THE UNBROKEN

By the time the estate came into view, the sun was hanging low in the sky. Thick and swollen like a dying star. The road had turned to gravel hours ago, kicking dust into their throats, clinging to their sweat-slicked clothes. Even the birds had gone quiet.

They didn't say much.

Just walked.

One step, then another.

Elena's hand was blistered from gripping her blade too tightly.

Niegal's sigil burned like a second heart beneath his ribs.

They didn't come to talk.

They came to get their daughter back.

And if the gates hadn't opened when they arrived, they would've burned them down.

The manor loomed tall on the hillside, stone and shadow, glass towers veined in ivy. The kind of ancestral home that made the blood in your teeth taste like silver.

Elena sized it up with a bitter glint in her eye.

"All this, and they had to steal a child to keep it."

Niegal didn't speak. He looked carved from volcanic rock.

When the iron gates finally creaked open, it wasn't soldiers who greeted them.

It was her.

Siobhan.

Beautiful in the cold, aristocratic way of women who had never known hunger. Red silk gown. Gold-trimmed shawl. Hair the color of ash, lips painted to match blood. She looked like a fucking painting. A lie.

"Welcome," she said, smiling faintly. "At last."

Elena's hand twitched toward her weapon. She didn't move. Not yet. Not until she saw her baby.

Siobhan tilted her head slightly, eyes flicking to Elena with faint amusement.

"You must be… her," she said, voice light and dismissive, like she was commenting on the weather. "The infamous 'La Doña Guabancex.' How… quaint. I'd imagined something more refined."

Elena didn't blink. "Say that again."

Niegal stepped forward then, his voice cold steel. "Where is Esperanza?"

Siobhan's smile widened. "Safe, of course. We'd never harm our blood."

"Our what?" Niegal snapped.

She sighed, like she was already exhausted with their presence. "My father, you may remember, was exiled. Humiliated. Stripped of title after the fall of House Sotomatteo. He fled there, to that crumbling wasteland of a country. Built something new. Married down, yes, but survived. I was too ill to make the journey then."

Her hand drifted to her chest, dramatic. "But I remember the stories. The lions. The prophecy. The child born of storm and flame. When I heard the Holy See had fallen… well. The stars aligned, didn't they?"

She turned to Niegal, stepping closer than she should've. "You're the last Matteo. And you carry the mark. This house, this land? It's yours by right. And now, so is she."

She nodded toward the house, as if that explained everything.

Niegal's jaw clenched. "You kidnapped my daughter."

"We saved her," she countered, smooth as cream. "From her future. From being raised like a wildling."

Her eyes darted back to Elena, full of quiet venom. "Or worse."

The silence that followed felt like the moment before a blade fell.

Niegal trembled. Not from fear, but from rage. His chest burned. His hands twitched.

Elena could feel his magic coiling. The air warped around him, heat and wind and memory building into something terrifying.

She placed a hand on his arm, grounding him.

Not yet, her eyes said.

Siobhan took a slow step back. "Come inside. Rest. Eat. You'll see she's unharmed."

The implication hung in the air:

For now.

Elena looked toward the manor. She could feel her daughter. Hear her, even; soft, heartbeat faint but steady in her chest.

She didn't want food.

She wanted her baby.

But they were too close now to charge in blind.

So she nodded, once.

But not out of submission.

Out of calculation.

Niegal didn't speak again.

He just walked forward, shoulder brushing Siobhan's as he passed, forcing her to step aside.

Elena followed, blade still at her hip, fingers grazing the hilt.

Let them play their little games of inheritance and nobility. Let them polish silver and pour wine and pretend this wasn't built on a war crime.

She would get her daughter back.

Even if she had to tear every brick from this cursed house to do it.