he did.
Felicia sighed through her nose and pulled her shawl tighter around herself. “A body?”
“No.”
“A bomb?”
“No.”
“A body with a bomb?”
“Felicia.”
“What, then?”
Vander’s expression shifted, and that was what made her stop teasing. His eyes softened, but his mouth had gone uncertain. Vander did not look uncertain often. Concerned, yes. Angry, plenty. Tired, always. But uncertain was different.
“A baby.”
Felicia blinked.
For one beat, the rain was all she heard.
Then she looked down at her stomach, then back at Vander, flatly. “That is not mine.”
A laugh broke out of him before he could stop it, short and startled. “No. No, not yours.”
“Good. Because I’m fairly certain I would’ve noticed.”
“She was left at Silco’s door.”
Felicia’s expression changed.
The damp cold of the hallway seemed to creep closer.
“At Silco’s door,” she repeated.
Vander nodded.
“Alive?”
“Alive. Cold. Hungry, probably. Looks a bit small.”
Felicia was already reaching for her boots. “How old?”
“Hard to say. Infant. Not newborn.”
“Wrapped?”
“Badly. But someone tried to keep her out of the worst of the rain.”
Her hands paused on the laces. “Her?”
Vander nodded again.
Felicia tied her boots, stood, and reached for the basket she kept near the door. She did not know what would be needed yet, so she packed the things she knew were usually needed: clean cloth, a little jar of salve, an old towel, one of Violet’s outgrown shirts that had somehow survived childhood intact, and the emergency bottle she had kept even though Violet had chewed the rubber top half to death.
Vander watched her with that look men got when they had no idea what to do but were deeply grateful someone else did.
“She looks like him,” he said quietly.
Felicia stilled.
The words settled between them.
Then she looked at him properly.
“Like Silco?”
“Enough that even he couldn’t pretend not to see it.”
That meant something.
Silco could pretend through a house fire if pretending served him.
Felicia pulled the basket against her hip. “Where is he?”
“With her.”
“With her how?”
Vander’s mouth twitched. “Holding her.”
That was enough to make Felicia forget the rain entirely.
She stared.
Vander lifted both hands, half defensive, half delighted by the absurdity of it. “I know.”
“Silco.”
“Yes.”
“Holding a baby.”
“Yes.”
“Voluntarily?”
“Well. Zaun’s stretching the definition of voluntarily tonight.”
Felicia stepped past him into the hall. “Take me to this miracle before the gods realize they’ve made a mistake.”
The walk was short but unpleasant. Cold water dripped from every overhead pipe, and the floor had gone slick beneath the runoff. Vander stayed close enough to offer his arm, but Felicia only took it once where the walkway dipped and the metal beneath her boot shifted. She hated needing help, but she hated falling more.
By the time they reached Silco’s place, her hair was damp at the edges and her shawl clung wetly to her shoulders.
The door was half-open.
Light spilled into the lane.
Felicia stepped in first.
And stopped.
Silco stood near the table with his back half-turned to them, the lamp throwing long shadows across his face. His coat was still damp. One sleeve had been rolled back. In his arms was a bundle of cleaner cloth than Vander had described, held stiffly, yes, but not carelessly.
Never carelessly.
The baby was tucked against his chest, her small face turned toward the warmth of him, one fist knotted in the fabric near his collar as if she had claimed him and found the arrangement acceptable.
For a moment Felicia did not say anything.
Because it was Silco.
Vander lingered in the doorway behind her, wisely silent.
Silco noticed them and looked up.
His expression was composed, but Felicia saw the tension beneath it. He did not know what to do with his hands. He did not know how much motion would wake her. He did not know how to ask for help.
That, more than anything, softened her.
“Well,” Felicia said, stepping closer. “You do like making an entrance.”
Silco’s mouth tightened. “I did not make anything.”
“Not tonight, maybe.”
His eyes narrowed.
Vander made a noise behind her that might have been a cough and might have been him choking on laughter.
Felicia set the basket down on the table and leaned close enough to see the child’s face.
Oh.
There was no preparing for it.
Vander had said she looked like him, but that had not been enough. Felicia had expected a resemblance. A hint. A shared brow, perhaps. A narrow face. Dark hair.
This was different.
The baby looked like someone had taken all the soft, unfinished things infancy allowed and arranged them around Silco’s bones. Dark hair, already thick despite being damp. Pale skin made paler by cold. A small, pointed chin. The same severe little brow. The same delicate sharpness around the nose and mouth.
And the eyes.
The baby blinked awake as Felicia hovered near, unfocused at first, then clearer. Pale blueish green. Not ruined. Not yet marked by violence or chemicals or betrayal. But bright. Watchful.
Felicia felt something in her chest twist.
“She’s yours,” she said softly.
The room went very still.
Silco’s gaze flicked to her.
“I said she resembles me.”
“No,” Felicia said. “She resembles you. But that’s not what I said.”
Vander shifted slightly in the doorway.
Silco looked back down at the child. “Resemblance proves little.”
“In Zaun? Resemblance is often the only proof anyone gets.”
