“Seori sent a note,” Yuna says, thumb smoothing over my brow. “She made Rheon promise not to hover for an hour. He lasted seventeen minutes.”
I grin.
“I believe in his growth.”
“She says the baby kicks whenever Rheon reads out loud,” Yuna adds, eyes bright. “He insists it’s because of his voice. She insists it’s because the princess is already judging his punctuation.”
“Our niece will rule us all,” I say solemnly.
“As she should.”
I lower my ear to Yuna’s belly again. The Little Drum thumps once, offended that the conversation moved without him.
“You hear that?” I confide to him. “You’ll have a cousin who will teach you how to steal the kitchen honey without getting caught.”
“And an aunt who will teach you not to,” Yuna says primly, which is how she tells on herself.
Footsteps in the grass. Seori and Rheon appear at the garden arch like a benediction learned to walk. Seori is barefoot, a hand braced at the small of her back, the underlight at her throat dimmed to a steady pulse that matches the faint glow beneath her dress. Rheon’s shadow tries to bow to every pebble she steps on. It fails and looks pleased about it.
“Your Majesty,” Rheon intones, king-smooth, then under his breath to Seori, “—don’t kill me, I’m only using the title because it makes the Sentinels behave.”
Seori levels him with a look that could reforge iron.
“I am making a person,” she says. “If anyone behaves, it will beyou.”
Yuna rises and we meet halfway. The four of us stand together, the garden making a soft cathedral around the fact that our world didn’t end when it should have. Seori takes my handwithout ceremony and flips my palm to check the sigil above my heart like a blacksmith checking a blade.
“Holds,” she says, satisfied. “Good.”
Rheon glances at my chest and then at Yuna’s belly, something raw and grateful loosening his face. “How is he?”
“Opinionated,” I say.
“Related, then,” he answers gravely.
We sit. The babies kick hello to each other like cousins learning secret handshakes. Yuna and Seori talk names in low, conspiratorial tones while Rheon and I pretend not to be men who would fight a mountain if it looked at these women wrong. When Yuna grimaces at a sharp nudge, I feel it—faint, like a lantern on the far end of a hall—and my hand is there before she asks. The bond cools it. The ache softens. The Little Drum resettles, mollified.
“Do you ever stop staring at her?” Rheon asks, not unkind.
“No,” I say honestly. “It keeps the old doors shut.”
He nods like that was the answer he hoped I’d give.
“Good.”
The day moves the way healed places do: gently, then all at once. Minji arrives with a stack of lists and a jar of salve that smells like lavender and resolve; Jisoo ghost-follows carrying a carved mobile of feathers and starwood he pretends is a diplomatic gift but hangs carefully over the cradle anyway. Seori drags Yuna to the shade and orders her to sit like a queen who gets to issue commands that are also caring. Rheon and I are dispatched to the rookies, who now run drills for the Crown and try to pretend they’re not showing off for the babies who can’t see them yet.
I correct a stance here, a grip there. Names come to me like prayer: Seo-joon, who still keeps bread in her sleeve for the garden cats; Han, whose ankle no longer betrays her; Kaelen’s newest, whose jaw is too tight until I tell him the story of the first time I missed on purpose because mercy was the point. By noon the courtyard breathes easier. By afternoon Yuna charmed three elders into admitting that the nursery doesn’t needfiveceremonial quilts.
By evening the four of us are back in the garden as the lanterns warm and the day’s noise tucks its chin. Seori leans her head on Rheon’s shoulder and finally lets herself be small in a way that isn’t weakness. Yuna tips into me with the same permission. The Little Drum rolls beneath my palm; a comet dragged lovingly by gravity.
“I keep waiting for the fear,” I admit, quiet, because the others are close enough to hear if they’re meant to. “For the part where I break something I love because that’s what I was built to do.”
Yuna’s hand slides over mine.
“You weretaughtto do that,” she corrects softly. “Different kinds of building. We unlearned it.”
“Together,” Seori adds, a smile in her voice.
