He’s the father of your child, she reminded herself. Though as Elspeth’s wails turned into distinctly angry howls, that was seeming less and less of a good thing.

Finally, just when she thought that her head was going to split, she heard the sound of feet running into the nursery and the howls cut off—and lest she worry that someone else had put a pillow over the baby’s face, she heard suckling and cooing noises. The wet nurse had been found, it seemed. Her Highness was now satisfied.

If only His Highness could be satisfied so easily.

She sighed, and pinched the bridge of her nose to try and ease the pain in her head. Demands for attention, demands for service, wanting everything now, this moment, totally self-centered…

Perfectly reasonable in an infant.

Not so attractive in her father. And unfortunately, at this late date he was unlikely to grow out of it. Things seemed dreadfully clear, all of a sudden—when she wasn’t looking into those beautiful eyes, and listening to that honey-sweet voice whispering in her ear. When she had been sleeping alone for far too long. When she realized that the demands were never, ever going to stop, and she began to understand Caryo’s antipathy to him—and wonder which Karath was the real one.

What was I thinking? she thought with despair. What have I done?

She dropped her head into her hands, and for a moment, gave way to the despair.

She who had been afraid of being trapped had trapped herself. She was trapped within the hard shell of the Crown, trapped with an infant she had not really planned for, trapped with a husband who was—

Face it, Selenay—who is beginning to look like someone who put on a show for you.

She wanted, suddenly, to get away, away from the Palace, away from the Crown. Not forever, just for a few candlemarks, where she could be just Selenay, not the Queen, not a mother, just herself. She needed to be able to think clearly, and she couldn’t even think at all with the baby fussing in the next room. Something had changed between her and Karath; she needed to figure out what it was, and somehow get things back to the way they had been before that terrible quarrel.

If she could. She had to think about that, too. She had to be able to step back from the whole situation and try to look at it objectively, as if this was Selenay sitting in judgment in the City Courts.

If only she could go somewhere that held no memories of the Prince, where she could be herself entirely again, the Selenay she used to be.