Nash knew that it was irrational to hate a baby. It didn't stop him, but he felt badly about it.

Hannadell was everything Nash could not have in screaming infant form, and he loathed her for it. She was concrete evidence of his brother's choices, proof that while Brigan gave his body and soul to the army, he had left his heart in King's City. At the time, Nash knew with a painful clarity that he would never know what it felt like to cherish his child. Nash would marry someone for power and wealth, at Cansrel's directive, and he would love her only as much as he needed to father children. Hannadell was the light in Brigan's eyes and the first person he always asked for. Nash couldn't remember being the first thing anyone asked for, ever, and he couldn't imagine asking for his child that way.

He has never been so glad to be wrong about anything.

Holding the baby close, he sits with Mila and Liv on the bed. Liv takes after her mother in colouring, though it's hard to guess who she might resemble as an adult on her toddler face. She has called him Papa since she could speak.

"Livdell, would you like to hold your new sister?" He helps arrange the baby in her lap, supporting her elbow, and catches Mila smiling at him in a way that makes Nash feel as if he were a drop of water falling into the sea from the river, a brief prism catching all the light and reflecting it back outward.

Nash will always leave his heart at home in King's City, and he finds that he does not mind at all.