Page 98 of Tale of the Heart Queen

She directs me to a bench, and we settle on it. I have so many questions and don’t know where to start.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you more about who you are,” she starts. “I thought I’d have more time, and you were so young. I didn’t want to frighten you. I thought . . .”

She shakes her head. “I thought I’d have more time.”

“How much do you know?” I ask. “About us now?”

“Only some things,” she answers. “Tell me, what happened after we died?”

I take a deep breath. “Are you sure you want to hear? It’s not . . . pretty.”

She clutches a hand to her heart. “My children’s pain will always be mine, too, Lor. I knew that from the moment I laid eyes on your brother. It is the lot of a mother to wear her heart outside of herself from the moment her children are born.”

“Okay,” I say, again laying out my truth.

And this time, it is the truth. I give her everything. Every ugly moment and every secret I know. She accepts it all with stoicism, but I see the pain that passes behind her eyes.

She doesn’t ask me to stop. She doesn’t ask for anything but the cold, unvarnished truth.

When I’m done speaking, I feel like I’ve been talking for hours, my throat hoarse and sweat beading on my forehead. She started crying a while ago, quiet tears running down her face.

“I’m so sorry, Lor. I wish . . .”

I take her hand and squeeze it. “No. Let’s not do that. Let’s not make this anyone’s fault but those who caused all of this. I admit I’ve spent time being angry with you for leaving us all in the dark, but I understand it, too. I love you, and I miss you, and I don’t want to spend whatever time we have here debating who was right or wrong. I know that you did your best.”

The words come out in a rush, and the look she gives me nearly breaks my heart. She touches my cheek in the way only a mother can and smiles.

“I knew you would grow up to be someone remarkable, Lor. I knew your heart was always as big as the sea. Even when you seemed intent on making foolish decisions, you’d always find a way to come back from them.”

I can’t help the tears that continue to fall. They come in coursing, endless waves, channeling every moment that I’ve missed this woman with every piece of my heart. She wraps me in her arms as I cry and cry, giving everything to my mother, who couldn’t be there to comfort me through the years. They wash away a darkened slice of my soul that I thought was broken forever, her love and her touch healing over scabbed wounds scratched deep under the surface.

It is a cleansing. A rebirth. But I already know I won’t be allowed to keep her forever.

As I cry, she cries too, and after a while, we finally pull away again.

“What are you doing here?” I ask, and my mother shakes her head.

“I come on behalf of the first Heart Queen of the Second Age, Amara.”

“You do? Why? Where have you been?”

“She thought it might be better to hear it all from me,” she says. “And I’ve been with your father.”

“Is he here too?” I ask, hope flaring in my chest, but she shakes her head.

“Alas, it could only be us. A former Primary and her future.”

“Oh,” I say, trying not to let that disappoint me too much. My mother is here, and that’s more than I ever dreamed possible.

“Where is he? Where have you been?”

“We were granted passage into the Evanescence upon our deaths,” my mother says. “The Artefacts agreed that while I never ascended, they would still afford us that honor.”

I remember what Cedar and Elswyth said when we were in The Woodlands, realizing this explains why they never found our parents’ bodies. Though Tristan and I fantasized for a brief second that they might be alive, the truth is actually comforting, because they deserved this as their resting place.

“Why?” I ask.

“Because of you, my girl,” she says. “While my destiny as the Heart Queen was never meant to be, it lives on in you.”