Dimitri's POV

Rose was so gentle with Sunshine and yet still firm enough to stay in control of the situation. She hadn't wanted to become a mother so young, I was well aware of that, but she was doing a wonderful job, even if the child wasn't her own. I chanced a glance at the rearview mirror every once in a while and felt a strange tightness in my chest at the sight.

Once upon a time, I'd dreamed of a family with Rose, but then this entire situation had ruined any plans either of us had had. I looked at them again, and a horribly selfish thought crossed my mind. What if we didn't bring the child to Christian? What if we followed Rose's initial plan and simply disappeared? All three of us? Rose and I would never be able to have biological children, in any case. This would have been a perfect opportunity for us…

Sunshine said something that ripped me from my thoughts just then. "She said she recognised me by my eyes."

I hadn't been able to make the connection when I'd first seen her, and it surprised me that someone else had. Then again, maybe someone had been looking out for just that sort of thing. It wasn't something one should have worried about, but when I looked at Rose through the rearview mirror, I knew she blamed herself.

"It's not your fault," I told her. No one could have expected any of this. Not the recognition, and certainly not the dreams. After all this time, she still held herself to an impossibly high standard. "You did the best you could, I know you did."

She let out a huff and shook her head. "Yeah, right. And I still failed."

"Roza," I said quietly. My heart hurt for her. She truly believed that, and there wasn't anything I could do or say to change it. I still tried. "You didn't. She's alive and well, isn't she?"

It wasn't Rose who spoke next but Sunshine.

"Can I ask a question now?" Rose must have nodded because the girl continued, "Where are we going?"

My mind went back to my earlier idea for a second. I could turn around and drive the other direction and… no. No, it wasn't an option. Our duty was to Christian and Vasilisa, and though we had initially thought the answers to be at Court, we knew better now. It was up to us to solve this mystery and bring their family back together. To make sure I wouldn't selfishly change the plan, I told the girl, "We're going to see your father."

Not surprisingly, all hell broke loose in the backseat at this revelation. Sunshine started bombarding Rose, who was most definitely glaring at the back of my head, with questions. She spoke too fast to distinguish between words, but it wasn't hard to understand what she wanted to know. Who was her father, where was he, and why were we going to meet him?

Rose did an admirable job of calming the girl down while I decided it was probably better if I kept quiet and focused on the road for now. Eventually, Rose was able to speak for more than a few seconds, and she explained that Christian had been nearby for a while, but he had been hurt and therefore they couldn't meet yet. The next part of her explanation must have hurt the poor child, but it was better if she found out now rather than later that her father would not only not recognise her but had, in fact, no idea she even existed at all. We, like the rest of the world, had been under the impression that the Queen had miscarried after the assassination attempt, and Christian had been devastated when he'd heard the news. He'd run away more than once to try to get to Court, too, but I'd always found him first. I was quite certain he still resented me for that after all these years. If finding out his child was alive had been a shock to me, I couldn't even begin to imagine what it would be like for him.

But I supposed I wouldn't have to imagine. In just under twenty minutes, we would reach the motel. I had warned Viktoria that we would come by and that we'd bring a guest, and I'm sure she'd passed the message along to Christian, but neither of them had any idea who we were bringing to their doorstep.

I heard Sunshine ask another question. A hopeful one, but she wouldn't like the answer.

"Will we meet my... mother, too?"

Rose was silent for a long while before she whispered, "No. No, not just yet."

"Oh." Sunshine tried to hide her disappointment, but if I caught it, Rose most definitely did, too. "Will he tell me about her? My... father?"

That was a good question, actually. How much could we let her now? Was it better for her to know the entire truth so she knew what we were up against? Clearly, whoever had visited her dreams already knew who she was. It wasn't up to me to decide that, though.

In fact, it wasn't up to Rose, either. We were about to hand over Sunshine to her father, and that meant taking away Rose's role as a stand-in parent for the child. I hadn't considered that aspect of this whole endeavour, and it dawned on me that this might have been hard on Rose, too. She had not only been a guardian but essentially a mother to Sunshine for nearly a decade at this point. It couldn't be easy for her to let that go.

"I'm sure he will," Rose eventually told the girl, but I saw the pain behind her eyes when I chanced a glance at her. "But you probably shouldn't push him if he doesn't answer all your questions right away, okay?"

Sunshine hummed, and I had the strangest suspicion she was absolutely not going to listen to Rose's advice. She may not have been her biological daughter, but she had been raised by her, and that would have left a mark. Surely, Sunshine would have picked up some of Rose's more bothersome traits and behaviours over time, and her impatience was very likely one of them.

There was a rather uncomfortable silence in the car from then on, and I was almost tempted to turn the radio on, but I didn't. It wasn't likely that we were going to be followed but never impossible. Better to stay aware of our surroundings just in case. And so we drove in silence until we eventually arrived at the motel where Christian and my sister were staying.

I was the first to get out of the car, with Sunshine following right after. Rose, though, was still sitting in the backseat. She closed her eyes for a few seconds and probably took a couple deep breaths before she, too, stepped out of the car.

"Ready?" she asked Sunshine.

The girl took a moment before she answered. She was practically vibrating with excitement, but there was nervousness, too. "Yes."

And so we made our way to Christian's motel room, ready to turn his world upside down again.

Author's Note:

Apologies for the short chapter but I haven't had a lot of time to write at all and actually wrote this during my linguistics lecture yesterday. (Absolutely despise that class, I'm only taking it because all the interesting classes are in the summer term but I still need lots of credits and don't want to have to take ten classes next semester lol)

Also, THANK YOU guys so much for all the kind comments!