Renna opens our bedroom door directing her to the balcony. Poppy blinks around us, her eyes widening at the size of the gigantic bed, her eyes taking in the branches and leaves around us. We say nothing, letting her absorb it all.
"Wow," she whispers, eventually. "Lots of green! It's your house?" She spins to face me, wobbling on her feet. She's still mastering walking, a little behind her peers physically.
"This is my house, yes. Mine and Renna's."
"It's big!"
Renna smiles, her eyes filled with adoration as she parts the opaque curtains. A glimmer of hope forms in my chest as Poppy lets Renna take her hand to help her up onto the outside bed.
"You like apple pie too?" Asks Poppy, as we start eating a small slice each, the three of us sitting in a triangle on the white duvet. Renna nods enthusiastically, accompanied by an appreciative moan that has my mind going places that are not appropriate right now. If I don't get to take her to bed soon, I'm going to drop dead.
"Iloveapple pie," she says, and Poppy nods, giving Renna a look of appreciation like she had completely misjudged her until now. She then looks to me with a look that saysgood-choice, Rexxan, and Renna and I are in stitches on the bed. She's such an old soul, my Poppy.
"I don't like you to touch me yet," she says, to Renna.
Renna nods as she swallows her mouthful, her eyes softening with understanding. "That's perfectly fine. We don't have to touch to be in the apple pie club."
A small giggle escapes Poppy's lips, and she nods her agreement, finishing her pie in comfortable silence. Finishing it isn't quite the word, because ninety percent of it is on her hands and face, but she's doing her best.
"You want me?" She asks interrupting the silence with a sigh of relief as if she'd been building the courage to ask that for hours.
"We'd love for you to live here, but we are the King and Queen," I say, and her eyes widen.
"You're King thiswholetime?"
"I am."
"But you don't have a cow."
"A crown? I have lots of crowns, I only really wear them at big events."
"Oh."
"Mine and Renna's jobs mean sometimes, one of us might need to be away from home for a night, or sometimes much longer, like a month or two, but we wouldn't both go at once, and we won't do it for at least a year," I begin explaining.
We sit on that bed as the morning breeze morphs into the afternoon sun, telling everything to Poppy. I know she's only twelve or so, I don't expect her to understand it all, but I want her to understand that Renna and I are famous and so she will be too.
"Shall we take you back?" Asks Renna, as the afternoon draws late, the sun staining the cotton clouds in shades of orange and red.
Poppy looks unsure, picking at her bottom lip.
"What's going through your little head, Pop?" I ask, knocking on her head as if it was a door. She giggles, shuffling nearer to me and burrowing into my side.
"I'm thinking what if you send me back."
"We will never, ever send you back," I say, meaning it. Not for anything. "There's nothing you could do that would make us send you back. You could..." I stroke the stubble on my chin, "you could smash an apple pie on Renna's head and call her a silly cow, and we wouldn't send you back."
Poppy is in a fit of giggles, and Renna continues. "You could call Rexxan a giant poo, which would be true, by the way, and we wouldn't send you back."
She's rolling around on the bed laughing, genuine care-free laughter filling the air, and me and Renna are wearing the same face-splitting grin. But my next words are serious. "It doesn't matter how much you cry, or how much you scream, or how much you wake us in the night, or if you don't want us to cuddle you ever again, or ever come into your bedroom. We will never send you back."
She holds out her little finger to us both, and I shake it with the most serious of faces, as I do if I am negotiating the Kingdom out of war. "I can stay today?" She asks, with eyes full of hope. She's had the best day today, full of excitement and new things. She must be so tired.
"You can stay if you like, but if you want to be back at the orphanage for a few more days—“
She vehemently shakes her head, and Renna gets up. She's grinning at me. And I'm grinning at her. Because our wedding is so fucking cancelled, and there's never been a sweeter reason.
All I know is that with my son, my new daughter, and the love of my life all safely under this roof, life has never felt as whole as it does now. I whisper an eternal thank you to the gods for delivering Renna to me. She's all a man could wish for and more, and she's taken my shattered heart and mended it into something far greater than it ever was before.
