hey, guys. i used  HornsDa 's OC, Yvette, who is Claudia and Soren's younger sister. she was born after their mother returned to Del Bar. i also used Khaleesi-Of-Trolls 's OC, Hildr, who is Claudia and Soren's mom. i know Lissa is the canon name of their mom, but i like this name and the take on their family better 

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"Mommy," Yvette said, one evening when she looked up from the picture she was drawing. "Will I ever get to meet Daddy?"

Hildr stopped putting some of her clothes away and turned around. "What?"

"Will I ever get to meet Daddy?" Yvette repeated, picking up another piece of charcoal. "Because, like, you never talk about him. And he's the guy in that picture over there," she said, pointing to a slightly turned around picture on Hildr's dresser. 

"So," she continued, "I was wondering if I'll ever get to meet him. You know because I haven't." 

Hildr finished putting away her clothes in the bottom drawer and stood up. She gently took the picture and ran her fingers over the delicate and intricate frame. She let her mouth slightly turn into a sad frown, and sighed quietly. 

Contemplating her next words carefully, she finally said, "Maybe. When you're older and you really want to, I'll take you to Katolis and you can meet him."

Yvette seemed satisfied with that answer. She hopped out of her mother's bed and stood on her tippy toes to look at the picture her mother was holding. 

"What're you two doing in the picture?" she asked. 

Hildr held it lower so her daughter could see it. "That was made the day we were married. It's our wedding picture," she said, fingering the delicate brush strokes. She looked over the picture: she and Viren were both standing in their wedding garments, holding hands, while Hildr's head was resting on Viren's shoulder. They were smiling, wide, and ecstatic, and their hands were interlocked with Hildr's wedding bouquet. 

Yvette inspected the picture a bit further. "Mommy, what happened? Like, why haven't I ever met him? Why doesn't he live with us?"

Hildr thought for a moment. What would she say to her daughter? She had never really gotten into really, truly telling her about the divorce, instead wanting to wait until Yvette was a little older to fully understand it. Maybe, if she chose the right words, she could try and sum it up for her.

"Well," Hildr said, putting the picture back down and turning to her daughter, "sometimes relationships don't quite work out."

"What do you mean?" Yvette asked, locking her deep sapphire-blue eyes with her mother's pale ones. 

Hildr motioned her to the bed. Once they were both sitting on it, Hildr wrapped Yvette in a half-hug. She took a breath. "Sometimes people just don't love each other anymore. Like your father and I. You know Queen Sarai?"

"Yeah," Yvette said. "She's dead. She died, like, a long long long loooooooooong time ago."

"It was nine years ago, Yvette," Hildr said. "So it happened two years before you were born. But yes," she said, her voice taking on a sad note. "She did die. Your father was there with her in her final moments, and when he came back, he . . . wasn't the same man anymore. He was much more distant and cold. The event had changed him. We started fighting. A lot; the fights became more violent and loud, and eventually we just couldn't take it anymore. So I left for Del Bar, and then you were born." She stroked her daughter's dark hair and sighed. 

Yvette looked up at her mother. "Daddy sounds terrible." 

Despite agreeing with her, Hildr was able to crack a small smile. "Terrible" was Yvette's favorite word lately, along with "sparkly," and "juniper." She cradled her daughter into another hug. 

"He was, I'll say," she agreed. "But he wasn't all bad. Before we started to fight, he was good. He was kind and caring, and I'm sure that if we never broke apart, that he would have loved to meet you." She tilted her daughter's chin up and brushed a stray bang from her face. 

Yvette blinked and thought for a moment. She flopped back down onto the bed and glanced at the two cups cooling on her mother's bedside table. 

"What about Soren and Claudia?" she asked, backing up against the backboard. "What are they doing?"

Hildr scooted up beside her and took the two cups. "I'm not sure," she replied. She handed one of the cups to Yvette, who sniffed it before taking a drink. Hildr took a sip as well and smiled at the bitter hot cocoa's taste. The other kingdoms may think that it was weird to drink cocoa without any sugar, but the bitter taste was something that the people of Del Bar had been accustomed to for years and years. 

