Chapter 25: The Third Strand
The rain had softened overnight into a quiet mist, curling along the windows of Evelyn's private study in slow, wavering trails. Outside, the gardens blurred in silver-green as the world held its breath. Inside, Evelyn stood still as a statue, her pale hands resting on the sill, her gaze lost in the far trees.
Eva hadn't gone out today.
She'd been quiet lately. Quieter than usual. Closer. Watching more than speaking. Like the rain, Eva had a way of creeping into places unnoticed—until the silence around her ached.
And Evelyn… Evelyn had always known this day would come.
The day the child would begin to change.
It wasn't just the mood. It was in the eyes.
The first time Evelyn saw her daughter, she hadn't cried. Not like a normal baby. She'd opened her eyes.
That had been the first sign.
Deep wine-red… no—violet. Or something between. Glowing, faintly, like the dim heat of coals that hadn't yet died. The pupils had been thin, vertical. Not human. Not even vampiric. Something older.
And then they shimmered, shifting like water under moonlight.
Seafoam green. Then deep ocean blue—warm, magnetic. When Eva blinked, they softened into something luminous. People who held her in those first few weeks spoke less, lingered longer, as though caught in a gaze that peeled them gently apart.
Intimate. Otherworldly.
Vivienne called them "stormglass eyes." Evelyn thought they looked like the sea—impossibly deep, with something ancient at the bottom. The change had startled the nurses. Evelyn dismissed it. Told them not to report it. She needed time to understand it herself.
And just when she thought she had…
The ocean faded.
Piercing grey. Sharp. Calculating. Like lightning before it strikes. Like something that watches from above and never truly blinks. Evelyn could barely hold her gaze without feeling like she was being measured—each breath, each thought, each weakness catalogued.
The Council noticed it too.
They didn't say it aloud. But one of the old ones had leaned in during the early-year check and muttered:
"Athena's eyes… They returned."
It chilled Evelyn more than she wanted to admit.
Later, the color dulled again—pale grey, like the edge of a dream. Easier to look at. Easier to explain. The nurses said it was development. Maturation. Evelyn said nothing.
But she had begun sleeping less.
Because no one had seen the transitions—except her and Vivienne.
*****
She turned from the window now, walking slowly to the fireplace, where a folder waited—sealed, worn at the corners. She opened it with fingers that trembled only slightly and flipped past the early reports.
There, stamped in violet ink:
Subject Lineage: 99.94% Match — D'Aragon, Solenne Origin Marker
Category: Dormant Lineage Activation – Maxwell-Class Mutation Stability: Absolute
Evelyn sat down.
The chair groaned softly beneath her, but she didn't notice. She was looking at the genetic overlay. It was still beautiful. Terrifying. Perfect.
Vivienne's blood was the foundation: noble, dominant, old. Evelyn's added resilience, intellect, symmetry. That had been the original plan—to create a child who would survive any system, thrive in any society.
But then there was the third strand.
A vial. Cold. Metallic. Delivered by gloved hands with no explanation other than a wordless nod.
"Maxwell internal inheritance. Classified lineage seed."
No one said where it came from. Evelyn had been young. Curious. Arrogant, perhaps. She didn't question it. She just knew she wanted Eva to be extraordinary.
And she had been.
From the very first moment.
*****
She remembered the sterile room, the low hum of machines. Vivienne by her side, still pale from the extraction. They watched the embryo divide, watched the cells knit themselves together with almost unnatural speed.
When the lab nurse called the first scan "flawless," Evelyn felt no surprise.
When the second technician called it "impossible," Vivienne smiled.
And when Eva was born, her cry was not a cry—it was a breath. Like the world exhaled and paused.
And then she opened those eyes.
*****
Even now, Evelyn felt the pull of those memories. They lived under her skin. The guilt. The pride. The unspoken knowledge that they had done something no one else had dared.
But now…
Now, Reginald had started acting strange. The Council had spoken to him—finally. She could see it in the way his hands fidgeted when he tried to pour tea, the way he looked at Eva like she was a riddle carved into glass.
Evelyn knew that look.
She had worn it herself for over two years.
Because Eva wasn't just perfect. She wasn't even just brilliant.
She resembled Solenne.
The First Daughter.
A genetic whisper passed down only through Maxwell's oldest line—a lineage that supposedly died out centuries ago. But blood didn't forget. Not truly. And the Council… they never let go of their obsessions.
"You created a child who could save the world," one of them had told her during Eva's first-year eval.
"Or bring it to its knees. Either way, we can no longer touch her."
Evelyn had never let Eva hear those words.
She never would.
Eva was too young. Too trusting. She loved her "papa." She didn't understand why he was different lately. Didn't understand that he saw in her not a daughter, but a creature born of something larger than him.
Worse: something that had no place for him in its future.
*****
Evelyn set the file aside and closed her eyes.
She hadn't told Eva the truth. About the science. About Vivienne. About the third vial. Not yet.
How could she?
Eva still thought she was just a little girl. She still played with puzzles and asked for extra strawberries. She still called Evelyn mama and wrapped her arms around Vivienne when she got scared at night.
How could Evelyn tell her she had been designed?
That her blood might carry the echo of a goddess?
That her eyes, those shifting mirrors of color and light, might be the key to unlocking—or unraveling—an entire legacy of power?
No.
Let her be a child a little longer.
Let her laugh. Let her sleep with her head nestled on Vivienne's chest. Let her believe in fairy tales.
Because soon enough… the world would come knocking.
And Eva would open the door with those strange, impossible eyes.