Lachlan smiles at his little girl.‘She knows what she’s doing.’
Mimi takes a huge deep breath and then jumps in.Lachlan dips beneath the water, eyes open, watching her movements.
It’s critical, he knows, to handle this well.Just as he wanted Jules to learn how to bring his own body relief during stress, so he wants his princess to learnsheis the master of her body in this way.Confident swimming requires autonomy, fear management and a whole lot of graceless splashing.She kicks up, following her instinct to break the surface.She gasps, grinning wide, and then briefly chokes when water goes in her mouth.
Lachlan chuckles as he scoops her up.‘My little princess, look at you!’he declares, so very proud.‘You’re like a mermaid.’
‘Sharkymermaid,’ she corrects, coughing still, but her enthusiasm is bulletproof and she wriggles determinedly free to dive back in, breath held deep and tight that time.
She learns to swim in less than two hours.
She’s a natural.
?
‘I think she loves you more than me now,’ Jules says one night during a party in mid-August.He’s a little drunk.Endless glasses of champagne keep finding their way into his hands and, really, what else is there to do but drink?
Jules drifts through the ballroom doing exactly what’s expected of him, circulating elegantly beneath the dome while Alistair speaks with Mikhail and Ariadne elsewhere.For the moment, it’s just him and Lachlan.
‘You’re her brother,’ Lachlan says,lighthousingaround.
‘She loves you more.She looks to you now, not me.’
Lachlan wants to point out that that’s how it should be for kids.
Normal siblings fight and argue.They don’t feel the need to protect one another and form parental relationships.He wants to say it’s been hard on her, not having Jules around.He wants to say a lot but then Mikhail Sorrenko comes over and asks Jules to dance.
‘I’d love to,’ the boy answers, allowing himself to be spun out onto the floor.
Lachlan takes the opportunity to check in.
‘Control, this is Kestrel.Echo Bay status?’
‘Eight bells, Kestrel.Eyes on confirmed safe.’
The new system holds up well, but Lachlan worries about the strength of it under a real attack like last year.The Moroz Front are known to be relentless.
On his right, the youngest Sorrenko boy is lurking, watching Lachlan.He’s not especially subtle while Roman is dancing with Savannah.
‘Vasily,’ Lachlan greets politely with a nod.‘You OK?’
‘Y-yes, sorry.I just wanted to say hello.’
Lachlan speaks Russian well enough and could do so now, but he suspects it’ll foster intimacy, so he sticks to English.‘Hello.’
‘Is it hard?’the kid asks, then winces, looks like he wants to die.
Lachlan takes pity on him.
‘Security is a difficult sector to manage, yes.Are you having a good night?’
‘Oh, um.Yes.Sort of.’
Not taking the bait, Lachlan keeps his eyes on Jules.
Vasily is a year younger than Jules and Roman barely a year older, yet both Sorrenko brothers look noticeably older than the Penhalyx heir, who is consistently styled to appear younger than he actually is.
‘Control, Cascade is central, can you confirm tracking?’
