The royal family got precious few moments to be together without interruption, and the age-old tradition of exchanging gifts on Silverfest was one of the undisputed and extended periods of time reserved for family only. Ian did not want Lady Lockwood present for that special morning either.
“Well,” his mother continued slowly, “Robert Lockwood was a dear friend of your father, and when your father made the commitment to look after Robert’s child as his own, he fully meant it. Lady Lockwood is not here as a guest like the visiting lords and councilors; she is here to be part of our family because she has lost her own. We’ve already discussed this. You need to treat her like a sister.”
“But if she’s supposed to be my sister, why do I have to call her Lady Lockwood?” Erich persisted. “I just call my real sister Meena, not Lady Meena.”
“If you were going to call her Lady Meena, you’d actually have to call her Lady Philomena, since that is her real name,” Queen Cara explained. “But we will only call Lady Lockwood ‘Robin’ when she is comfortable being informal with us.”
Meena dropped her hands to her lap, her two dolls momentarily forgotten as a concerned look came over her round, chubby face.
“If she doesn’t want to be informal with us, then she doesn’t deserve to be at our special family time,” Aden declared.
Ian wanted to cheer for his youngest two brothers, whose logic was quite impeccable, but his mother sighed. Her patience was growing thin.
“The whole point of Silverfest,” Queen Cara said in her most regal tone, “is to spend the darkest day of the four seasons remembering and honoring the light in our lives. Robin has lost much of the light in her life, and we are the only light she has left. Not a single one of you...” She paused to look each of her four older children in the eyes—excluding the fifth, Meena, who didn’t know any better. “Not a single one of you will make that day darker for her. Understood?”
“Yes, Mum,” Erich and Aden murmured.
Ian merely nodded, pretending he had been on his mother’s side all along.
Onric suspiciously said nothing.
Ian tried to ignore the small pain in his chest at the thought of losing their Silverfest morning tradition. He hadn’t realized how much he had been looking forward to it. Now it was just another sacrifice to be made for the good of the family and somehow the kingdom as well. He was used to sacrificing things, of course, as the eldest and the most responsible one, but it was not fair on the youngest.
He looked over at Meena sitting in the window nook. Her eyebrows were still drawn tightly together.
“My real name is Philomena?!” she screeched in disbelief.
Chapter 7
Robin wound her way through the stables to a small stall that had been allocated to Humphrey. The compact animal began to bounce on its forelegs as soon as he saw her.
“What’s wrong with your lip?” Robin asked, pushing through the wooden gate into the stall.
The donkey’s lower lip was raw, as though he had been rubbing it against his teeth for hours. Which he probably had.
“Have you been missing me?” Robin rubbed his ears in what she hoped was a soothing motion. Humphrey was quite attached to her. Although he put on a stoic front, he must have been anxious all alone in a new place. “I know how you feel, my smart boy. It’s difficult, isn’t it?”
The new sights and sounds of the palace had helped to distract her from the hole in her heart, but they had done nothing to fill it.
“I’m here now,” she cooed. “Did you have something tasty for breakfast?”
Robin turned to his feeding trough. “Oh, no! Not again! Have they never had a donkey at the castle before?” Whipping around, she looked her animal in the eye as though it could understand her. “How much of that did you eat? You know oats make you ill!”
Humphrey only blinked in response. Then, with a patter of hoofbeats, he rotated his body to press against her, wrapping his head around her shoulders as though he wanted to wrap her in a hug.
Robin twisted herself out of his embrace. “No, you silly one, I don’t need to be comforted. I’m concerned for you. Let’s get these oats out of here.”
Humphrey chose that very moment to drop his head into the feeding trough.
“No!” Robin reached into the trough, scooping up as many oats as possible into her hands and dashing out of the stall to deposit the oats in the trough of the lucky horse next door. But her largest handful made barely a dent in the pile of oats available to Humphrey.
She shooed him away from his trough again as she entered his stall. He backed away to the far wall, looking at her reproachfully.
“You’ll thank me later,” she told the animal. “I know you’re smarter than this.”
Grabbing the trough itself, she pulled against it with all her weight. The fastest way to get rid of the dangerous oats would be to remove the heavy wooden trough from the stall altogether.
As strong as she was, moving the trough was a two-person endeavor. Her mightiest tug moved it a single finger’s width.
