Nice to see you too, Renna.
"I could ask you the same," I reply, walking right past her.
"I'm...helping?"
"As am I."
"Well, you don't seem like the volunteering-at-an-orphanage sort."
I rattle off my usual answer. "It's good publicity."
"That seems on-brand for you," she remarks, in a venomous tone. She's pissed off. Good. I am too. She should be dead for what she did. I head inside, not waiting for her. I’m too annoyed to be here.
"You comed back again?" Says a tiny voice, and my heart sinks to my stomach, my anger fizzling into thin air.Poppy. I've been here three times in the last seven years, and this little girl has never found a home, even though the littlest ones are usually the first to go. She peers out from behind a doorway, just one big eye looking round.
Evergreen children grow slowly, so she’s the size of a mortal two-year-old, but she’s twelve, so her speech is much more developed. She’s a sweetheart but she's shy. She gets scared and angry, and she won't talk to anyone, especially not strangers. I squat down to her level, not approaching too near. "Of course I came back."
"You...come to see me?" She asks, her voice quiet and high-pitched, still not coming out from behind the door. She hasn't grown much, small for her age because of how badly malnourished she was when she arrived.
"I did. I wanted to see how my favourite future artist has been doing!" I say, aware of Renna watching us from the doorway.
Poppy pokes an inch more of her tiny face out, a second anxious eye appearing. Her short blonde curls stick up around her head. "I am okay. I had an apple for a snack."
I laugh at her executive summary of the last twelve months of her life. "Wow. I could do with an apple now too!"
She giggles but her eyes snap up to Renna, widening in trepidation. She quickly vanishes again, out of sight once more. I sigh and stand, spotting Mary who dashes over and bows to us both. "Your Majesty! And Commander Renna. Welcome to the madhouse! Poppy will be ever so pleased to see you."
"I've just seen her. She's not found a family?"
"She did. They sent her back after a week. It's knocked her already brittle confidence."
Gods, maybe I do have a heart after all, because it's fucking hurting.
"You've been here before?" Asks Renna.
Mary nods. "He's here quite often. Pretends he's scary, but he's a big softie!"
A growl rumbles in my throat, but Mary pays no mind. She claps her floury hands, a small white cloud of flour puffing into the air and settling on her red nose. "I thought you two could help them plant strawberry bushes together."
Fuck me. This is going to be the longest day of my life.
Chapter17
A Reunion (Renna)
"Nooooooooooo!" I shriek, as Atlas, a tiny boy with frizzy hair and a few scars on his dark skin stabs me with a wooden sword. I tumble to the floor, letting the army of children pile on top of me.
I have not been successful at the gardening part, but I have kept half of the children entertained while Rexxan digs a hole in the dirt for the strawberry bush to go into. A toddler sits on his shoulders as he does it, letting the other half of the children help him dig.
"You're staring at the big man again, Renna," says one of the girls.
I feel myself blush. I may hate Rexxan, but my ovaries aren’t on board with that yet, and seeing the evil, conniving, six-foot-nine brute let a girl put a flower in his hair is doing things to my body that I cannot explain. His dark brown hair is up in a messy bun, stubble covering his square jawline, and I’m just mush.
If masculinity had a physical form, it would be the Forest King. The same violent hands that can scare lightning out of the sky now tie the laces on a toddler’s shoe. His dark brown riding pants hug his muscular thighs…and I'm staring once more. This girl has a point.
Espan doesn’t know about my situation, and he would never have meant harm, but spending the day here is hard; a constant reminder of my love for children and the fact that my chance of being a mother was cruelly stripped away from me by my own.
My downward thoughts are gratefully interrupted when Mary calls all forty of the children inside for dinner, and Rexxan and I scoop up the four babies that are too young to walk or crawl. Mary smiles over at us, wiping her hands on her pinstriped apron. "You'll make a wonderful mother one day, Renna."
