ty was a bustling place, one where Miss Aroura had believed her daughter could grow up nor

city, intending to leave the child there and return to tha

child was strikingly beautiful; as though she'd inherited only the best of her parents. "Elaine, I'll come back for you one day. Hopefully with your mummy.

it into the baby's wrappings. She set the child down in fr

"Oh God, who left such a beautiful baby here?" She scooped up the child and looked around the empty street.

d. She hated leaving the young miss behind, but she made herself walk away,

to look at the baby in Mother Superior's arm

ht." Mother Superior checked the wrappings

mething off the ground. "This fell from her c

e could leave behind a baby barely a month old, let alone one so lovely. When she fed her, the child ate hungrily,

murmured, "you're Elaine Heike

YEARS

nned out through the halls an

uperior muttered, joining the search. "

e was fond of Elaine, and she got along well enough with the others, but she mostly ke

inner. Knowing her, she's off reading somewhere again." Sister Ann sai

r things and then blaming her for losing them. She never told the nuns. She'd learned fast that telling only made the whispering worse, so she smiled through it and slipped away instead, until the little for

t her practicing forms of martial arts no one had taught her. It startled all of them, especially Mother Superior, that a child so you