Rayfa was an excellent baby, small and plump, with a shock of thick, dark hair. She didn't cry much but when she did it was a loud, demanding cry worth of her royal lineage.

"She has Amara's eyes," Ga'ran said.

"You mean your eyes," Inga said, as if he had any idea what they looked like.

As Rayfa wriggled and fussed - no doubt at being held by a lowly peasant - she head-butted the servant that was bottle-feeding her.

"That's my girl," Inga said, pleased.

#

"Look at me! Look at me!" Rayfa yelled.

Inga looked up from his paperwork because, why not? Orders to execute could wait another fifteen minutes. Rayfa moved her clumsy toddler limbs through the first few steps of the Dance of Devotion, that she'd already started to practice.

"Excellent. Again," Inga ordered.

Rayfa shrieked, gleeful, then did another little dance.

"Now spin in circles until you get dizzy and fall over."

Rayfa at this age had a joyful scream of a laugh that almost made not seeing the joy on her face worth it. A royal guard once described it as piercing. How convenient that his police had found that guard secretly associating with rebels, so Inga could get rid of him.

Rayfa continued to laugh as she tumbled to the floor. She only laughed like that when Ga'ran wasn't in the room, which meant it was Inga's gift alone.

#

It was worth the increasingly strong pain killers to lift her on his back and pretend to be her royal chariot as they romped around his private quarters. Every time.

#

Rayfa's hair was like strands of raw silk falling over a weaver's hands - as befitting of a future queen. Nayna (Amara) moved gentle fingers through Rayfa's hair. Then Nayna (no, Amara) tidied it with priceless heirloom combs and impossibly expensive hair accessories. Only the best for Inga's little girl.

He'd taken to watching Nayna (Amara) fix up Rayfa's hair into improbably complicated shapes whenever he could to avoid another embarrassing incident. More, to avoid the sadness in Rayfa's voice at the thought that her father might not recognise her. Nobody should make his little girl cry, not even himself.

Nayna (Amara, he reminded himself, not safe old Nayna but powerful, dangerous Amara, a concealed threat) finished the loops of Rayfa's new hairstyle.

"What do you think?" Nayna asked.

"Beautiful," Inga said.

With his many skills and Nayna attending to Rayfa like this, it was easy to wonder why he and Rayfa needed Garan at all.

#

And it was also hugs and kisses. Crayon and pencil drawings. Fights over bedtime. Rayfa wanting dessert before dinner and he ignoring everyone else at the dinner table to make her eat her vegetables. The pride he felt the first time she performed the Dance of Devotion and correctly executed the divination séance on her own in the Hall of Justice.

The years ran by much too fast. He tried to hold as many memories of her as he could, even as they faded like faces.

#

Inga wasn't going to let anyone get in the way of his relationship with his daughter. He didn't like that spiky haired blue suited lawyer nosing around trying to influence Rayfa. And he wasn't going to let that bastard Dhurke take her away. Three shots in the back (three cracks in the dark, three injections of lead). Any father would do it.

Later, in that tomb for the living, as he died at the hands of the faceless dead to the sound of distant laughter, as he finally succumbed to the pain, he realised he was leaving Rayfa without a father after all.

###

When all the madness of the trial is over, and everyone has been dismissed from the hall, and people are slowly leaving the accused lobby, Rayfa watches Barbed Head give something to her new big bother. She can tell they're talking about her because they keep looking over at her. They should learn to be more subtle. Rayfa crosses her arms and scowls - don't they know she's been through enough?

Braid Head comes to her later, holding whatever it is in his hands. A file of pictures, perhaps.

"You should have this," he says. "In spite of everything he was, it is clear he loved you."

She can only be thankful that nobody else is there to witness her tears.