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Siân's earliest memory was of Mama. Her light blonde hair was pulled back in a tight braid, proudly showing off her rounded ears that were so different from the gentle points of Siân's own, and there was a smile on her face as if she knew something that no one else did.
"You were born just as the sun set on the shortest day of the year," Mama whispered to her as she held her close. "You were my light in the darkness. Lady Luck herself gave you to me."
Looking back, Siân thought there might something in the name "Lady Luck" that she didn't pick up on as a child. She had the vaguest of impressions that there may have been a hint of reverence to it that she'd completely missed in her innocence. By the time that thought crossed her mind, though, she was two decades too late to ask any questions of the woman who'd borne her.
It was what it was. She never asked. She hadn't even realized there was something to ask, not back then. So what did it matter in the end? Nothing, really. Life was life, and death was death. That's all there was to it. There was no point in wondering "what if?" when there wasn't any chance of ever getting an answer to the question.
Maybe it was something. Maybe it was nothing. In the end, it didn't matter one way or another.
That said? She was the daughter of Ilana Breyer and always would be, even if sometimes it felt like everyone but her had forgotten that fact. She shared the blood and appearance of the Valinta family, but Breyer was the name that had been given to her the day she was born and would stay with her until the day she died.
Siân Valinta might be what half the city called her, a good half of them mockingly, but Siân Breyer was who she was and who she always would be.
*
If Siân focused and truly thought back, she could remember the first apartment she and her mother had lived in. The memories were vague, those of a small child, but they lingered in the back of her mind. It had been tiny and cramped, even to a child's eyes, but it was always clean and brightly lit. It wasn't anything fancy, not by a long shot, but it had been her home for the first four years of her life.
She looked back on those days like a dream, the sound of Mama humming quietly to herself as she sat in her chair sewing on whatever project she was being paid for that day. There were the occasional trips to the market or the temple, her mother quietly whispering stories about the various saints to her in order to keep her quiet.
Siân remembered her mother pointing at a stained glass window once and smiling, like she knew a secret no one else did. "Mathias Valinta, the first stonelayer of Avanos itself," she'd whispered to Siân as if she was telling her something no one else knew. "I've always thought the paintings make him look quite a bit like your father. Or maybe it's that your father looks like him."
Even back then Siân had known who her father was, although she rarely saw him herself. Everyone knew who her father was. She may have inherited Ilana Breyer's bright green eyes, but everything else about her made it clear she was born on the wrong side of the sheets. Her curly red hair. Her pointed ears. Her freckles. All of that came from the Valinta family, not the Breyers. Or, at least, not the one Breyer that Siân knew since Mama never talked about her family.
She might not have been a Valinta in name, but everyone who saw her immediately knew she was one in blood. Bastard or not, that meant something in Avanos. It meant something throughout the entire empire.
Honestly, Siân wasn't entirely certain why she and Mama had lived on their own back then, especially in such a small apartment instead of something more opulent. Maybe Mama hadn't wanted to move in with Father and accept what she would have considered to be charity or, worse, payment for services? Perhaps it was because Siân and her siblings would have still been too young to properly understand, and none of the adults wanted to confuse them?
Or maybe Father had been quietly dealing with those who would use it against him. Siân knew that they had to have been those who weren't happy with how blatant he was about his mistress and their bastard together, more than just the ones who kept their complaints to cutting comments and nothing more that she dealt with regularly throughout her life. There had to have been others once upon a time who would have done more than simply whisper and quietly judge.
Whatever the case, it wasn't as if Mama and Father weren't still sleeping together regularly. Siân hadn't quite understood what was happening back then, but she couldn't even count the number of times that one of the girls in the neighboring apartments had been given some coins to watch her for the evening while Mama went out. Mama would come home late every time, a smile on her face and a light in her eyes.
Still, whatever the reason, for four years she and Mama lived in their own small world. And then everything changed when Siân was four, almost five, because that was when Father moved the two of them into his home. Their home, truly, even if it took a while for it to feel that way.
It was a beginning, even though she didn't realize it at the time.
*
Once she was older and had a better idea of how things worked, Siân knew that there had to have been some awkward moments in those early days that she hadn't been aware of as a child. While Mama and Mother had grown close over the years, she suspected it had to have been difficult in the beginning for them to work out just how the new status quo would go. For years it had been Mama and her in their home and Father, Mother, Ronan, and the twins in theirs, and then suddenly the seven of them had been thrown together into one household.
Oh, it wasn't as if Father didn't have plenty of room to spare in his manor. She and Mama had their own suite of rooms ten times the size of their old apartment, after all, some distance away from the rest of the family. Well, eventually they became the rest of the family. Back then, Siân suspected they were more "the other family" or perhaps more accurately "Siân's other family," at least in Mama's eyes.
Despite that, though, it had to have been strange to everyone.
Even years later, Siân wasn't entirely certain how well Mama and Mother had known each other back in the beginning. She knew that they knew of each other, at least, because Mama had always made it very clear to her from a very young age that Mother was well aware of her relationship with Father. She might have been a bastard in name, but Mama, Father, and Mother all had a say in her being born in the first place.
