I’d held good on my word to Sydney. I’d gone back on my meds, silencing both spirit and Aunt Tatiana. It had also quieted the bond between Jill and me. She still had a sense of me but no longer the intimate view into my heart and mind like she’d once had. Before I could say more to her, a plaintive wail made its way to us.

“The little master awakes,” I said. “Be right back.”

I sprinted out of the room and up the stairs, to the bedroom that doubled as both a nursery and Eddie’s room. I had high enough royal rank to finally be assigned my own guardian, and Eddie, in that noble way of his, had pulled strings to be assigned to us. I’d initially protested because I wanted him to stay at Court and have a semi-normal dating life with Jill. Eddie, however, felt obligated to be with us—both out of friendship to Sydney and me and for all the times Neil had helped him. We’d offered to turn the house’s small study into Eddie’s own bedroom, but he always ended up sleeping in Declan’s room anyway.

“Hey, buddy,” I said, walking over to the crib. Declan stood there in fire truck pajamas, watching me seriously with big brown eyes. His dark curls were tousled from sleep, but he beamed as I approached and lifted him out. “Did you have a good nap? We have guests, you know. Aunt Jill is back.”

Declan leaned his head against me and yawned, not responding. He was only a year and a half and not much of a conversationalist. Only a few of us knew his true age, however. To the rest of the world, we said he was just over a year old.

That was because we were also telling the rest of the world that he was my and Sydney’s son.

Neil had been convinced it was the only way to give Declan a chance at an ordinary life, and we’d finally respected Neil’s wishes to stay in hiding. There was no other family to care for Declan; Nina had never recovered. Even if we’d passed Declan off as Olive’s son, whom we were raising on her behalf, there might still be too many questions about his father. But if we, a Moroi and a human, said we had a dhampir son, there was no reason for anyone to think we weren’t telling the truth.