you, child development, and biology in general, are not my areas of expertise, but I know they’ve done studies on these early life experiences and they’re crucial to the emotional well-being of a person. If they aren’t given the proper attention now, they may never be able to form attachments in the future.”
Sayid regarded her, his eyes dark, fathomless. “That I believe.”
“I mean, they’ve actually looked at CAT scans of the brains of children who have experienced stable nurturing and those who haven’t. It changes them on a physical level. Parts of their brain cease to function properly and...and...I doubt you want that for a ruler, do you?”
“Naturally not,” he said, clipped.
“I’ve been...I’ve been taking care of him,” she said, her throat tightening. “Breastfeeding him. What do you think it would do to him to be separated from me? I’m his only stability.”
“And what do you think letting him cry is doing to his psyche?” he asked, his tone hard.
She brushed past him and went toward the bassinet, her heart in her throat. She bent down and pulled him gently into her arms. Holding him still didn’t feel natural. It made her nervous. Always afraid she wasn’t supporting his head just right. And the soft spot. Yes, she knew there was a reason for it to be there, but it terrified her to the core. It highlighted just how vulnerable he was. How breakable.
Sayid watched Chloe pull the child in to her body, her arms wrapped around him securely but gently. She didn’t look like a natural, didn’t look at ease. Her blue eyes were huge, her lips tightened into a firm line, denoting her fear and concentration.
The sight created a strange tightness in his chest, a heaviness that made it difficult to breathe. Her discomfort was evident. The fact that she didn’t want to do this, or that she, at the very least, didn’t love it, was evident. Yet she felt compelled to fight to stay in Aden’s life. Had cared for him, protected him, from the moment he was born. Because she was bonded to him, her loyalty deep and strong.
Loyalty he understood. Honor. The need to protect others at the expense of yourself. He saw it all in that moment, etched across her face.
“Six months,” he said.
She looked up at him, her expression cautious. “Six months of what?”
“You may come back to Attar, to the palace, for six months and serve as his nanny for the purposes of maintaining the fiction of his birth for the public eye. It’s a reasonable step. Logical to believe we secured a woman who is able to nurse the child, as he’s lost his mother.”
“I...oh...I...”
“I will make the announcement to the press that Aden was born just before Tamara’s death and that until we knew his health was stable we wanted no intrusion.”
“What will people think...that you kept something like that from them?”
“They will understand,” he said, his voice, his certainty, echoing in the room. “There is no other option. Rashid wished to keep it a secret, and so it will be kept secret.”
“Tamara said...she said if people knew they might think that it was down to some sort of faithlessness on her part.”
He shook his head once. “Not everyone. Anyone who knew her would never have thought so. But certainly yes, you have factions of the population who regard infertility as a link to some sort of sin on the woman’s part.”
“They wanted to avoid that,” she said. “And now...now it’s even more important, isn’t it? Now that he’s the only one left.”
She looked down at the top of Aden’s fuzzy head, her expression dazed.
“Yes,” he said. The helplessness of the child, his tiny size, delicate body, filled him with a sense of unease. He had the sense of fingers being curled around his neck, cutting off his air. He had felt ill at ease ever since assuming the throne. He was not a diplomat, not a man to sit and do paperwork or make polite conversation with visiting dignitaries.
The press knew it. Took every chance to compare him with the sheikh they had lost. The sheikh that had been born to rule with the one that had only been bred to fight.
And now there was this. This baby. This woman. The child might very well be his salvation, the one that would take his place on the throne. But right now...now he was a baby. Small. Helpless.
It made him think of another helpless life, one he had been powerless