“That is not an argument.”
“It is when a baby is left at your door and has your entire face.”
“She does not have my entire face.”
Felicia raised an eyebrow.
Silco looked at the baby again.
The baby frowned up at him.
Felicia smiled before she could help herself. “Oh, she absolutely has your entire face.”
Vander muttered, “The glare too.”
“I do not glare.”
“You are glaring at an infant right now.”
“I am observing.”
“She’s glaring back,” Vander said.
Felicia leaned in, unable to resist. “Aren’t you, little thing?”
The baby’s eyes moved toward her voice. For a moment she simply stared at Felicia with solemn suspicion, as if weighing whether this new woman was useful.
Then her mouth trembled.
Felicia clicked her tongue gently. “Oh, I know. Men are useless and the world is cold.”
“I am standing here,” Vander said.
“That was included.”
Silco shifted the baby slightly when she fussed, awkward but careful. Felicia watched the movement with interest. He had adjusted before thinking. Not perfectly, but instinctively enough.
That was dangerous.
For him.
For all of them.
Felicia opened the basket and pulled out the towel. “Hand her over.”
Silco’s arms tightened almost imperceptibly.
Felicia saw it.
So did Vander.
Silco, unfortunately, probably saw that they saw it.
“I can manage,” he said.
“I didn’t say you couldn’t.”
“Then why—”
“Because she’s wet, cold, hungry, and wearing something that smells like canal runoff. Unless your grand plan is to intimidate her into good health, hand her over.”
Vander turned his head away.
Silco glared at him this time. Properly.
Then, after a pause long enough to be prideful, he transferred the baby into Felicia’s arms.
The child immediately objected.
Not loudly. She seemed too tired for that. But her face crumpled, and one hand reached back in Silco’s direction with an outraged little jerk.
Felicia froze.
Silco froze too.
The baby made a small, broken sound.
Felicia looked up at him.
He was staring at the child’s hand.
Not moving.
Not breathing quite right.
Oh, Felicia thought.
Oh, you poor damned man.
“She knows you,” Felicia said quietly.
Silco’s eyes hardened at once. “She does not know anything. She is an infant.”
“She knows warmth. Smell. Voice. The shape of being held. That’s enough at her age.”
His jaw worked.
Felicia adjusted the baby against her shoulder and began rubbing warmth into her back through the cloth. “She may not know you are her father. But some part of her decided you were safe enough to ask for.”
Silco looked away.
Vander’s face had gone gentle in that unbearable way of his. Felicia knew that look. It was the look that had made stray dogs follow him home, that had made angry boys at the Drop sit down instead of swing, that had made half the lanes believe, foolishly or not, that they could build something better.
Silco hated that look.
Felicia loved him for it.
The baby fussed again. Felicia shifted her and reached into the basket. “Vander, there’s a bottle in there. And the little tin.”
Vander moved immediately. “This?”
“No, that’s salve. The tin.”
“This?”
“That is also salve.”
“How many salves do you own?”
“As many as I need because I live with you people.”
Silco made the faintest sound. Not quite a laugh. Not even close. But Felicia heard it and let herself treasure the tiny impossible thing privately.
Violet stirred in her mind then, as she often did when Felicia held another child. Violet had been so small once. All fists and outrage. Born ready to swing at the world. Now she was three and a half and still trying to fight chairs when she stubbed her toe on them.
This baby was different.
Quieter.
Not gentle, exactly. Felicia did not think Silco had produced anything gentle. But contained. Watchful. Like she had already learned that loudness wasted energy.
That thought hurt.
“How long was she outside?” Felicia asked.
Silco answered, “Not long.”
“You know that?”
“The cloth was wet on the outer layers, less so beneath. She was cold but not frozen. Whoever left her chose the corner with the least runoff.”
Felicia nodded. “So someone wanted her found alive.”
“Yes.”
“By you.”
Silco did not answer.
The baby accepted the bottle after some initial offended confusion. Felicia held her properly, angled just right, and the room quieted around the tiny sounds of feeding.
Silco watched like he was studying a mechanism.
Vander watched like he was trying not to cry.
Felicia watched both of them and felt an old, familiar ache.
They were all so young, still, though none of them felt it. She and Connol had Violet, another child on the way. A bar full of angry dreamers and hungry workers. A city pressing down from above and boiling beneath their feet.
And now this.
This little girl with Silco’s face and no name, delivered to a door in the rain.
Felicia brushed a thumb over the baby’s cheek. “She needs a name.”
“I said that,” Silco replied.
“Good. So we agree she stays.”
His eyes cut to hers.
Ah.
There it was.
The part he had not said aloud yet. The decision sitting inside him like a knife he was pretending not to hold.
Felicia kept her voice even. “Unless you were planning on giving her away.”
“I have not decided.”
“Yes, you have.”
Vander looked between them but did not interrupt.
Silco’s posture sharpened. “Do not presume to know my mind.”
“I don’t have to. She reached for you and you looked like someone had put a blade between your ribs.”
His expression went blank.
Too blank.
Felicia softened her voice. “Silco.”
