“Better go fetch,” muttered Alucard into his tea, and Kell made a rude gesture with his hand as he left. Alucard looked to Nadiya. “When did you see her?” The captain and the queen were oil and flame, safe so long as they didn’t get close enough to mix.
Nadiya shrugged. “A passing moment in the hall.”
Her green eyes were half-lidded as her pen flicked across her work. If he didn’t know better, he might think she was just waking up, instead of winding down, making notes before retiring to her rooms at last to sleep.
“Kers la?” asked Ren, cheerfully slipping into the common tongue as she climbed the side of her mother’s chair, and jabbed a jammy finger at the papers by her plate.
“This?” said the queen, her voice softening as it only did for Ren. “It’s a design for an amplifier.”
Alucard tensed at the mention of the work, but he could see the page on the table, and it bore no resemblance to the Antari rings, or the golden chains.
“Amplifier?” asked Ren, sounding out the word.
“A way to make a person’s magic stronger.”
Her tone was gentle, patient, but her speech didn’t change. Since the girl had been born, Nadiya had spoken to her as if she were a grown adult, bound inconveniently but temporarily in a child’s form. If she said a word Ren didn’t know, the girl would ask its meaning.
Ren squinted at the page. “Why don’t I have magic yet?”
Rhy looked up. It was his greatest fear, he knew, that his daughter would be like him. And he always told Rhy the same thing that Nadiya now told Ren.
“You are young,” she said. “It will come.”
“Daddy’s didn’t.”
Alucard stiffened. Only a child could say something like that, stating the obvious without meaning or malice. Rhy met his wife’s eyes, waiting to see what she would say to that.
Nadiya only smiled. “Your father is powerful in other ways.”
Ren took this in, rocking heel to toe on the side of the chair. “If I don’t get magic,” she said, “can I still have my animals?”
A smile caught the edge of Rhy’s mouth.
“Of course you can,” said Nadiya.
Ren nodded thoughtfully, and said, “That would be okay.” With that she hopped down, made to flee the table, but Sasha caught the child, guiding her back to her chair.
“You don’t need magic,” said the nursemaid, “but you do need breakfast.”
An easy quiet fell over the room as they ate.
Alucard took it in. When he was young, a set table was a dangerous thing. His father looming at the head. His brother across. His sister beside. No chair for their mother—no space for sentiment. Those scenes, a reminder that looking like a family was more important than being one.
That table was full of traps he could not see, ones just waiting to be triggered.
Sit straighter. Speak up. Do not use that tone with me.
There was no joy in those meals, only expectation, and Alucard could not wait to be excused, the air rushing back into his lungs only when he was free of that room.
But as he looked around the table now, his chest grew tight for other reasons.
This, he thought, this was a family. An odd one, perhaps, a strange and different shape, and despite Rhy’s moaning and the queen’s distraction and Ren’s restless squirming as if she were a pet trying to escape, while Sasha tried first to goad and then to bribe her into eating, there was nowhere else Alucard would rather be.
Everyone he loved most was seated within reach. He laced his fingers through Rhy’s, and gave a gentle squeeze. And Rhy looked down as if Alucard’s hand there was a gift, some unexpected but wholly welcome surprise. He brought it to his mouth, and kissed his knuckles.
Alucard smiled, and sipped his tea, and did his best to savor the moment, knowing it wouldn’t last.
And it didn’t.
Ren was the first to break away. Having been coaxed to eat an egg, and some toast, and half an apple, the child finally escaped, and flung herself toward the courtyard doors, Sasha on her heels.
Their daughter’s presence was a clasp, holding them together. Without her, Nadiya rose, and made her excuses, collecting her papers and a sugared roll as she drifted up to bed.
Their family peeled away like petals until it was just the two of them at the laden table. Even that didn’t last long. Before the tea had time to cool, Isra arrived, her short gray hair scraped back and her guard’s helm under one arm.
“Your Majesty,” she said, bowing her head. “The merchants are here, to discuss the import rules for the Long Dark Night.”