"Your brother became the captain of the Crownguard, not too long ago," Hildr said. "As for your sister . . . well, she follows your father. She's taken up dark magic."

"Ew!" Yvette said, wiping away the chocolate mustache on her upper lip. "But dark magic is icky and disgusting and gross! Why would she ever even do it? It's terrible. Terrible, terrible, terrible, TERRIBLE." 

Hildr nodded and took another sip. "I agree. But I can't be mad at her. I wasn't there to steer her away from the path she took, so she followed it herself."

She took another sip, thinking. A silence drifted in between the two, mother and daughter, each thinking their own thoughts. Hildr about the children she left behind, and Yvette about the family that she had never gotten the chance to meet. 

Yvette mulled over the thought that her dad wasn't who she thought he was and wasn't the loving and doting parent that she had always wanted to meet. Was this her mother's fault? 

Mommy said that the feelings were mutual, so probably not, she decided. Mutual. I like that word. She took another sip of her cocoa. 

Yvette slid off the bed and handed another picture to her mother. Hildr gingerly took the picture from her and smiled, very gently. It was Soren and Claudia, both hugging each other with the widest, most happy smiles plastered on their faces. 

Hildr pulled Yvette in close for another hug. Yvette leaned on her mother's shoulder and looked at the picture further. 

"Mommy, why don't they ever visit us?"

Hildr brushed Yvette's black hair away from the sides of her face. "After your father and I split up, it was very complicated. We both had a lot of things to work out. I had to go back to Del Bar's palace and rejoin the Crownguard, and Viren had to continue helping Katolis and King Harrow. The months following the divorce were cruel and harsh, but then you came along, and suddenly I had another daughter in my life. Life became very busy. I had to raise you by myself, and--"

"You didn't do it yourself," Yvette interjected. "Auntie Maileen helped. And Uncle Winter. And--"

"Yes, I know they helped, but they had their own children to worry about," Hildr jutted in. "But it was mostly me. As I was saying," she started again, "I had a harder time raising you than I did with your siblings. We don't live in the palace, therefore I didn't have any nursemaids or nannies to help me when I was busy. Life got complicated and I just . . . never got around to sending them a letter. At that time, still fresh from the divorce, I thought that it was better to let go of past actions and just live in the moment with my new baby, and my family, and forget everything that happened before."

Yvette took a moment to process all that. While she didn't fully understand it all, she did get the gist of it. Her mother's life sounded so . . . hard. And she did half of it for her. She wondered what Soren and Claudia were like; did they like the same things as she did? Did they joke around with each other? If they knew that she even existed, would they like her? . . .Or would they hate her and not want anything to do with her? 

It would be sort of weird to have a sister that you didn't know about, she thought. Like, the entire time you were growing up, there was another sibling that you didn't know about. I wonder how they were raised. They were probably raised with different traditions. They weren't raised drinking bitter cocoa. They weren't raised with Mommy giving them all of her old jewels and treasures. 

Yvette looked back at her mother. Her eyes were set in a heavy way as she flipped a page of her book that she had brought up. But somewhere, lodged deep in her eyes, was a spark of love. Whether it was for her or her siblings, Yvette didn't know, but she knew that her mother's love was endless. Hildr loved Yvette more than anything in this world, and she wanted to keep her safe from whatever her father was going to do. Yvette had already heard many times that Viren was now the reget of Katolis, and how he failed to win over Queen Aanya and without her, the other three kingdoms as well. Hildr was ashamed of it, while Yvette really didn't know what to think. Should she be proud that her father tried to do something about Xadia? Upset because he let a violent outburst consume him? 

Yvette leaned into her mother who stopped reading to put an arm around her. Hildr gave her daughter a kiss on the head. 

"Mommy? What's going to happen to the Human Kingdoms? Did Daddy make Xadia angry? Are they going to attack us again?"

Hildr shook her head. "No, no. They won't Your father just wanted to attack them back for killing King Harrow."

"Okay." Yvette snuggled up to her mother and closed her eyes. 

"Nothing will happen to us," Hildr said, stroking her daughter's crow-black hair. "I promise."

The next day King Florian was killed. 

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the name of the chapter might change but idk yet