“Cai?” Father calls for me, I turn and race off to meet him. He has Axellia on one of his hips. Smiling, he lifts me onto his other hip and carries us inside his and Mother’s room. Mother is lying on the bed, with a bunch of women busying themselves around her; folding towels, carrying buckets of hot water, cleaning some odd metal tools. In mother’s arms is a tiny, squirming bundle. She slowly lifts her head to look at us, and smiles.

 “Cai, Axellia,” she motions for us to come closer. Father sets us on the bed next to her. “You have a new sister.”

 Excited, we crawl over to Mother to look at the baby. She’s tiny, and pink, with wavy hair; like mine and Nicholai’s. Her skin is pale. Not as pale as Father’s, but not as dark as Axellia or mine. 

 “She’s so cute!” I say as I reach down and touch her hand. Her fingers uncurl and wrap around one of mine.

 “What’s her name?” Axellia asks.

 “Tempest,” Mother answers. “Because she survived the storm. And so shall we.”

 “Tempest,” I repeat. It sounds a bit strange to me, but I guess I like it. “Can I hold her?”

 Mother smiles, nods, and carefully positions my arms to place Tempest in them.

“Mind her head,” she whispers.

 Tempest squirms for a little while then settles down and begins sucking on her hand. I smile as I watch her. Were Axellia and I ever that small? It seems impossible, I've never seen anyone so tiny before. I hold her closer to me and kiss her forehead. Tempest makes a weird but cute noise that makes me laugh.

 “What’s she doing here?” Father yells all of a sudden, causing all of us to jump. I look and see that Father is pointing at the little girl I saw in the hall, who is standing just outside the door with Bebin. She flinches, but other than that doesn’t move.

 “Donar,” Mother hisses, her eyebrows furrowed together.

  “Nursemaid, get that thing out of my sight!” Father orders.

 Bebin looks upset, but grabs the girl’s hand and nods. “Yes, sir.”

 My mouth falls open. What did she do wrong to make Father yell at her like that? She was just standing there, doing nothing.

Tempest begins to cry in my arms.

 “Sh,” I whisper as I rock her. It’s a bit hard, she’s kind of heavy. 

“It’s alright Tempest. Your big brother’s got you.” I remember how Nicholai used to bounce me on his knees when I was little, and I try to do the same thing. It doesn’t work too well, my knees aren’t quite big enough, so I just kiss her forehead again. That seems to quiet her down and she goes back to sucking on her hand. Mother carefully takes Tempest back from my arms. I want to hold her longer, but I don't fight Mother.

 Father walks over and holds his arms out. Mother stares at him, her brows still furrowed. He stares back, a strange look on his face. A long pause follows that makes me very uncomfortable. Axellia scoots closer to me and grabs onto my hand, looking a bit scared. Finally, Mother hands Tempest over to Father. He rocks her back and forth but he doesn’t smile, he doesn’t talk, he just rocks her and stares at her.

 “Go back to the nursery, darlings,” Mother says to me and Axellia in a soft, sad voice, not looking at us. Her eyes are fixed on Father.

 I don’t want to go back. I want to hold Tempest again, but Mother’s voice tells me that something’s not right, so I take Axellia’s hand and we both leave. I look over my shoulder once more as we leave. Mother and Father are just staring at each other as the guards close the doors.

 Axellia and I hold hands, scared to be apart from each other as we shuffle back down the hall. The guards open the nursery for us and let us in. Bebin is sitting in the rocking chair, holding the girl in her lap. Axellia looks at me as if to ask me what’s going on. I don’t say anything because I’m not sure what’s happening either. I just step closer to the rocking chair and tap on Bebin’s shoulder. The girl flinches as I grow closer.

 “Is she alright?” I ask.

 “She-”

 “I’m fine,” the girl cuts Bebin off as she straightens herself up, drying her eyes on the back of her dirty hand. “What now? Are you going to yell at me too?”

 “No,” I answer. “Why would I? You’re not doing anything wrong.”

 She stares hard at me, like she’s trying to decide if I’m telling the truth or not.

“Children,” Bebin says softly. “This is Seana. She’s half-elf, half-human. She came back from Omniphilo with your father because she…had nowhere else to go after the war.”

