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Anya trained her gaze on her father, direct and open. And watched as something impatient moved over his face. With possibly more than a little distaste, mixed right in.
“My God, Anya,” he said. And when he spoke, that distaste was unmistakable. He didn’t quite recoil, but managed to give the impression that he might at any moment. “You’ve become completely unglued.” His gaze, so much like her own, sharpened in a way she hoped hers never had. She found she was bracing herself, though she couldn’t have said why when she knew him. There was no point bracing for the inevitable, was there? “Unglued, emotional, and pitiful. Just like your mother.”
He meant it like a bomb, and it exploded inside her like a blinding flash of light. She stared back at him, seeing nothing but his gaze like a machete, aimed right at her.
Aimed to hurt. To leave wounds.
On some level, Anya was aware that her father, brimming with triumph at the blow he’d landed, had turned and was marching for the door. She met her stepmother’s gaze, bright blue and stricken, but all either one of them could do was stare. Then Charisma, too, scurried for the exit.
And once the door was open, the room filled up again. There was laughter again, sunlight and brightness and that glorious sense of expectation and hope that Anya herself had felt so keenly earlier.
She was aware of all of it. She smiled for her photographs. She shook hands, smiled wider, and did her job as the Queen she would shortly become.
Yet all the while, the bomb her father had lobbed at her kept blowing up inside her. Over and over again.
But not, she thought, in the way he’d intended it to.
Because all she could seem to concentrate on were memories of her mother she’d have sworn she didn’t have.
She’d been seven when her mother died. Anya wasn’t one of those who had memories dating back to the cradle, but she did have memories. That was the point. When all this time she’d convinced herself she didn’t.
“You are brave, Anya,”her mother had used to whisper to her. She would gather Anya in her lap, tucked away in the corner of the house that was only theirs. Sometimes she would read books. Other times, she would have Anya tell stories about her day. About school, her friends, her teachers. Or perhaps her stuffed animals, if that was a mood Anya was in.“You are brave and you are fierce. You can do anything you want to do, do you hear me?”
“I hear you, Mama,”Anya would reply.
What she remembered now was that when she’d thought of all the things she could do, it had never been becoming a doctor. She had been far more interested in learning how to fly, with or without wings, much less a plane. And dancing, which she had loved more than anything back then, despite her distinct lack of talent or ability. And the masterpieces she’d created with her crayons, that she’d secretly believed were the sort of thing she ought to do forever, if only as a gift to the world.
Anya remembered walking in the backyard holding tight to her mother’s hand, listening intently as Mama had pointed out a bird here, a bug there. She had repeated the names of flowers and plants, all the trees that towered over them, then made up stories to explain the tracks in the dirt.
She remembered her mother’s laugh, her joyful smile, and if she focused as hard as she could, she was convinced that she could almost remember the particular smell of her mother’s skin, right in the crook of her neck where Anya liked to rest her face when she was sleepy. Or sick.
Or just because.
Once one memory returned to her, all the rest followed suit. She was flooded with them. And it was clear to her, when it was finally time and she was led from her rooms, that somehow, this was her mother’s way of being here today.
It was what her private moment with her father should have been, yet wasn’t. All these memories dressed up more brightly now, and almost better for having been lost to her for so many years.
Because it felt like her mother was here. Right here. With her she walked through the palace halls, surrounded by Tarek’s sisters and aunts. It was as if her mother was holding fast to her hand all over again, her simple presence making Anya feel safe. Happy.
And absolutely certain that there was nothing wrong with her. No psychological damage from her time in jail. Just hope.
Anya knew, then, that every step she took was right and good, and better still, her mother was beside her for all of it.
She waited outside the great ballroom, open today to the even grander courtyard beyond, and she knew something else, too. As surely and as fully as if the words were printed deep into her own flesh. As if they were scars like Tarek’s, angry and red at first, then fading into silver with the passage of time.
But scars all the same.
Because her heart was pounding at her. Her stomach was fluttery. But she knew that none of that was panic.
She thought of her long-lost mother and the things she’d said so long ago. That Anya was brave and fierce, capable of choosing any life she wanted. Anya had believed her.
Anya believed her so hard, so completely, that when she was gone it was as if she’d taken all of that with her.
Without her, Anya had never felt brave. Or anything like fierce. And she hadn’t known what she wanted, except her mother back.
But that was never on offer.
And without her mother there, there was nothing to temper her father’s coldness. Back then, he’d been a different man. She could remember him, too. Never as warm as her mother had been, but he’d smiled then. He’d laughed. He’d danced with her mother in the backyard on warm summer nights, and held Anya between them, her bare feet on his shoes. In every way that mattered, she’d lost both her parents when her mother died.
