Chapter 795: What you Want to Do

Luna looked toward the door before the attendant carrying her meal reached it.

Alex came in behind the tray with Mingyue beside him.

"You came back."

He stopped close enough for her to touch his arm.

"We said we would."

Luna glanced past him, checking the doorway as though someone else might be waiting to take them away.

Mingyue closed it after the attendant left.

Their daughter relaxed enough to look at the food.

Alex sat beside her while Petricia moved the cup where she could reach it. Luna immediately moved it back, away from the edge of Alex’s sleeve.

"I can do it."

"I know," he said.

He kept his hands on the table while she poured water into the cup. A little missed, and she watched the wet mark spread over the cloth. Neither parent hurried to touch it.

Luna set the jug down and drank.

A few hours earlier, Alex would never have expected such a small thing to please him so much. Her fingers stayed solid around the cup. She was annoyed at being watched and hungry enough to start eating before asking another question.

He let her eat.

Petricia remained standing until Mingyue drew a chair out with her foot.

"Sit."

"There are a few things I need to finish."

"They can wait until you’ve eaten."

Petricia looked at the tray.

"I already ate."

Mingyue studied her for a moment, then left the chair where it was.

A familiar quiet signal came through Alex’s connection with Vesa, drawing his attention before he had decided whether to answer.

Luna stopped chewing.

He looked back at her.

"I’m here."

"Your face changed."

Luna was right. He had spent so long listening for the next problem that his body responded before he knew what the problem was.

He asked Vesa what had happened without bringing a voice or a blood trace into the room.

A group wanted to know whether they could place their supplies beside the freight ground. Selene had already sent someone to meet them but wanted him informed.

Alex closed his eyes briefly.

"Selene can decide that," he told Vesa. "For the next two hours, keep the routine reports with the people handling them. Reach us if an attack or an immediate danger needs one of us."

"And the calls for help?"

"Let the attendants and commanders answer what they can. Bring the ones they can’t handle to Mingyue afterward. Don’t leave someone in danger waiting for a time to end."

He felt Mingyue’s agreement through the bond.

Vesa repeated who would receive the reports. Then the small pressure of the connection eased.

Alex opened his eyes.

Luna was still watching him.

"No one needs me to move that cart," he said.

"Then don’t move it."

"I won’t."

She took another bite.

Petricia sat down at last, though she did not take anything from the tray. From the way she watched him, Alex suspected she had been waiting for that exchange too.

After Luna finished, Mingyue asked where she wanted to go.

"The garden."

Alex looked toward Petricia.

"She can rest there," Petricia said. "She doesn’t need to stay in the attendants’ room now."

Luna stood before anyone could offer to carry her.

She managed a few steps, then reached back for Mingyue’s hand. Alex took the cup and the extra cloth while Petricia gathered the remaining things.

They left the receiving ward by the quieter passage.

The garden was familiar to Luna. She led them toward a low table beside the water, where several folded sheets and small wooden pieces had been left in a shallow box.

"I was making a house," she said.

Mingyue sat where she could keep her injured arm supported. Luna began taking the pieces out, placing the larger ones on the table first.

Alex stayed near the path while Petricia set down the things from the ward.

"Can we speak?" she asked him quietly.

He nodded.

She waited until Mingyue looked toward them, then stepped far enough down the path for them to speak quietly without Luna hearing from the table.

"I can’t keep telling her you will come back soon when I don’t know whether it’s true," Petricia said.

Alex looked toward their daughter.

Luna was explaining which piece was supposed to be a door. Mingyue held two blocks apart while she tried to fit it between them.

"We know you have been looking after her," Alex said.

Petricia shook her head.

"That isn’t what I’m asking you to know."

He turned back to Petricia.

"When she asks where you are, I can tell her what I’ve been told. When she asks when you’ll come, I don’t have an answer. I spend the rest of the time trying to make that answer less upsetting."

Alex remembered Luna making him repeat that both parents would return before the meal. She had not asked for a gift or a new game. She had asked him to make his promise clear enough that she could tell whether it had happened.

"I shouldn’t have left that to you."

"You did."

Petricia’s fingers closed over one another. She seemed startled by how bluntly it had come out, but she did not take the words back.

There was always Petricia. That had been the reassuring thought whenever he and Mingyue had to go somewhere. He had never followed it as far as what Petricia had to give up so it could remain true.

Mingyue came to stand beside them after leaving Luna with the two walls held upright against the box.

"Say the rest," she told Petricia.

Petricia looked between them.

"I care for her. I am not asking to stop seeing her. But if you leave for a battle, then another problem, then a meeting, my time becomes whatever is left after you finish."

Alex started to say that the battle could not have waited, then stopped. She should not have to explain the part she had already made clear.

The battle had required them. Every report afterward had not.

"What do you want to do?" Mingyue asked.