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Twice this week I’ve walked into a room and found him standing at a window, jaw tense, listening for something I can’t hear.

Both times he didn’t notice me until I said his name, and both times it took him a second too long to actually look at me, like he had to swim back up from somewhere before he could.

I hate it more than I hate the guards, honestly. I got used to being what he looks at without even trying to.

I didn’t ask for that. I definitely didn’t expect to miss it this fast.

“Everything okay?” I ask him casually over dinner, testing the waters.

“Fine,” he says shortly. He reaches for his wine instead of meeting my eyes. But that’s what concerns me the most. Not the word “fine,” but the fact that he won’t look at me saying it when looking at me is usually the one thing this man can’t seem to help doing.

I don’t push. Pushing gets me “soon” and a face that makes me not want to try twice.

So instead I watch him not eat his dinner and watch Seraphina swipe a piece of bread right off his plate without him even blinking.

Instead, I focus on Seraphina. At least she’s honest about what she wants, which is currently all my attention, all the time, forever.

She’s apparently decided I’m hers.

If I leave a room without her explicit approval or order, she comes barreling after me on those short little legs, screaming loud enough that three different guards have poked their heads in to check nobody’s dying.

Everything is hers now—my chair at breakfast, my bracelets, which she steals and wears, my attention, which she guards jealously from anyone else in the house, including, memorably, Nico himself, who got a firm little hand shoved in his face and a flat “mine” when he tried to talk to me while I was reading her a book.

It’s not just my stuff she takes.

Over the last few days, Seraphina has presented to me the following: a smooth gray stone from the fountain, one of the guard’s walkie-talkies, lifted right off his belt and I had to sheepishly return while she screamed bloody murder behind me, half a soggy graham cracker offered up with such glee that I ate it anyway even though I wanted to gag at how wet it was.

What?

I’m not a monster.

My entire day revolves around her now, and there’s a kind of peace in it I didn’t expect to find in this house.

This little creature needs my total presence and hands back her total trust in return, no games, no agenda, no nothing.

But it’s not always peace.

She’s been crying for her mother a lot recently. I can’t figure out what triggers her, but when it happens it’s tragic.

“Want Mama,” she wails during bedtime.

She had been in a foul mood all evening, fighting her caretaker Marta and I about everything.

Her tantrums had been exhausting. “Want Mama, want Mama, where’s Mama, where’s Daddy⁠—”

“I know, baby. I know.” I pull her into my lap and rock her the way I’ve learned she likes, one hand on the back of her head. “Mama loves you so much. Mama’s coming.”

“Now?” She looks up at me, brown eyes wide with hope, absolutely certain I have the power to make it true. “Mama come now?”

“Soon.” I don’t actually know if that’s true anymore, not with the guards doubling and Nico so busy I barely see him. But I say it anyway, but Seraphina deserves to know that her parents will see her again.

She fell asleep curled into my arms and I cried into her soft hair. There is no version of this that isn’t a tragedy.

She should be home and tucked into her bed, after being rocked to sleep by her mother.

She should be waking up to her own mother’s face and rough housing with her father.

Instead she’s here, because some piece of shit named Russo plotted to kill her.