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It wasn’t all gone.
This baby was hers, and whether it made sense that she knew it or not, she did.
She hadn’t held her baby. The baby was a month old and she’d never held her.
Suddenly her chest felt like it was caving in on itself. It was all too overwhelming. She’d been awake for hours after the baby had been separated from her for so long and no one had brought her to Riot.
“Why didn’t you bring her to me immediately?” she asked, angry that there had been hours where she could have been holding her child and hadn’t been.
“Concern,” he said, his voice hard. “It is difficult enough for you to believe all that passed between us. To lose this from your memory...”
“She is mine,” she said.
“Yes.”
“I know,” she whispered. She did. She knew it with her whole heart. Her whole soul.
Suddenly everything felt terrifying and precarious. He knew so much more about her than she did, and the only good thing was that he must love her. No one else in her life ever had. But if he loved her, and he had taken care of her so it seemed that he must, he wouldn’t do her any harm.
He wouldn’t take Soriya from her.
And she suddenly felt desperately, horribly afraid. Not of this unprecedented situation that she found herself in, but that she might actually be asleep now. That this was a dream.
Because how had the girl that she had been when last she remembered, woken up to be engaged. Woken up to be the mother of this perfect, beautiful child. It didn’t make any sense. She had never been lovely or compelling or desired.
Her own mother hadn’t wanted anything to do with her at all, much less her father.
And somehow, she had managed to get herself into the situation where... Where she was different. Where everything was different. It was like waking up in an entirely new life.
It wasn’t like that, itwasthat. And she couldn’t... She would never be able to...
And she realized she didn’t even know his name.
“I’m sorry, we have not been properly introduced.”
He looked at her, as if she had said something extremely surprising. And she supposed that she had. But she didn’t know what was surprising right now. She felt at sea, and utterly ignorant of everything. And he knew everything. He knew about the baby. Everything about her. Riot didn’t. She hadn’t even known she was pregnant.
“Kravann,” he said. “Valenti. If I had friends, they would call me Krav.”
“Oh.”
“Yes. It means nothing to you, I take it?”
“No. It just doesn’t... None of this... I don’t remember anything. I don’t remember any of this. I don’t remember you. But then... I’m not entirely certain that I remember myself. Because I just... I am not interesting enough to have met you and gone back to your place and...” She realized that she was still speaking in front of the nanny.
And then he gestured to the woman. “Leave us.”
Riot took the baby in her arms, holding her close. She was so warm and weighty. She wanted to cling to her forever. She had never felt anything like this, the strange sense of peace that stole over her even in the midst of all this turmoil. And if there was one thing she knew right now it was that this child was hers. Regardless of whether or not she remembered it. This child was hers.
“We will find our way,” he said.
And she wondered if he had been worried about her. If he had been keeping a bedside vigil. It was difficult to imagine this man worried. He was... She had never known a man like him, that was certain. Her experience with men was limited, it was true. But even so, she felt that he was the sort of man that wasn’t common in the least.
He had an air of authority about him that was entirely different from any other person she’d known.
And all of this...
“I just have so many questions,” she said. “I feel like I need to... Piece together the whole last ten months immediately.”