“Children are liabilities.”
“Yes.”
“They are used against people.”
“Yes.”
“They require resources.”
“Constantly.”
“They make men foolish.”
Felicia glanced at Vander. “Unbearably.”
“Hey.”
She ignored him. “And?”
Silco was silent.
The baby drank slowly, eyes half-lidded now, one small hand resting against Felicia’s finger. Her nails were tiny and uneven. Her hair, drying into little black wisps, stuck up at odd angles.
Felicia looked down at her and felt the decision form before anyone asked her to make it.
“You don’t leave a child in the rain,” she said.
Silco’s gaze lowered.
“No,” he said eventually.
It was not a grand declaration.
It was not tender.
But it was enough.
Felicia smiled faintly. “Good.”
The next few days were quite a treat for Felicia, not because the child was in any way easy, infants never were, but it had been wholeheartedly amusing to watch Silco struggle with something such as a baby which Silco still had not decided a name for.
Felicia had Violet with her, in one of the lower rooms in The Last Drop, she was supposed to be napping but that did not mean it was always true of her fiery child.
Felicia had been holding the baby because Silco, to her great amusement, had been asking her things while Vander did his best to pretend like he was not eavesdropping.
From the other room, there was a sudden thump.
A small voice carried from the hall, groggy and offended. “Mama?”
Felicia closed her eyes for half of a second. “Of course.”
Violet appeared a moment later in the doorway, barefoot, hair mussed wildly, one cheek creased from sleep. She blinked at the room, at Vander, at Silco, at the baby in her mother’s arms.
Her little brows pulled together.
“That’s not our baby,” Violet said.
Vander made a strangled sound.
Felicia bit the inside of her cheek. “No, sweetheart.”
Violet padded closer, suspicious. “Whose baby is it?”
Silco looked deeply uncomfortable.
Felicia looked at him.
Vander looked at him.
Violet looked at him too, because even at three years old she understood when adults were being weird.
Silco said nothing.
Felicia said, very gently, “She’s Silco’s.”
Violet turned fully toward him.
Silco stood rigidly.
Violet stared up at him, then at the baby, then back up at him.
“You had a baby?”
Vander lost the battle and turned his face into his hand.
Silco’s mouth opened.
Nothing came out.
Felicia, who loved him but was not merciful enough to save him, calmly adjusted the bottle.
Violet squinted harder. “Where was it?”
“The baby,” Silco said at last, voice thin with restraint, “was left at my door.”
Violet considered this. Then she nodded, as if this was reasonable.
“Like the cat.”
Felicia blinked. “What cat?”
Vander immediately looked guilty.
Silco’s eyes narrowed at him. “What cat?”
Violet pointed vaguely toward Vander. “The stripey one Uncle Vander feeds.”
“I do not feed it,” Vander said.
“You give it meat.”
“That’s different.”
“It’s feeding.”
Felicia sighed softly, she was going to say something when Violet came closer, standing on her toes to see. “She’s tiny.”
“She is,” Felicia said.
“Smaller than Powder?”
Felicia’s heart warmed at the name Violet had already decided her unborn sister owned. “Bigger than Powder.”
Violet stared at the baby with solemn authority. “Can she fight?”
“No,” Silco said.
Violet had the gall to look disappointed at that.
Felicia said, “She can sleep. And eat. And make everyone do what she wants.”
Violet brightened. “Oh. Like Mama.”
Vander snorted into his hand from the bar, Felicia pointed after him. “That man is the reason you have no manners.”
Violet ignored this, still studying the baby. “What’s her name?”
Silco was quiet for a moment before he stepped closer to the baby.
Felicia did not hand her over yet. She only waited.
His gaze held on the child’s face with an intensity that made the room feel narrower.
“Nera,” he said finally.
Violet repeated it with a child’s blunt certainty. “Nera.”
The baby blinked.
Felicia smiled.
“Nera,” she echoed. “That suits her.”
Silco’s expression did not change much, but something in his shoulders eased, so faintly Felicia might have missed it if she had not spent years watching stubborn people pretend they had no hearts.
Violet reached one cautious finger toward the baby’s foot.
Felicia guided her hand gently. “Careful.”
“I am careful.”
“You are many things, Violet. Careful is sometimes one of them.”
Violet touched the baby’s foot.
Nera kicked weakly.
Violet gasped, delighted and personally challenged. “She kicked me.”
“She’s a menace already,” Vander called from the bar, still laughing.
Silco looked down at his daughter.
His daughter.
Felicia could see the word had not fully entered him yet. It hovered at the edge of his understanding, too large and too dangerous to accept all at once. It reminded her of Connol when they first had Violet.
But Nera was real, and when Felicia finally handed her back, Silco took her without hesitation.
That was when Felicia knew.
Not because of the resemblance.
Not because of the name.
Because the second Nera settled against him, he adjusted the blanket around her with one careful hand, shielding her from a draft no one else had noticed.
Felicia pressed her palm to her stomach and glanced down at Violet, who was still watching Nera like she had discovered a new species of tiny, useless person.