Still, she was fairly certain the two of them hadn't been particular close even if they had known each other existed, so it had to have been odd for Mama to suddenly be working as an assistant for Mother every day. Especially considering how different it must have been from working as a seamstress as she'd done since she was only a girl herself, going from that to personally assisting one of the more powerful women in the empire.
The important thing was that it all worked out in the end. Mama and Mother spent their days with each other, and Siân suspected that they occasionally shared their nights as the years passed by. She didn't know for certain, of course. She'd never asked, and she never planned on doing so even if Mother would probably answer if she did, if only to laugh at the faces Siân would undoubtably make at hearing about her parents' sex lives. By the time she was in her late teenage years, though, she knew enough to recognize the signs, even if the adults in her life probably would have preferred otherwise at times.
Whatever the case, they spent their days together, and she spent her days with her siblings studying under some of the best tutors the capital city had to offer. She was a Valinta in all the ways that mattered, which meant she needed the best education possible, even if only a fraction of it actually stuck in her head once it was all said and done.
Ronan was the heir, so he had to know everything that he could possibly learn. Gwyn was the spare, so a similar level of learning was expected from her just in case. Devan was Devan and wanted to know all of the mysteries of the universe, preferably all at once. And then there was Siân who'd never truly understood learning about things unless they were relevant.
Oh, parts of it she loved. She'd immediately taken to debate and oration, even writing to some extent. Anything that involved her getting to put her words to use was something that she exceled at and therefore enjoyed. The little details and dates all seemed to go in one ear and out the other, though, even if she typically remembered most of the important parts. She remembered some of drudgery of history lessons, if it was interesting enough to catch her attention for some reason, but if it was boring in her mind then it was as if she'd never heard it.
And for the next fifteen years, that was the life she knew.
*
Mama died during the night, less than an hour before the sun rose.
They'd all known it was coming, even if most of them had been hoping against hope it wasn't. Siân had stayed up all night beside her bed, Mama's hand clasped in her own even as the tremors that had wracked her body for weeks finally started to fade along with the light in her eyes.
Father had left before the end, a look on his face that she'd never seen before and hoped to never see again. Part of Siân hated him for it. Part of her wished that she could have done so as well. Still, she understood. As much as he'd grown to love Mother over the years, their marriage had been arranged for them by their families, and they'd had to learn how to love each other. He'd chosen Mama when he had barely been more than a boy himself.
Siân had heard all the stories. When they'd met, they had been of a similar age. Mama had been seventeen-years-old at the time, still a few months' shy of adulthood, and Father hadn't even been a full four years older than her, barely of age himself once you considered that half-elves aged slower than humans.
They'd been together for almost twenty-five years, and he had barely aged in that time. But Mama, oh, she had. She wasn't old by any means, not at forty-two, but there were strands of silver mixed in with her white-blonde hair if you knew where to look and laugh lines on her face that hadn't been there once upon a time.
Still, Siân knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he would have gladly accepted every wrinkle and silver hair if it meant he could have more time. She certainly would have given up almost anything for just another day with Mama in her life.
Everyone said it was an illness, but Siân was doubtful at best. She wasn't a fool, no matter what some people seemed to think of her. It wasn't the nobles who were dying from the so-called disease, even though it was spreading through their part of the city. It was their lovers of non-noble blood, and some of their bastard children, and others in their lives who people whispered their suspicions about when they thought no one was listening. Not the nobles themselves.
Siân couldn't help but wonder why it hadn't come after her too, whatever it was that was killing people. Perhaps it was because she looked so much like a Valinta that people forgot she wasn't, not really. Maybe it was because someone thought she might be more useful alive than dead.
Or maybe she was simply too young. Most of the other illegitimate children who'd died during the outbreak of whatever mysterious sickness it was had been adults, old enough to start being a potential risk to their legitimate half-siblings. She was still only nineteen, close to adulthood for someone of mixed human and elven blood but still technically a child in the eyes of everyone who looked at her. Not to mention she was the youngest of them, with no chance of her ever supplanting her older siblings even if she was legitimate.
Then again, maybe it was just a sickness. Maybe it was simply Lady Luck turning her back on those she felt weren't deserving of life. Death came for everyone eventually, after all, no matter who you were or where you came from.
Siân didn't know. She suspected she never would.
All she knew was that it hurt more than anything she'd ever felt before when Mama's bright green eyes, so very much like her own, closed for the last time. Something inside her shattered in that moment, and Siân suspected nothing would ever truly piece it back together.
She closed her eyes and for a long, quiet moment she simply breathed. The room was silent except for the sound of her ragged breaths.
Then Siân opened her eyes, looking down at the body that used to be Mama one more time, before pushing herself to her feet. The others would want to know. They needed to know.
And if she wanted to cry and scream and rage at the unfairness of whoever or whatever had just taken her Mama from her, well, she knew better. She was a Breyer, maybe the last one for all she knew, but part of her was almost a Valinta even if she didn't have the name. There were rules to follow and masks to wear. Nobles had their breakdowns when no one else was watching and, while Siân wasn't exactly a noble, she was close enough to being one that she still had to play the part.
There would be time to grieve eventually, but not there. Not then. For the time being, she needed to push everything down deep inside her and pretend that she wasn't breaking into pieces.
She was Siân Breyer, the bastard Valinta, whatever that meant for her.