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“Couldn’t sleep either?” Gen’s voice came from behind her.
Helen turned. She hadn’t heard him approach. He had left his attendants behind. And then she saw who hadn’t been left behind. “Who else is awake?” she asked, peering at the wiggling baby in his arm.
“Eugenia,” he said, settling down on the bench beside her. He rocked his daughter gently. “She doesn’t enjoy sleeping at night any more than I do.”
“Her poor nurses. Just wait till she starts climbing.” She smiled. Gen leaned against her as he shifted Eugenia to bounce her lightly in an attempt to soothe her back to sleep. The moon was high in the sky, and it was quiet but for the crickets in the bushes and the baby’s soft gurgling.
A soft puff of air made Gen turn to face her. He saw the corners of her mouth upturned. “What are you smiling at?”
“Thinking about Sten,” she said, glancing up at him briefly before staring back into the middle distance. It was always the fondest memories that surfaced unprompted after a loved one passed. “Do you know I was with him the first time he saw one of those flat-backed watches?”
“What?”
Helen nodded. “It was just a few months after your mother passed. I’d barely been queen for a full season and we were all just...so miserable.” Gen remembered how awful that year had been for him. Helen’s brothers and father had died in the span of a few months, and instead of having time to grieve, she had become queen. Gen had been young and wracked with grief that he hadn’t realized at the time how miserable his older siblings and cousins must have been too. “We had an emissary from Ferria—I can’t even remember why—who pulled out a pocket watch to show it off. I think he got off on aggrandizing himself and hinting at what barbarians we were. It was after dinner one night, and Sten was enthralled. I think the Ferrian regretted it, after Sten—who was twice his size even then—pestered the man with nonstop questions for an hour.” Happiness had been hard to come by that year, and Helen had clung to the memory.
Gen remembered that watch too. He smiled at the memory. “I stole that watch for him.”
“You what?” She laughed in surprise.
“Well, borrowed it," he said innocently. "The gold and red one, right? The clock face was painted with some kind of flowers?” Helen nodded and Gen grinned. “Sten told me about it that night in the boys’ house, and he was so excited that I snuck into the ambassador’s room the next night and took it. I thought Sten was going to beat me when I showed it to him, he was so mad.” Gen remembered his older brother’s excitement, and his own desperation to help. He smiled again, more softly this time. “Instead he told me to grab a lamp, and we snuck down to the armory so he could take his time looking over it where no one would look for us. It was almost sunup by the time he gave it to me to put back.”
Helen laughed outright. “The two of you really did get your father’s persistence.”
Gen raised an eyebrow and smiled wryly. “Imagine if he’d heard you liken him to a pair of child thieves.”
“And yet, there was no one more determined than your father,” she said fondly.
The silence between them was filled once again with the chirps and rustles of the late evening, as animals readied themselves for sleep and others woke for a new day. Eugenia began to fuss again, and Helen took the baby in her arms but she did not quiet down. Helen stood to better rock her. The crying stopped only when her niece lifted up one tiny fist, closing a hand around Helen’s earring. Helen gasped and cooed, “No, no, no,” as she gently pried her jewelry back from Eugenia’s gasp. “How is it possible I have to worry about this already? You weren’t snatching at jewelry until you were at least a year old!” Gen’s laugh carried out over the garden.
Helen walked a lap around the hedged-in outdoor room, feet crunching on the white shells that made up the path. Eugenia nodded off, and Helen carefully made her way back to her cousin. Gen surreptitiously wiped his face on his sleeve as she approached, but not fast enough that she did not see. Still standing, she shifted the sleeping baby in her arms and laid a land on his shoulder. “I miss them,” he said, voice ragged. Helen kissed the top of his head and sat down next to him, pulling him close with her free arm.
“Me too.”