King Sammy's Arc

Chapter 3 of 4

A week after Elara left, Sammy still felt the old ache. He had answered the room's question about what he wanted. But wanting was not finding. He had no honest way to meet someone who would choose his whole life, children and all. He had always courted the way other people did, hiding the size of his family until it was too late. That plan had failed every time. So he made a new one. He wrote an open invitation and sent it across the realm. It said the truth first: thirty-one children, and more coming every winter. Anyone who wanted to court the king had to want that too. The answers came slowly. Most were polite refusals. One arrived by hand at the ice castle where Sammy had gone to think. A woman in a pink gown swept through the frozen doors, turquoise hair catching the blue light off the walls. "Oh! You're taller than the letter made you sound," she said, clapping once. "Princess Miracle. I read your invitation four times, which is three more times than I read anything, and I still cried at the part about the children nobody wanted." Sammy braced himself. He had heard warm words before. "Most people stop reading at the number," he said. "Thirty-one!" She spun toward a rack of shimmering blades near the wall and touched one. Light danced along the edge. "Do they all fight? Never mind. What are their names? Tell me one. Tell me your favorite, no, that's cruel, tell me the newest." No one had ever asked that first. Sammy stared at her. "Molly," he said. "She's seven. She threatened a lord to protect us." Miracle pressed both hands to her chest. Her voice dropped to a whisper. "I never had anyone protect me like that." Then she laughed, loud and quick, and stepped back. "So! I'm not here to fix your throne. I don't have soldiers. I barely have a plan. I just want—" She stopped. Her cheeks went pink. "I want somewhere loud and full and mine." Sammy set down his guard, carefully, like putting down something heavy. This was the thing his old plan could never reach. He had finally told the truth up front, and someone had walked toward it instead of away. "I won't ever stop adopting," he said. The test. The line. "Good," Miracle said at once. "Thirty-one is a starter number." Sammy felt something loosen in his chest. His honest plan had worked. He had a way now, a real one. But he watched her spin through the cold hall, bright and quick, and a new worry settled in. She was here for the noise and the belonging. She had not yet seen a quiet night, or the days his children went silent watching him. Wanting the family was not the same as staying through the hard part. He would have to find out which one she was.