Parker couldn't stop looking at her.
Even as Tessa teased Nyxvare—voice bright with mischief that could light up dead stars—even as Maya leaned in and playfully pinched her daughter's cheeks with fingers that trembled just slightly, even as laughter curled like sunlight through the bedroom air, threading between them like golden silk—he just stood there, watching.
Breathing like he'd forgotten how.
Relief burned quietly through his chest, slow and heavy like honey poured over flame. The kind of relief that hurt because it replaced fear so deep he'd forgotten he was carrying it.
His daughter was here.
Not some fragment of a forgotten god wearing her face like a mask.
Not an ancient being with borrowed memories and counterfeit love.
Not a cosmic puppet moved by hands a billion years old, dancing to music he couldn't hear.
