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And she continued her story: “I left absolutely everything behind. Rohn supported me the whole time; I didn’t have anything with me. I took only some clothes. So I came back and waited. I couldn’t even bring myself to call Tay and tell him I was here. But fortunately, two days later he showed up on his own, and I begged him to forgive me. It wasn’t good for a long time before he started talking to me more again. But he agreed that we would finish the agreement and then divorce, with me keeping everything as we had originally arranged.”

She fell silent and looked toward the door, behind which Sheena could be heard announcing her awakening. She went to check on her. “Excuse me for a moment.”

…

While she was with Sheena, Mario was amused by the sweet comments drifting in from the bedroom. He stood up to stretch a bit and noticed a photograph pinned to the refrigerator. It was from the maternity ward—Tay holding Sheena right after her birth. Or rather, someone who looked like Tay, but with a face he had never known. He nodded and, with the same happiness the photograph conveyed to him, sighed in disbelief.

“What did you do to him?” he pointed at the photo when Mishi returned with Sheena.

“Me?” Mishi laughed softly, gently rocking the baby. “I certainly didn’t do anything. This little rascal did. Tay doesn’t look at me like that,” she added cheerfully, and all the gloom of the earlier topics vanished.

“Maybe he does when you’re not looking,” Mario doubted, taking his goddaughter from her arms. In that instant he understood why Mishi, even with such a heavy fate, shone so brightly. He admired their small miracle. “She really is beautiful.”

“Yes,” Mishi agreed tenderly, and together they watched Sheena from close by.

“Like you,” Mario whispered after a moment, looking into Mishi’s eyes in a way she had experienced from him a few times before, always with a word too many. “You’re still such a fragile, enchanting little cat.”

Seeing Mishi’s pleasure, he tried to move closer.

“Better have some pie, you old tomcat,” she cut him off at once, knowingly.

Mario held that longing gaze on Mishi’s lips for a moment longer before breaking into amused laughter.

“I will, I will… looks like pie is all that’s left for me,” he returned Sheena to her mother’s arms. He obediently took up the second plate and went on: “But I’m glad you’re happy, little mouse. That I put you two together well in the end, right?”

Mishi smiled at how Mario liked to take credit. But this time she could only agree: “Perfectly.”

…

She went to put the now-calmed Sheena down again, and Mario, his cheeks stuffed with pie, once more studied the photograph that fascinated him so much. When Mishi returned, he launched eagerly:

“No, you still have to explain this to me. Today I saw Tay tear into his intelligence officer like a killer just because two completely irrelevant lines were swapped on a page. Before I left, he looked like he had a sour pickle in his mouth and didn’t want to discuss anything with me. He said that if I told him anything about my breakup, he’d open a window and jump out on the spot. Tell me how you got this out of a man like him,” he pointed at the photo. “And I mean it seriously—how did you even find this side of him under all that ice and stone he has instead of a soul?! Because I’ve known him personally longer than you, and I’d dare say he’s told me things he’ll never tell you. And still, I couldn’t imagine in my wildest dreams that he was capable of this. This grinning man simply isn’t Tay Taris!”

Mishi burst out laughing. She pictured the poor intelligence officer and could have quoted word for word what Tay had been shouting at him. Then she quieted, realizing she might wake the sleeper in the next room.

“As you said, I’m just magical,” she giggled softly. “But at first… at first I had to cheat a little. I found something that allows Tay, for a moment, not to be Tay.”

Mario frowned, not quite understanding, and watched her radiant face slowly turn nostalgic.

“But no, that’s not entirely true either,” she corrected herself. “For a long time, I also thought Tay was… cold and irritable. That his life was in the palace, and ours was just a pile of paperwork to him. Just that stupid agreement.

But when I came back from Rohn and he found me here, crying in the dark like the biggest idiot under the sun, he did something I truly did not expect.”