 “Why?” Axellia asks. “What happened?”

 “Everything’s gone,” Seana answers. “They tore down and burned everything.” Her bottom lip trembles, and a few tears fall, but her face doesn’t change. She doesn’t look like she’s crying even though there are white tear trails streaking the dirt on her face.

 “Who destroyed it?” I ask.

 “The soldiers,” Seana whispers.

 “Oh. Well, maybe they can fix it now,” I say. “The war is over so I’ll ask Father if we can-” I begin to walk toward the door.

 “No, Cai!” Bebin stands up, sets Seana on her hip, and grabs my shoulder. “Your Father won’t listen to you.”

 “Why not?” I answer. “If he sends the soldiers to fix everything then Seana can go home.”

 Bebin smiles sadly at me. “It’s not that simple, dear.”

“Why not?”

“It’s too complicated for you to understand now, but…,” she sighs.

 Axellia and I look at each other, not happy with that answer but knowing to listen to Bebin. I turn back to Seana. She still has tears running down her cheeks, but her face still doesn’t look sad, or scared, or mad. It just looks empty.

 Axellia slowly steps towards Seana. “Your clothes are dirty, do you want some of mine?”

 I look at Seana’s nightgown. It’s not just dirty and torn, it looks thin which means she must be cold.

 “Your Father will get mad,” Seana answers.

 “Why?” she asks.

 “Because, I can only stay here if I work as a servant,” Seana answers. “Servants don’t wear princess dresses. I get caught in one I’ll get thrown on the streets.”

 “I have a brown play dress you can wear,” Axellia says. “All the servants here wear brown. He’ll never know it’s mine.”

 “Now that’s a good idea,” Bebin smiles. “Why don’t you change into Princess Axellia’s play dress? You’ll be much more comfortable.”

 Seana thinks for a moment, then nods, still keeping the same empty expression as Bebin sets her down. Axellia takes Seana’s hand, and Bebin leads the two girls over to Axellia’s wardrobe. I climb on my bed and cover myself in the blankets so I can’t watch Seana changing. Axellia tells me when they’re done. The dress is a little too short for Seana, who is a bit taller than me and Axellia, but it’s better than what she had been wearing.

 “My legs are cold,” she whispers.

 Axellia grabs a pair of her stockings and starts to hand them to Seana, but Bebin stops her.

 “Thank you, dear, but they’ll be too short,” she says.

 I run over to my trunk of clothes and pull out a pair of my socks.

 “What about these?” I ask. “If you don’t roll them down, they’ll reach under your skirt and look like stockings.”

 Bebin smiles as she takes my socks and sets them on Seana’s legs. Both Axellia and I try to give Seana our shoes, but her feet are too small for both pairs, odd seeing as she's so tall. I give her two more sets of my socks and that makes her feet big enough for the shoes to stay on.

 Once she’s dressed, Bebin begins brushing out her hair while she washes her face and hands in our wash basin. While she’s doing that, Axellia and I go through all of Axellia’s hair ribbons and pull out all the black and brown ones to give to Seana. We try to give her the white ones too, but Bebin tells us Father might figure out they're Axellia’s if we give her anything but black and brown. By the time we finish with the hair ribbons, Bebin is done brushing, and begins to braid her hair. 

Axellia and I go looking through our clothes again. Axellia finds another play dress and a brown overskirt that I think she’s supposed to wear when it’s raining to keep the mud off her dress. I find one of my brown shirts to go with it and a brown cape for when it’s cold. We look a little while longer, but we can’t find anything else, so we bring what we have back to Seana, who’s hair is now in two braids.

 “It’s not much,” I say. “But it’s all the brown stuff we have.”

 Seana takes the clothes from us and hugs them to her chest. I guess that means she’s happy, but her face still doesn’t show anything.

 “Thank you,” she says as turns and walks back into Bebin’s room and shuts the door behind her. Bebin turns and looks at us, tears in her eyes, though I don’t know why. She pulls both of us into a hug.

“Blessings,” she whispers. “You’re both sent straight from the Creator, just like your brother was. And I’m sure he’s smiling down on both of the from the Great Kingdom.” She holds us both for a while longer than lets us go. “Now, off to bed, you two. It’s been a long night for all of us.”