“Ye-p.” He chuckles. “Those need cleaning pretty often. Ask me how I know.” He sticks his tongue out at the adoring face smiling up at him. Too angelic to ever sully a washing chamber, I’m sure. “Don’t worry though, I doubt you’ll have to scrubanything. Places like this use Pixie Polish. Just spray it over the counters and tub, a bit in the commode, and let the pixie dust make it sparkle.”
That makes me feel marginally better. “And remaking the beds?”
“One sheet on the bottom, some TidyTuck to tighten the corners, then another sheet and the blanket on top. You’ll get the hang of it.”
“You sound very confident for someone who has been covering my messes and literally fixing what I break.”
Every time he smiles at me, I’m drawn in by the warmth in his eyes, entranced by the gleam of amusement in them.
“I have faith,” he tells me. I’m about to retort when he adds, “Oh, and you might have to do laundry.”
“Laundry?” I’ve seen the machines we have at the palace. They look complicated. Breakable.
He smirks. “We don’t want a repeat of the soap incident, do we?”
I groan. “No, we do not.”
“Then it’s a good thing I’m here,” he says. “Come on. I’ll show you.”
“Don’t you want to get back to the cottage?”
He adjusts Eevi, who lets out a small sigh, her tiny fist curling into his coat. “The others are sleeping. Mika and Kat are there if anything happens. And who knows? Maybe the laundry smell and dryer hums will lull this one to sleep.”
We both glance down. Dark eyes stare back, unwavering.
Above Lark’s head, a few flitting shadows swoop low, bats on their nightly hunts, while at the edge of the forest, the black silhouette of a buck retreats. This whole place feels magical tonight. Or maybe that’s Lark.
“All right. Lead the way.”
Lark finishes changing Eevi like it was nothing, like he didn’t just efficiently take charge of a squirmy, fussy child and meet all her needs in no time. I take the once-again-happy girl from his arms so he can tidy up, marveling at her adorable smile and dark curls now that she’s free from the bundle of blankets.
“I don’t know how you did that. As soon as she started fussing, you knew what to do.”
Lark chuckles. “It’s not like I always knew what I was doing. But one tends to pick up some skills when living in an orphanage. Never a shortage of babies, though I only learned to change a nappy after Aili came. Frederik— He’s the man who ran the place. Raised me from when I was a baby myself. Anyway, Aili arrived after I came of age, and Frederick decided that if I was sticking around, then I should learn how to do all the things needed to run the place. I think he expected I would take it over for him one day.” His voice goes quiet. “I wanted that too. Now they’re both gone.”
A shadow crosses his face as if he disappointed the man who raised him by not being able to keep the orphanage open after he died.
“He sounds like a good man.”
“He was. I got lucky, ending up at that orphanage. I’m aware they’re not all as well-run as ours was. Which is why I hated to lose it like that.”
“I’m sure you did your best,” I tell him. “What happened?”
“It was already in rough shape. After funding got cut off three years ago, Frederik kept us going on fumes and hope, mostly. He died a year ago, and without him, I couldn’t handle thefundraising and the operation. Eevi here was the last new charge we took in, dropped on our doorstep a fortnight before we had a fire. Since the water brigade got defunded too, they’re under-manned and couldn’t respond quickly enough. The damage to the back wall was too much, and there were no resources to get it fixed.”
“What do you mean funding got cut off?”
He casts me a strange look, taking Eevi and setting her on a pile of freshly dried blankets. When he turns to me, he looks thoughtful. “Are you aware of the royal policies here, and the extra decrees since the king’s death?”
“What? Yes, no, yeah. Of course.” I wasn’t expecting that gut punch.
“Then you also know that Queen Taynia has cut off all civil programs for Wilder Fae.”
“She WHAT?” I clap a hand over my mouth. “Sorry, no, I wasn’t aware.”
I knew the Wilder Fae stayed separate from us, but I didn’t realize the divide had grown so deep, or that we would just stop programs that were supporting them because…because why? No wonder there’s so much animosity. No wonder that little boy stared so hauntingly at the royal carriage as we passed him.
Lark is still giving me the same sympathetic look. I don’t deserve sympathy, though. I was so caught up in feeling discarded and hard-done-by, and missing my father, I never even thought about what the rest of the Hinterlands were going through. The endless winter was difficult for me because it was cold and gloomy, and it reflected my own feelings of oppression, but out here there were orphans losing their home and being left to starve. How did I miss that?
