[COMPLETED] The Child Who Knew Her Face Before They Ever Met

The first thing Liana Graves heard inside the Varric mansion was a baby screaming hard enough to erase every other sound.

The second thing she noticed was that nobody seemed able to help him.

She had been carrying folded linens across the marble foyer when nine-month-old Nico Varric arched in his father's arms, red-faced and frantic, his tiny fists twisted in Matteo Varric's white shirt. Two guards stood nearby with the helpless posture of men trained for gunfire, not grief. Matteo himself looked less like the ruthless figure whispered about in kitchens and delivery halls than a father losing an argument with fear.

Twenty-two days earlier, Liana had buried her own son.

That fact lived in her body now. It sat behind her ribs when she woke, filled the pauses between words, and made the sound of Nico's crying almost physically unbearable.

She put the linens down.

One of the guards moved. "Stop."

Liana kept going.

Matteo looked up. His dark hair was disordered, his sleeves unevenly rolled. "Who are you?"

"Liana. New housekeeping staff."

"You're not assigned to the nursery."

"I know."

Nico cried harder.

Liana lifted her arms before she had decided to do it. "Please let me hold him."

Matteo's expression changed by a degree. In another man, she might have called it anger. In him, it looked like a door closing.

"No."

"He's exhausted."

"You've known my son for less than an hour."

"That's true."

"Then why would I hand him to you?"

Because she knew the sound a baby made when exhaustion had outlasted comfort. Because her son Gabriel had made that same broken little catch in his throat during the last week of his life. Because motherhood did not leave when the crib became empty.

She could not say any of that in front of armed strangers.

"Because he needs someone calm," she said.

Nico stopped crying.

Not slowly. Not because Matteo rocked him differently.

He simply stopped.

The silence was so abrupt that one of the guards glanced toward the chandelier as if something electrical had failed.

Nico stared at Liana.

His cheeks were wet. His breathing still hitched. Yet his eyes fixed on her with startling concentration, and then both arms came out toward her.

Liana's throat closed.

"Hi," she whispered.

Nico leaned so far that Matteo had to shift his grip.

Matteo looked from his son to Liana. "What did you do?"

"Nothing."

"That's not possible."

"Maybe he's tired of being afraid."

The words came from somewhere deeper than sense. Matteo heard the weight in them.

"Afraid of what?"

Liana glanced at the guards. "I don't know."

He studied her for two long seconds, then eased Nico forward.

Liana took him.

The baby collapsed against her chest as if he had been trying to get there for hours. His forehead tucked beneath her chin. His small hand closed around the collar of her red uniform. The last of the tension drained out of him.

Liana almost lost her balance, though Nico weighed very little.

Gabriel had been heavier than this at nine months.

The thought struck without warning. She shut it down before it could open into memory.

Matteo watched her hand move over Nico's back in slow circles.

"Come upstairs," he said.

She looked at him. "With the baby?"

"With my son."

The correction was quiet but deliberate.

The nursery occupied the end of a second-floor corridor behind two security doors. It was enormous, expensive, and strangely impersonal. Hand-painted animals marched across pale walls. Stuffed toys sat in perfect rows. A carved crib stood beneath a soft brass lamp. Four security cameras watched the room from different angles.

Liana noticed them immediately.

"You record him all the time?"

"I have enemies."

"You think someone would hurt a baby to get to you?"

Matteo's face did not change. "Yes."

That answer frightened her more than if he had tried to reassure her.

Nico remained tucked against Liana, breathing evenly now.

"Has he always cried this much?"

"No."

"When did it start?"

"Three weeks ago."

Her hand stopped on Nico's back.

Three weeks.

Matteo noticed. "What?"

"Nothing."

"You reacted."

Liana looked at the crib. Gabriel's funeral had been twenty-two days ago. Three weeks was twenty-one.

"When did Nico's mother die?" she asked.

Matteo's expression closed completely. "Seven months ago."

"Then what happened three weeks ago?"

He waited long enough that she thought he would order her out.

Instead he said, "A woman entered the estate with forged staff identification. She reached this room before security realized she didn't belong here."

