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'Family is all we have in the end', the previous Lady of Spring used to say to her youngest son.
For centuries, Tamlin had believed this sentence to be a warning against sadness and solitude. To him, family had been a nightmare, a succession of fights brothers who were too proud and a father whose only tenderness was as occasionnal as only dedicated to his mate. But Pauly had arrived, sweeping away the ghosts of the past, and she had offered him what he would never have dared to ask for: a real family.
When Astryd was born, the High Lord of Spring suddenly felt as if his heart was made of glass. While Pauly drifted into a well deserved sleep after hours of labor, Tamlin found himself alone with this tiny “thing” in his arms. The awaited heir for the political survival of the Court was nothing more than a small six pound bundle with tiny rosy cheeks. This was his first shock of fatherhood: he discovered he was capable of remaining strictly motionless for six hours straight, for fear of waking his darling daughter resting against him.
His first stumbles were memorable. There was that moment of absolute panic when, attempting to change a diaper, he ended up calling Lucien for backup, convinced he was going to “break an arm” if he pulled too hard on the baby’s onesie. Or the time he spent an hour whispering orders to the birds to stop singing so loudly near the nursery window. Seeing Pauly wake up and laugh softly at the sight of him, helpless before a cooing baby, had become his favorite moment of the day.
After Astryd came Olga, then little Rita. Three daughters. His father would undoubtedly have screamed of dishonor, a man who swore only by warriors and male lineages. But for Tamlin, these three little flowers were a blessing he savored every day. The Spring Manor no longer belonged to sorrows; it belonged to rag dolls and bursts of laughter echoing through corridors.
However, each new arrival had been a battle against his anxiety. “Pauly, I can't,” he had whispered while she was pregnant with Olga. “The first time, I thought my heart would stop to seeing you suffer so much. If ever… if ever the land decided to take you back in exchange for the child, I couldn't bear it.”
Pauly then took his face in her hands. She was his strength, the one who backed down from nothing.
“I am here. And I fully intend to stay to see you fail at tying Astryd’s ribbons for eternity, or so.”
Despite his terrors, Tamlin had become an expert at convincing his wife that the family was “not quite” complete.
“Do you realize, Pauly? ”he would say while Olga and Astryd played in the grass. “There are only two of them. If they argue, there is no one to act as a referee.”
-“Tamlin, do not give me the political stability argument to justify a third child,” Pauly would reply without looking up from her book.
-“It’s not politics, it’s balance! Imagine a third little one… One who might have your eyes, perhaps?”
And when Rita finally arrived, he found himself one evening, as silence finally returned to the manor, watching his sleeping wife, one hand resting on the youngest’s cradle. He approached softly and sat at the foot of the bed. He didn't tell her often enough how grateful he was. For her. For their daughters.Words seemed too small to express the immensity of his debt. He was so grateful to her for not being afraid of his shadows. For allowing him to be a different father than the one he had.
Looking at Pauly, he understood that his mother wasn't speaking of family as a burden. He leaned over and placed a light kiss on his wife's forehead.
“One more?” she whispered in a half sleep, a mischievous smile stretching her lips without even opening her eyes.
-“Sleep, Pauly,” he laughed softly. “We'll talk about it at breakfast.” He knew he would lose the battle, but with such a family, losing was probably the most beautiful of victories.
Time, at the Spring Manor, seemed to have developed the annoying habit of galloping fast, so fast. For Tamlin, it was a silent tragedy: every inch gained by his daughters was another step toward a world he wasn't quite ready to open to them.
The manor had become an obstacle course.
Astryd, the eldest, was no longer the little featherweight he feared breaking. She had inherited her father's stature and her mother's stubbornness. She didn't walk; she conquered.
“Dad, the sentries say I'm too young for sword training,” she announced one morning. “I told them you didn't agree. Tell them you don't agree.”
Tamlin looked up from his reports, a brow twitching.
-“Actually, Astryd, I am the one who gave that order.”
-“Traitor,” she declared with a dramatic shrug that was cruelly reminiscent of Pauly when she lost an argument.
Olga, the middle child, was a real danger. Silent and observant, she had developed a terrifying talent for diplomacy. She was the one who had managed to convince Tamlin to hand over his family heirlooms for “an artistic experiment” or to get a second slice of cake when Pauly had formally forbidden it.
“Tamlin, where has your official seal gone?” Pauly asked one afternoon, hands on her hips.
-“I think Olga borrowed it to stamp the grapevine leaves in the garden,” he replied, looking sheepish. “She told me it was for a census of the local wildlife.”
-“She’s a little girl, Tam! She has you wrapped around her finger.”
-“She has a very convincing gaze,” he defended himself in vain, shrugging his shoulders.
And then there was Rita. The youngest, the sweetest. Rita didn't walk either: she climbed. She was often found perched on crystal chandeliers or on the shoulders of a stoic sentry.
The hardest part for Tamlin wasn't the noise, or the ink stains on strategic maps. It was watching childhood slip away from them.
One evening, when the three sisters were finally in bed (after a pillow fight that had nearly cost a pre Hybern era vase), Tamlin and Pauly found themselves by the fireside of their bedroom. The High Lord seemed to have aged ten years in a single day.
“Astryd asked today when she could visit the Night Court,” Tamlin sighed, rubbing his face. “She wants to see if 'the stars are really bigger there'.”
-“And what did you say?” Pauly asked, smiling.
- “That I was going to fortify the borders and double the guard.”
-“Tam...”
-“I'm joking. Mostly. Pauly, they're growing up too fast. They'll want to... fly on their own.” Pauly settled against him, resting her head on his shoulder.
-“That’s the goal, isn't it? To make them strong women.”
-“Yes, but...the manor is going to feel empty one day.”
There was a long silence and Tamlin tightened his hold, feeling the warmth of his wife.
“You know,” Pauly murmured in a trailing voice, “Rita said she felt lonely, being the youngest. She says a little brother to get into mischief with would be practical.”
Tamlin froze. He looked at Pauly. She was smiling, that little smile that always announced her “never again giving birth” resolutions were starting to waver before the love of chaos.
-“A boy?” Tamlin repeated, a glimmer of hope and terror mixed in his gaze. “A little warrior to protect his sisters?”
-“Or to be martyred by them, more likely.”
Tamlin laughed. Family. It was all that remained in the end, but above all, he wouldn't it trade for anything in the world.