I nodded, and fell back. He yanked on trousers and a shirt, while I grabbed my own robe. Then I followed him down the hall to the small rooms Palla and Bennet had been given until more permanent housing could be found. The two younger children had been temporarily placed with the family who was running the castle kitchens. Permanently, if it works out for them.
Palla’s single bed took up most of the chamber. She sat straight up, eyes wide and unseeing, screaming. The sight of her hands clenched around fistfuls of the blanket was unsettling.
“A night terror,” Lorcan whispered. “She’s not really awake.”
“What do we do?”
“Wait until it’s over. If you try to awaken her while she’s screaming, it will only frighten her.”
I perched on the edge. She didn’t react. I winced as she screamed again, “Princess!”
“Why do you think she’s calling for me?”
Lorcan sat beside me. “Maybe you’re the first person she’s felt safe with since she lost her parents. Or could be a dream. There’s not necessarily a rhyme or reason to it.”
“Hm.” I clapped my hands over my ears when Palla released a particularly loud wail. We both inched away when her legs began thrashing. Tears streamed down her cheeks, but her eyes, though open, were blank. “How do you know this?”
“Arya used to get them. Sethi was starting to.” He kissed my shoulder. “Happens to kids that age.”
I was again reminded of how little I know about children. I must have been desperate for love to delude myself that I could raise a daughter on my own. I would’ve been completely adrift. I could hire nursemaids and governesses but I’d have hated it, wanting to keep her for myself. I’d have been just as bad a parent as my own father was to me.
All at once, Palla collapsed, still and silent. A moment later, she moaned and pushed up to sitting with shaking arms. Her eyes were barely open, but seeing me, she lurched into my lap, trembling.
“Oh, you poor thing,” I murmured.
Lorcan chuckled softly and ran his hand down her curls. “Congratulations.”
“Hm?”
“It looks like you’ve been adopted.”
“Isn’t it usually the other way around? We would choose to take in a child?”
Lorcan’s smile was soft. “Sometimes. Other times, you get chosen.”
He carried Palla back to our room and placed her small body on the child’s bed in the corner of our bedroom. I sighed. Finding time to be alone in the castle is going to be nigh impossible—not that I would dream of sending my new foster daughter away.
* * *
The week after our return passed in a blur. Lorcan was busy recruiting candidates to join the new royal guard, setting up a training facility, and trying them out. Bennet wanted to join, but he was too young. Tahra volunteered immediately, though it wasn’t out of loyalty to me.
My days were consumed with preparing for our foreign visitors and straightening out the Treasury situation. Thanks to Lorcan’s generosity, we had enough funds to plan a proper ceremony. Tovian’s warning haunted me, though. I did have doubts, and no safe place to voice them.
I was haunted by the whispers, too. As if echoes of Bashir, and my father’s constant criticism, didn’t chase me down every hallway, I also heard the rumors about Lorcan and me.
He barely tolerates the princess. Spends all his time training the new guards to avoid her.
Princess Zosia is cold and aloof. Unfeeling. I don’t think she cares about him at all; she only wants him because he’s popular with the people, and she isn’t.
Hasn’t led a religious service since she’s been back. All but neglected Midsummer, too.
I ignored them. But I heard them, all the same.
I told myself it should be enough that I was focused on shoring up the economy. But it wasn’t. I might not care about religion, but they did, and they noticed how I wasn’t prioritizing it.
Lorcan, sweaty from training, found me in my father’s old study. When I was trapped in the castle with Bashir, I used to come here just to feel close to someone. Now, I come here because I hate hearing the way they whisper about me. It’s the only place I can shut them out. I know Norah is feeding the rumors. Small details only a maid would know occasionally make the rounds, like the fact that Palla refuses to sleep anywhere but the children’s bed in our room, and we’ve relocated to the cramped guard’s bed just to get a bit of privacy.
But according to the rumors, it’s Lorcan avoiding me. Honestly, it might be easier if he did. Being near one another with no outlet has been hard, at least for me.
