But I was jarred back to the present, and I knew it could not be me, for I was standing on my feet, and I was a man, not a child. And I was not helpless, which meant I had to move toward the sound, whatever it was.
I stopped at the door, and her name slammed into my mind.
Lily. Of course it was Lily.
I had been pushing her away in my mind, pushing Marissa away, and there she was, crying out.
And I could not turn away from her. That much I knew.
I pushed the door open slowly and saw her lying there in the bed, turning over and over fitfully, wrapping herself up in the blankets.
Her dark hair covered her eyes, and she looked distressed.
I crossed the room, feeling like anything but a king, feeling like the lowest of men. Because I didn’t know what to do, and none of my power, none of my money and none of my status would give me insight into what the best course of action should be.
But I couldn’t abandon her.
“Lily,” I whispered.
I went to the bed and sat on the edge, pressing my hand against her forehead. “Lily,” I repeated.
“Daddy!” She sat upright and nearly crawled up my body, wrapping her arms around my neck. “Daddy. I dreamed that we were taken away from you. From here.”
I was stunned into silence by that. That Lily’s worst nightmare would be to be taken from here.
“I don’t want to not know you,” she said. “I remember when I didn’t know you. It wasn’t as good.”
She clung to me with trust, this child, with helplessness and sadness, and I felt undone. Because who was I to deserve this?
She was so vulnerable...so helpless...
She felt her life was better for having me in it.
She didn’t know. She didn’t know who I was, how broken I was inside.
And she didn’t care.
She loved me with an openness that had nothing to do with knowing me and everything to do with what I represented, and I kept thinking of what Marissa had said to me.
This was the love of a child.
A love so freely given, a love that didn’t even have to be earned.
No, a love like this had to be stripped away.
And my parents had done that to me.
To me, when I had been like Lily.
When I would have happily crawled into either of their laps and offered them all my small heart.
Because that was what children did, and it was how they were made.
They came into the world with innocence, and it was taken.
“I can’t sleep,” she said.
“You haven’t tried,” I said.
“I know I can’t. Will you sing me a song?”
“A song?” My heart thundered in my temples. “I don’t sing.”
“Everyone sings,” she said matter-of-factly, and I didn’t know how to argue with that.
I tried to think if I knew any songs that were suitable for children. The only thing that came to mind was something my nanny used to sing to me when I was a child. Back when I’d had a nanny...when there had been one soft person in my world.
The words were in Greek, so I clumsily tried to translate them along with the tune.
“Dear child, dear child, you’ve no need to cry.
Dear child, dear child, count the stars in the sky.
Dear child, dear child, rest your sleepy head.
Dear child, my child, rest in my heart.
For it is I who will love you even in your dreams.”
“Promise?” she asked, her voice small and tired.
“I promise,” I said.
And I meant it.
I would love her. I would protect her. I would fight armies for her.
And that no one had done it for me...
It was their failure, not mine.
To see myself through the eyes of a parent was...stunning.
My father had taken me when I was as young as Lily and put his hands on me to hurt me.
I touched Lily’s cheek. I could not imagine harming her, let alone ordering that others harm her.
I would kill first. Anyone who dared harm a hair on her head.
My eyes felt dry.
Marissa had looked at me with trust and love once. And it was only there as I sat on the bed holding our daughter that I realized it.
The first time she saw me. A full acceptance of what was happening between us, even though it made no sense. Just implicit love. Implicit trust.
And I had thrown it back at her. She had been alone and pregnant, thrown out on her own. She had been wounded in my absence, and what had I done when I’d found her again? I had condemned her the same way so many others had.
And then...she had married me. She hadn’t punished me by withholding Lily. She had given me my daughter, given me what I needed to run my country.
And then she had given me her body.
Given me her love.
I was suddenly overwhelmed by all this love that I knew for a fact I would never be able to earn.
This love that I wasn’t being asked to earn.
Love.
I had been so convinced that it wasn’t real, because I couldn’t reason it out.
But that, I suddenly realized, was the beauty of love.
You might not be able to reason it out, but you could see it. You could touch it. You could feel it. And anything you couldn’t see, touch and feel wasn’t love. It was just words.
Hollow words that lacked any action.
And I was shamed, because I had not seen what was right before me. The gift that had been Marissa for the last five years.
When I was certain Lily was asleep, I dropped a kiss on her head, and I went down the hall.
I knew it was midnight. I knew that Marissa was probably sleeping, but this couldn’t wait. It couldn’t.
What good was being a king if yo
u couldn’t wake people up in the middle of the night when you were having an important revelation?
I didn’t knock; I opened the door to her bedroom, and I realized that it couldn’t be her bedroom anymore.
We needed a bedroom, together.
Because we were one, after all.
She and I had spoken of souls, and I had rejected the notion of them, but I knew now that they were real. And mine was tied with hers. The match, the mate. All manner of mystical things that I hadn’t believed in before.
But didn’t they come back to faith?
I had never believed I was a man of faith, but Marissa had shown me different.
“What are you doing here?” She was not asleep; she was perched on the edge of the bed in a white nightgown, looking confused. Though I imagined she had not been looking confused before I came into the room.
“We need to talk.”
“It’s after midnight.”
“I know, but you are not sleeping.”
“No. I haven’t been. Not since...”
“I know,” I said, moving to where she sat on the edge of the bed. Then I dropped to my knees, debasing myself for a second time in such a short period. But it would always be for them. For Marissa and Lily, and it would never be anything less than they deserved. For they were my life, my heart, my mission. And everything good that I did in the kingdom of Pelion would be an extension of that.
Of the love that existed between us.
“Lily had a nightmare,” I said.
“Oh no. Is she okay?”
“She’s fine. She’s... She’s beautiful. She’s perfect. Marissa,” I said, her name broken. “Marissa, I...I didn’t realize. I didn’t realize how love worked. I didn’t realize how a child could love a parent, because I’d forgotten. I’d forgotten what it was like. They stole it from me. They tore it away from me, stripped it right out of my body. They hurt me. Abused me, abandoned me. And I thought something had to be broken in me, but when I looked down at Lily, so vulnerable and small and crying like that... The unspeakable wickedness of someone who could harm a child, who could tell them they love them and then leave them. It was not me. And you and Lily... You showed me what love really is. You are unwavering, Marissa. You gave me more than I’ve ever deserved. I sure as hell didn’t earn it.