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Both of us, if I was being honest.
I crept closer, laying a hand on my husband’s shoulder and another on our daughter’s head, marvelling as I always did at how soft and warm she was. A pale scar peeked out from underneath my fingers to cross her eyebrow. Starling had offered to heal the wound, but Mat and I had agreed that leaving it there messed the least with the visions he’d had of her. If she grew up as resilient and amazing as he’d Seen, we’d be lucky parents indeed.
“Are you causing trouble for your daddy?” I asked her in a low murmur.
Hazel eyes opened, blinked sleepily up at me, and then closed again, leaving behind a contented smile on her face. She had the rich complexion and dark hair of her birth parents, a western Quarehian couple who had perished in a brigand raid two months ago. They’d had no other family, and their friends and neighbours had their own mouths to feed, so we’d only encountered gratitude when we’d offered to raise her as our own. I would say I felt horrible about what had happened to our princess’ birth parents, and I did...but every time I looked at her delicate little toes or the way her nose scrunched up when she tried foods for the first time, I could summon no feeling but love. Overwhelming, indescribablelove.
“Gimme,” I demanded, but Mathias shook his head, refusing to hand the bundle of sleeping delightfulness over.
I mentally ran through a list of sexual favours I could threaten to withhold until he agreed to comply, discarding the ones I couldn’t live without and realising…that was the entire list.
“Hmm. That’s an order, consort.”
“You had hours with her earlier,” he accused. “Iwant snuggles now.”
And the audacious brat proceeded to do just that, nestling his face against her warm stomach and nuzzling noisily into it, rewarded by a sleepy snort and a tiny – but insistently disgruntled – hand trying to bat him away. I was beginning to seewhyshe couldn’t sleep.
I attempted ignorance. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Nat.”
He grinned up at me. His storm-coloured eyes glittered even in the dimness of the room, the colour of a sea as turbulent and unpredictable as the man behind them. “So the rumours of the king of Quareh giving pony rides to a certain eleven-month-old this morning were greatly exaggerated?”
Ah. I imagined the sight of me prancing around on my knees in the grass while our daughter giggled atop my back and yanked my hair as hard as I’d ever pulled on my husband’s hadprobablysparked a touch of court gossip.
I tsked softly. If he wasn’t going togiveme cuddles with our daughter, I was going totakecuddles with them both. Kicking off my boots, I clambered onto the armchair and settled into the small, largely non-existent gap between his leg and the squishy arm of the chair, wrapping my arms around the two peopleI loved more than anything else in the world. More than my crown, more than flan, more than flirting.
More than life itself.
“Night,mi princesa,” I murmured, getting comfortable with the realisation that none of us would be moving from here until morning.
Mathias bent his head and pressed a soft kiss to our daughter’s forehead. “Night, Aleida Aratorre.”
***
THE END
