Two older men were sitting on either side of a wooden picnic table playing chess. I stood still for a long time, just watching them make their moves and chat about nothing important. Then my gaze was drawn farther afield, to a bench in the distance where a man sat alone. His hair was blond, and the sun glinted off it, making it seem as though it was sparkling.
Hope caught in my lungs.
My feet were moving of their own accord now, and the tears from before started up again, but for a whole new reason this time. I stopped several feet away as the man lifted his arms, and in his hands was a baby girl with blonde hair, a shade lighter than his. She couldn’t be more than a couple of weeks old.
She let out a little gurgling sound when he lifted her, and he laughed as he lowered her back down onto his lap. He cradled her in his arms, rocking her back and forth, and I stood there transfixed, unable to move. I took a step, and he froze, his head turning slightly to the side.
His voice was full of affection when he called, “I was wondering when you were going to wake up.”
My legs wouldn’t hold me up anymore, and I fell to my knees. I was wrong. It wasn’t all a dream. It was real. There was once a time when I would have wished for vampires and magic to be a dream, but not now. Now my heart belonged to the world I discovered, and I wouldn’t survive if it was taken away from me. More importantly, my heart belonged to the man sitting on the bench four feet away and the baby he held in his arms.
Ethan stood and walked to me. I stared at my hands, unable to look at him. He tipped my chin up so that my teary eyes met his.
“I believe you two have yet to meet,” he said, holding my baby girl out to me.
From the very moment I laid eyes on her, I knew she was mine. I felt it like butterflies under my skin. I took her in and was met with big, bottomless blue eyes, and perhaps it was the sheer emotion of the moment, but I laughed and cried at the same time.
“She’s so beautiful,” I whispered, afraid to touch her in case she broke.
“Just like her mother,” Ethan said, shifting her into one arm so that he could help me off the ground and lead me over to sit on the bench. He placed her in my arms, and a wave of emotion washed over me. She felt so small and delicate.
How could someone so breakable be destined to become a ruler?
“She doesn’t have my blood,” I realised suddenly. I didn’t get the same feeling from her that I got from Rebecca.
“No,” Ethan said. “I suppose we can count ourselves lucky that she doesn’t.”
Cool relief washed over me.
A long time passed as we sat in silence. I was fascinated by her little hands and her tiny feet, by her ridiculously golden eyelashes and the porcelain shade of her skin. You could certainly tell she was a dhampir because no human baby had ever had such vibrant, perfect features. Or maybe I just felt that way because she was mine.
“I don’t understand why we’re here,” I said, at long last breaking my reverie.
Ethan leaned forward and ran a finger down our baby’s cheek, his arm tight around my shoulders. I didn’t ever want to leave this moment.
“The doctor I had you seeing,” he started to explain in a gentle voice, “he does a lot of work for supernaturals, but in order to go unnoticed by the human population, he uses this hospital as a front. Half of the building is a normal, functioning psychiatric hospital and the other half is a supernatural hospital. I had you kept in the human half to keep the vampires from smelling your blood. You had a C-section, and I fed my blood to you intravenously to help you heal.”
“Ah, so that’s why I don’t have any scars. You know, I thought I’d had a mental break when I woke up here. How long have I been out for?”
“A month. The longest month of my life. For a while, we didn’t know if you would make it,” he answered, and there was a vulnerability in his voice.
I turned my head so that I could kiss his cheek. “I’m sorry you had to go through all that.”
He pulled me tighter into his side. “Don’t be sorry. I’d go through it a thousand times more if it meant I could have the both of you.” He paused. “So, what do you think we should call her?”
I gave him a surprised look. “She’s been alive a whole month and you haven’t even given her a name?”