Liana looked at Nico.

"Did she touch him?"

Matteo nodded once. "She leaned over the crib. She touched his forehead. Then she put something beneath the mattress and ran when a security light came on."

"What did she leave?"

"Nothing. We checked."

Liana shifted Nico to her other shoulder. "Check again."

His eyes sharpened. "My security team searched the entire crib."

"Then you lose nothing by checking again."

The old version of Liana would have apologized after saying it. The woman who had stood at a tiny grave had lost some instinct for apologizing to powerful men.

Matteo stared at her, then crossed to the crib.

He stripped away the fitted sheet, lifted the mattress, and ran his hand along the wooden platform.

Nothing.

He looked at her.

Liana stepped closer, still holding Nico. "You said she put her hand under the mattress, not under the crib."

"Yes."

"Then check the mattress itself."

The mattress had a cloth underside secured by a narrow zipper. Matteo opened it. His hand disappeared inside the lining.

His shoulders went still.

When he withdrew his hand, he was holding a small silver locket no larger than a coin.

The hinge was scratched. A fine chain had been wound around it twice.

Liana stopped breathing.

She knew that locket.

Not the exact scratches. Not the chain.

The shape.

An eight-pointed star had been stamped into the silver face, slightly off-center. Liana owned another just like it. Her mother had kept it in a sewing tin for years and given it to Liana on her eighteenth birthday with a strange instruction: If you ever meet someone wearing the other one, listen before you run.

At the time, Liana had thought it was one of her mother's dramatic little mysteries.

She had forgotten it until now.

Matteo saw her expression. "You recognize this."

Liana's pulse thudded in her ears.

She reached beneath the collar of her uniform and pulled out the chain she wore under her clothes.

Her own star-shaped locket slid into view.

Matteo did not speak.

The two pieces were nearly identical.

Nearly.

His had a shallow groove along one edge. Liana's had the opposite groove.

Her fingers shook as she placed them side by side in his palm.

They fit together.

Nico made a soft sound against her shoulder and reached toward the joined silver stars.

Matteo's voice dropped. "Who gave you yours?"

"My mother."

"Name?"

"Mara Graves. She died six years ago."

He looked at the joined lockets. "Did she ever work for my family?"

"No."

She wanted the answer to be certain. It came out too fast.

Matteo heard that too.

He crossed to a cabinet and removed a secure tablet. Liana watched him bring up the security recording from three weeks earlier. He did not hand her the device. He held it himself, angled between them.

A hooded woman entered the nursery.

Her face was mostly hidden.

She leaned over Nico and touched his forehead with extraordinary gentleness. Nico, much smaller in the recording, stopped fussing almost immediately.

Then the woman turned toward the camera.

Only for a second.

The hood slipped back enough to reveal the lower half of her face.

Liana's knees weakened.

The mouth was hers.

The chin was hers.

The tiny crescent scar beneath the left side of the lower lip was not.

Matteo looked at Liana, then back at the image.

"Do you have a sister?"

"No."

But the answer no longer felt true.

Nico pressed his palm against Liana's cheek.

She understood then why he had stopped crying the moment he saw her.

He had seen her face before.

Just not on her.

Matteo lowered the tablet. "Someone who looks exactly like you broke into my house the night after you buried your son."

Liana tightened her hold on Nico.

"I didn't tell you when the funeral was."

For the first time since she had met him, Matteo Varric looked caught off guard.

Then he said, very quietly, "No. You didn't."

Nico shifted between them and began to fuss again. Liana rocked him automatically, but Matteo was no longer watching the baby. He was looking at the two joined lockets in his palm as if they had changed the architecture of his own house.

"Until we know who she is, no one outside this room hears about the match," he said.

Liana's head came up. "That sounds like an order."

"It was meant as protection."

"Those are not always different."

Matteo absorbed the correction. "Then make it a request."

She considered him, then nodded once. "For tonight."

He gave her back both lockets.

That mattered more than she expected. He could have kept the second one as evidence. Instead he placed the choice in her hand.