But in that moment she wielded it like a blade, and it frightened me, because I did not yet know that her blade was made of paper.

I held my daughter so tightly she stirred against me, and I understood, with a mother’s absolute clarity, what was truly happening in that room.

This woman had not come to meet her granddaughter.

She had come to claim her.

She had spent five years hunting for the child who would give her leverage over the son who had escaped her, and she believed she had finally found it, sleeping in my arms.

Chapter 12 — He Stepped Between Them