The gold bracelet glinted in the moonlight. I would recognize it anywhere.
It was the same as the ones I wore around my own wrist.
Something tore at my heart, fracturing, breaking, tearing out of me. My breath caught in my throat, a sound ringing in my ears so loudly I could barely hear.
No, not a ringing but the rush of water, the River, always there, always stopping me from reaching her.
But not anymore.
“Mother?”
The words felt strange on my lips; it had been so long since I’d said them out loud. I cleared my throat and tried again. “Amma?”
Her skin was weathered, wrinkled as though she were decades older than she was. Her hair was white and long, trailing down to the ground, hiding the backward twist of her feet.
But her eyes. How had I not noticed them before? Her eyes were my mother’s.
I inhaled as those dark eyes roved over me, so similar to my own. I was desperate for her to say something. To embrace me as I remembered her doing. To tell me that she had been looking for me all this time but could never come home.
But she couldn’t do that.
She didn’t have the language, the words, the way to communicate anymore. All that had been stripped from her, melted away as the Court of Salt had taken what it wasn’t owed.
But now, I would give it back.
My wrist was outstretched toward her, the bangles tinkling together, the noise slight underneath the roar of the River, but I could feel the magic in that sound.
“These are yours,” I said, facing my palm out toward her. The moonlight hit the gold at just the right angle, making them glow unnaturally against my dark skin. Her gaze tracked my arm, and then slowly, she raised her own wrist, her hand working on the single bangle that sat there.
She handed it to me and pointed to my chest.
Yours.
I took it from her weathered hands, slipping it on my wrist with the rest of them. The brush of her fingers was feathery, a soft beat of wings.
The Queen gasped behind me, but I didn’t turn to look at her.
I was shaking as I reached out toward my mother, placing a hand on her forehead, feeling the glow of the bangles fuse with my own magic.
Just like with Mishah, the color returned to her hair, her skin, her eyes. Slowly she melted back into the woman I had memories of, her tongue untangled, and she worked her mouth, jaw moving. She arched her feet, and I saw that they weren’t twisted anymore.
“Yaseema?” she whispered, and I closed my eyes at the sound of her voice echoing inside me. It was the voice I’d heard in my head every single day since she’d left.
I’m going across the River, Yaseema. And I’m going to save us all.
“Yes, Amma, it’s me.” I gasped out a sob, losing and gaining everything in the same day. It was so bittersweet, my heart still ripped out of me by losing Kiyan but remade with my mother.
She was here this entire time, watching the wall, trying to get back to me.
We held each other tight, my head against her chest, feeling the beat of her heart as I did when I was young.
The Queen cleared her throat from behind us, and I looked back at her. I thought she’d be confused, but what I didn’t expect was to see her staring at my arm with such intense awe.
“I hate to interrupt,” she said, walking closer to the two of us, not leaving us to our reunion. She pointed at the bangles sitting on my wrist, the three together forming a jasmine flower, just like the peri at the bazaar pointed out.
“But you’re wearing Queen Azari’s crown on your arm.”
Chapter 52
