“Not anymore,” he answered, reaching to take her.

Lucy gurgled as I felt her almost-not-there weight leave me, kicking in frustration until her father—oh my God, Trent had a baby—took her. My shoulders slumped, and I felt her loss. On the stage, they were making motions to start the meeting, and Pierce was trying to get my mother and Ivy to sit down. “Is she really yours?” I asked Trent as they took their seats in the second row while he rearranged Lucy’s blanket around her.

He wouldn’t look at me. “In about six different ways,” he said, and remembering how I’d felt after holding her for just one minute, I knew what he meant.

“Trent, why didn’t you tell me you were after your…child?”

All around us, people were settling in, hushing themselves, getting ready for a show. But he was oblivious to them as he looked at me, a mixture of embarrassment and reluctance in him that I’d never seen before. “I don’t know,” he admitted, seeming more honest, more bewildered than he’d ever been before. “It sounded lame. Me? Going three thousand miles to steal a baby? I’m a product of the twenty-first century, not some elf with a title living in a castle with servants.”

“Yeah, but it was your kid,” Jenks said, having finally parked it on my shoulder.

Lucy was kicking at her blanket, and he tucked it back not even knowing he had done it. “She wasn’t mine until I saw her.” His gaze was unfocused as he remembered. “She’s…” He stopped, unable to put it into words as he looked at her. She was entirely her own person but needed him for everything.

“She’s beautiful,” I said softly.

Trent’s attention flicked to me, and his grip on her grew possessive. “I’d do anything for her. Risk anything. I never got it until now. I never understood true sacrifice.”

Huh. Maybe Lucy was going to save us all.

Jenks clattered his wings, going to distract her and make her squirm. “Just like any parent, Trent,” he said as he hovered over her, reminding me of who he was. “Think you can do anything for Rachel for the next hour? You owe her. I may have helped you get Lucy, but Rachel got you here alive to do it. Even with your help.”

My chest tightened, and where I was came rushing back. Trent was nodding, and Vivian began tapping her amplifying amulet for attention. “Just about anything,” he said, smiling with half his face. He looked at me, and even that vanished. “Rachel, it’s going to get bad. You’re going to have to trust me. You’ve got to lose before you can win.”

“Oh, that makes a lot of sense,” I said darkly. “You aren’t old enough for wise-old-man crap. Even with a three-month-old in your arms.”

He leaned close as Jenks zipped off to talk to my mother. “I mean it,” he said, Lucy reaching up for my face. “Oliver is going to weasel out of his promise no matter what I say. He knows you’re not going to tell anyone that witches were born from demons. If you do, witch society will crumble in a century of witch hunts that will make Salem look like a puppet show.”