Page 21 of A Divided Duty

Cagney and Lacey were on the nursing chair when we returned to the bedroom, while Spike was nowhere to be seen. I sighed heavily.

“Spike, come out of there,” I said.

The rose goblin’s head immediately poked up over the edge of the crib. Miranda was making fussy little grabs at my chest that told me she was ready for a snack, so I moved toward the chair instead. Cagney and Lacey helpfully jumped out of the way, not wanting to be sat on top of.

“Spike, you need to stop sleeping in Miranda’s crib,” I said. “You’re not supposed to be in there, and you know it.”

It rattled its thorns at me before lying back down. I sighed again.

“Shall I remove it?” asked Tybalt.

“No. You know it’ll just tear your hands up if you try. I’ll move it when you take the baby,” I said, and sat. “Leave the door open in case Raysel wants to come and check in. Chelsea will have told her where we went by now.”

“Of course,” said Tybalt mildly, and moved to sit on the bed.

One nice thing about keeping our baby entirely confined to the house: we don’t have to deal with human feelings about breastfeeding, which seem to be mostly based on making sure the mother is experiencing shame no matter what she does. If she doesn’t breastfeed, she’s not concerned with her child’s health, but if she does, she’s being inappropriate by feeding her kid when they’re hungry, rather than according to the sensibilities of the people around her. It’s damned if you do, damned if you don’t, and I want no part of it. The fae have a much more casual approach to nudity, and even the ones like me, who grew up largely in the human world, tend to be remarkably good at separating “a breast exists” from anything sexual.

I got Miranda situated and leaned back in the chair, pausing only to give Tybalt a dubious look. He wasn’t smirking, exactly, but was watching me with an expression on his face that I couldn’t quite untangle.

“What?”

“I simply enjoy watching you,” he said. “Our daughter is hungry, and you’re feeding her. You made her, and now you sustain her. It’s a beautiful thing. Allow a father his sentimentality.”

“You are very strange sometimes,” I said.

He smiled, rolling his shoulders in a gesture that was almost, but not entirely, a shrug.

We settled into quiet after that, me watching Miranda, Tybalt watching us both, Cagney and Lacey getting resettled on the bed, where they were less likely to be evicted for my petty physical needs. It was a good pause, long enough for all of us to catch our breath.

Miranda’s sucking was slowing, her hands falling away from my breast as she fell asleep with her mouth still full, when there was a cautious tapping from the doorway. I looked up. Raysel was there, her narrow face filled with anxiety, one hand nervously gripping the doorframe to hold her steady while the other did the knocking.

I smiled at her, as encouragingly as I could. “Hey, Raysel,” I said.

Tybalt sat up straighter, looking around. “I was wondering when you would join us,” he said, and slid smoothly off the bed. “As I will not be leaving my beloved unattended while I see to things, I’ll give you a few minutes of privacy.”

Raysel didn’t comment on this obvious excuse, only watched with grave golden eyes as he walked to the door and passed her, vanishing down the hall. She looked back to me, shoulders slightly hunched. “Is it really all right?” she asked. “I’m not distracting you from anything?”

“Miranda was just about done eating,” I said. “Tybalt can take the next diaper change. I don’t mind at all, Raysel. What’s up?”

“I … Chelsea said you went to Shadowed Hills?” She stepped the rest of the way into the room, watching as I stood and carried Miranda over to her changing table, setting her down as she woke just enough to fuss.

“I did,” I confirmed. “I wanted to talk to my liege about what he might be intending to do.”

“And?”

I hesitated. Chelsea was telling Raysel just about everything that happened in the duchy, so the party that had been intended to celebrate her return probably wouldn’t be any surprise; still, I wasn’t sure I wanted to confirm it. I kept my hands busy as I considered, prepping Miranda to be changed. One nice thing about having a baby: I never lacked for something to do with myself. She was an endless font of little tasks, all of them utterly essential and never-ending.

Finally, I glanced back to Raysel and said, “Your mother was under the impression that you’d be returning home in three days, when your original term of offense is up,” I said. “I discussed this with your father, at great length, and he seemed to understand that making you come back before you’re ready would not be the right thing for you, or for his relationship with you. I’m hopeful that he’ll back down.”

“I can’t go back yet,” said Raysel. “I did so many horrible things while I was there—I did so many things that weren’t horrible, but that should never have happened. And I can’t go back until I can look at those things without wanting to die.”

“Having you talked to Dr. Voss about that feeling?”

“I have. She says remorse is normal, and that I’m getting better, and that as long as I’m not thinking about actually hurting myself, I should be okay. But I did think about hurting myself when I was there. Not all the time, but when my thoughts untangled enough that I could remember what guilt was. And I know what guilt is all the time, now. I wouldn’t survive being sent back there.”

The worst part wasn’t knowing that she was right. The worst part was knowing that she was wrong: that she was still a child in Faerie’s eyes, and her parents could do whatever they wanted to her, could use magic to compel her to be whoever they wanted her to be, if they could only justify it to themselves. I didn’t think Luna would have a lot of trouble justifying the creation of a dutiful daughter.

Faerie does a lot of things very, very well. But it also has the potential to do things even worse than the human world does, especially where the children are concerned. It’s all a matter of which side of the argument you happen to be standing on.