Roxy froze, a chicken bone halfway to her plate.
Her plan?
Her plan was to wait twenty days, steal the Key, which was currently drooling in a stroller, open the Treasury Gate, and vanish into the ether, leaving him alone with a broken heart and a single-parent household.
She couldn't say that.
But she couldn't lie, either. Not completely. Not after the intimacy of the birth and the shared meal.
Roxy set the bone down. She wiped her hands on a napkin, stalling for time.
"My plan," she started, her voice steady despite the frantic drumming of her heart, "is to make sure he survives."
She gestured to Zale, who was fast asleep, his tiny chest rising and falling under the purple silk.
"He has legs, Caspian," Roxy said softly. "The court will hate him for it. They will call him a mutant. They will say he is weak because he cannot swim the currents like a true Mer."
She looked up at Caspian, channeling every ounce of her protective mother-bear energy to mask her guilt.
