“Owen,” Tristan and I both said as my protector appeared in the open doorway to the bedroom.
“At your service,” he said. “Is everything okay?”
“Do they know anything?” Tristan asked.
Owen shook his head. “Sophia told them Alexis gets all whacked out about the next daughter, and she probably needed air.” He peered at me and then Tristan. “Well, not those exact words. I think she said, ‘especially sensitive.’ So . . . what happened?”
Tristan studied my face and must have seen I wanted to tell him first. Alone. “Guard the door,” he told Owen. “Just in case.”
Owen narrowed his eyes for a brief moment, but then he shrugged and disappeared to stand outside the door to our suite. Tristan turned back to me.
“So?” he asked.
I stared at him, suddenly unable to say it. Unable to put the words in the right order. Unable to believe them. Owen’s appearance and the threat of the traitor had been enough to distract me from the urgency of the actual words. From the reality of hearing them.
I swallowed, hard, my throat dry and tight. “We, uh . . . we might already have a daughter.”
He lifted an eyebrow. “Explain.”
I recalled the chaos of the meeting, everyone yelling aloud and in their heads and how I heard all of it. The energy and urgency returned in full force. I sprang to my feet and paced while rehashing for him everything I’d heard . . . including how it had sounded as though we already had a daughter and someone kept her hidden from us. By the time I finished, he was shaking his head.
“That’s absurd, Alexis. No one on the council would have done that.”
I stopped pacing and put my hands on my hips.
“I know what I heard. Would you ever think anyone on the council would be a traitor in the first place? Of course not! But that’s exactly why I was listening.”
“But hiding a daughter . . . what would be the point?”
“You tell me. You’re the almighty seer of the best solution to everything.”
He leaned his elbows on his knees and pressed his hands together, resting his chin on the steeple his fingers formed. He sat silently for a moment, his eyes far off as he considered the options.
“I guess it would make sense,” he finally said, “to keep her safe. If the Amadis weren’t aware of her, then the Daemoni wouldn’t be either. But it’s impossible. Rina and Sophia would know.”
He was right. Although I’d had a difficult time giving birth to Dorian, actually passed out for part of it, Mom and Rina had been present the whole time. I thought they had been, anyway.
“What if they stepped out of the room while I was out of it? What if someone else flashed in there?”
Tristan shook his head again. “They would have been too protective. They wouldn’t have left you. And that’s not entirely what I meant. Rina would have heard someone’s thoughts about it. Sophia would have felt the truth there was already a daughter.”
I paced again as I considered this and stopped in front of Tristan. “But if they can block Rina’s telepathy, they might be able to block Mom’s power, too.”
We stared at each other as we continued to consider this possibility. What if I do have a daughter? She’d been out there for seven years without me, someone else raising her. Did she know about us—her parents, her twin brother? Who took care of her? How did they treat her? Do they love her? I sniffed against the tears threatening to fall.
Tristan took my hands and pulled me into his arms. I fell into his lap. “Don’t cry, Lexi. If it’s even true, it’s good news. But we don’t know if it’s true. His thought wasn’t that specific, right?”
“Hers,” I corrected.
“Hers what?”
“Her thought. It was a female voice.”
“Well, that narrows it down. The only female mages on the council are Minh, Galina, and Charlotte.”
“It definitely wasn’t Charlotte.”
“I wouldn’t expect so. Of course, I wouldn’t expect any of this. You’re sure that’s what you heard?” His hazel eyes pierced into mine as if he expected I’d suddenly give a different answer.
“Yes. ‘Of course Alexis won’t have a daughter. We already have the girl. We just need to keep her hidden . . .’ And then the thought trailed off.”
“Trailed off or you lost it?”
I considered his question and realized I wasn’t exactly sure. I’d been quite upset by then, so I may not have heard the rest.
“I don’t know.”
“So maybe there was more . . . something that explains it better.”
“And what could that be? It sounds pretty clear to me.”
Tristan blew out a heavy breath of frustration. He had no answer.
“What if she’s out there, Tristan? What if we have a daughter after all this time?”
He squeezed me tighter against him. “Then we find her.”
I nodded. Yes, we would certainly find her.
Though Mom, Rina, and Solomon were among the most graceful people on the planet, my powerful hearing picked up the whispers of their footsteps coming down the hall. The meeting must have adjourned. There was a soft knock on the front door of our suite, then they all, along with Owen, entered. I quickly moved out of Tristan’s lap to sit in the middle of the bed against the pillows. Mom and Rina sat next to me, on the other side from Tristan, and Solomon and Owen stood at the end.
Rina took my hand. “What did you hear, my darling?”
I inhaled deeply and blew it out slowly. Then I told them.
“That’s ridiculous,” Mom said.
“Impossible,” Rina added. “We would know.”
Tristan and I explained all the reasoning we’d already considered.
“We were there for the entire birth,” Rina said. “No one else was close.”
“You’re absolutely sure?” I asked. “Not even a brief moment, when someone could have flashed in and out?”
“We would figure out you’d had another baby, though,” Mom said. “And it would have to be longer than a moment. Long enough for you to give birth and them to cut the cord and then flash—with someone in their arms, which only Tristan can do—without Rina or me knowing.”
“I also had the house shielded,” Owen added. “There aren’t too many mages powerful enough to break my shields. It’d have to be a sorcerer.”
Solomon rocked back on his heels. “We have no sorcerers, so that would mean Daemoni.”
Everyone fell silent. I guess because I was allowed to be ignorant, I asked the question they all had to be thinking.
“Could there be Daemoni on the council?”
Everyone stared at me as if I were crazy. Okay, maybe we hadn’t been thinking along the same lines.
“Of course not,” Rina finally said. “We all have senses for Daemoni.”
“It would mean they infiltrated us over seven years ago, which is impossible,” Solomon said. He crossed his arms over his broad chest. “They would have exposed themselves by now. They don’t have that kind of self-control.”
“So if it’s not Daemoni, it must be Amadis,” I said. “And it’s not just the video. There’s a girl . . . possibly my daughter.”