Chapter Text
Edward hadn’t meant to count them tonight.
He usually didn’t - not in sequence, not aloud. But tonight, after one had a nightmare, another had a nosebleed, a third had wet their bed, and two were still whispering despite three warnings, he had found himself softly ticking them off on his fingers, like a man reckoning up the blessings that kept him tired and alive in equal measure.
Twelve.
Twelve children.
He smiled to himself. Who would have imagined?
He, the prince raised for diplomacy and statecraft, for signing treaties and giving speeches and wearing swords he’d never used - now spent his evenings mediating squabbles over toy horses and making up bedtime stories involving dragons who were allergic to jam.
It hadn’t always been easy. He had known peace negotiations less tense than trying to convince two toddlers that the same stuffed rabbit could not belong to both of them. He had been shouted at by a four-year-old wearing a crown of daisies for allegedly undercooking imaginary soup. He had been called “Papa!” and “Your Majesty!” and “No fair!” all in the same minute.
And yet-
And yet, standing here tonight, he had never felt richer. Or more loved.
“Are you hiding?” came a soft voice behind him.
He turned. Cinderella stood in the doorway, hair unbound, her nightdress loose and trailing slightly. She looked as she always did at this hour - weary, barefoot, and beautiful in a way that made his chest ache.
“Just thinking,” he said.
“Dangerous.”
He smiled.
She walked over and looped her arm through his.
“Which one was it tonight?” she asked.
He sighed. “Nicholas had a bad dream. Maria wouldn’t let Thomas sleep until he promised to marry her. Juliet insists she saw the Fairy Godmother outside the window again.”
“And you didn’t call me for backup?”
“You needed sleep.”
She leaned her head on his shoulder. “You should’ve woken me.”
“I was trying to be noble.”
“Well don’t. I’m not doing this war alone,” she teased, but kissed his arm as she said it.
They stood in silence a while, the candle flame flickering, the hallway full of soft, distant breathing.
Then Edward said quietly, “Twelve.”
“Twelve,” she echoed.
“Do you remember when we thought one would be enough?”
“I remember thinking we wouldn’t be allowed any.”
He turned his head to look at her. “Do you ever miss the quiet? The simplicity?”
She laughed softly. “Edward. Nothing about my life was simple before you.”
He kissed her hair. “That’s the opposite of what most people say about marrying into royalty.”
She smiled into his shoulder. “Well. Most people didn’t marry you.”
They went quiet again.
Then she asked, “What are you really thinking?”
He was quiet for a long time before he replied.
“I just...sometimes I look at them, and I see you. In all of them. In Maria’s sharp stare. In Juliet’s wild heart. In William’s stubbornness. Even Thomas - that quiet patience of his. I see you every day, a dozen times over. And it undoes me.”
Her eyes shimmered.
“I never wanted a dynasty,” he said. “Not really. I just wanted a life. With you. And somehow I got both. More than I ever knew I could ask for.”
She took his hand and kissed the back of it. “And what about you? Where do they get the nobility? The gentleness? The ridiculous sense of humour?”
“From Willoughby, I expect.”
She laughed quietly. “Edward.”
“I don’t know. Maybe from love. Maybe from you and me together. Maybe that’s how it works.”
She looked up at him, and he saw it then - that same light he had seen in her eyes the first night they’d danced.
“We’ve done well, haven’t we?” she whispered.
“We’ve done wonderfully,” he said.
He blew out the candle, wrapped an arm around her waist, and together they walked quietly back toward their rooms - past the nursery, past the portraits, past everything they had once imagined and somehow built with their own hands and hearts.
And down the hall, a child stirred in sleep, whispered “Papa,” and drifted off again - the thirteenth sound in the chorus of the life they had made.