I float up the steps after her, my legs somewhere else, my body moving in her shadow automatically, like it has always known how to follow her and has just been waiting to do so again. I feel Seth’s heat as he floats along beside me, equally transfixed. I reach down and grab his hand, and we are children again. Him running, me toddling through the halls of Castle Pyka, playing games in our mother’s shadows.
I’m so entranced by her that I hardly notice the changes in the palace. Vaguely, out of the corner of my eye, I see that all of the gold has been stripped. Sconces removed, pots misplaced, paintings missing their frames. Adria’s orders, perhaps, or perhaps my mother’s.
The Grand Vizier. Her white robes are just like the robes Cyrus once wore. This is Adria’s new advisor, I realize with a sudden heart-dropping terror.
Felixknew. He met her. He had to have known who she was, and he lied. Oh gods, when I see him again, I’m going to punch him in his smug face. Heknewmy mother was alive, and he kept it from us.
This is the woman who told Adria to invade Brakkar.
Or is it? Could Felix have lied about that too? Is there a chance he got it wrong?
A rush of emotions comes over me as I remember her journals. All of the terrible things she had said, all of the thingsshe did. This is my mother, the woman who loved me and held me and sang me lullabies, but this is that woman too.
And I betrayed her. Seth and I both did, though we didn’t even know it. We betrayed our family when we turned our backs on Adria.
What is she going to do to us?
She leads us into the library where Ronan held his war council. The room is still clearly being used for the same purpose, only now the markers on the map have switched their positions. I notice that although Adria is aware of the force Ronan has gathered in Pyka, she’s severely underestimating Elia’s legions in Minar.
“Why did you bring them here? Don’t let them see that,” snaps Adria, barely looking at us as she rushes to cover the map with a sheet.
“Did you know?” asks Seth, his voice strangely level. “Did you know she was alive?”
“Fuck you.” Adria looks up at him, her face shiny and red with sunburn, a muscle in her forearm twitching as she grips the table. “I spent weeks looking for you. I thought you were captured, held prisoner. Tortured for information. I waited for the demands to come. A negotiation.”
“And what were you prepared to give up for me?”
“Far more than you were worth.” Her hand tightens into a fist. “Shacked up with an Orsa. Who knew we had two lying whores in this family?”
Seth’s hand ignites first, and then Adria’s. I duck down, not wanting to get caught in their crossfire, but Mother extinguishes both of their flames.
Gods, her magic is strong. She’s been keeping one hell of a secret.
“Adria. Save it. I’d like to hear them out. They are, after all, my children too.” She gestures for Adria to join her at the headof the table, and Adria reluctantly agrees. “Please. Sit,” she says to us.
Seth and I stick together, taking the seats closest to the door.
“Where have you been?” I choke out into the silence that follows. If she has been alive all this time, why not reach out to us? Why did she wait until everything had gone so wrong?
Mother sighs, her hands fidgeting with an amber necklace she’s wearing around her neck. The necklace I wore to the masked ball. Adria must have found it among my things. “I have been many places, most of them unwillingly.” A knock comes at the door. “Give me a moment. Please don’t kill each other.”
The moment she steps outside, Adria and Seth begin to yell.
“When did she arrive? How could you keep this from us? How long have you known?”
“Keep it from you? You nearly cost me everything. Do you know how many of our people died because of you?”
“Because of me? Your attack was reckless. Foolish. I never thought you’d be so stupid—”
“Stupid? I was trying to save yourstupidlife!”
The door slams as Mother reenters. “What did I just say?”
They silence themselves immediately.
“That’s better. Now, as I was saying, I am sorry it took so long for me to return to you. I assure you I did everything I could to get back sooner, but I had no choice—”
“We heard you died,” says Seth, his hand shaking as he reaches for a glass. Mother rises and fills it from a pitcher and then fills one for me as well. “King Aurelian found you after you threatened Ronan. They said you died in your sleep.”
