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That was before I saw my powers siphon the life from people. Before I watched their bodies wither to shells at my mind’s command. Before I became a weapon.
Behind me, the door creaks, and glass slippers clink against the floor. Familiar enough to recognize the woman wearing them.
I shift to face her and give a stiff nod like that will keep me from shattering. “Mother.”
“Kirran. My dear — my boy…” She extends a delicate hand and starts toward me, her crimson and amber gown sparkling in the patchy sunlight.
I take a step back, into the shadows my canopy bed makes on the stone floor between us.
Emotion floods my chest, pulling me down until I sink onto the mattress. The clean linen scent washes over me. That makes it worse — that the servants didn’t clean the room but did freshen the sheets. Probably in preparation for a woman to join me in it. Within days.
Like I’m ready for that. For any of this.
I press a hand to my forehead, flinch at the sensation of fabric, and rip off the gloves. They land on the floor with a soft pat.
My mother hasn’t moved from her spot near the doorway, but I can feel her gaze slide over my hands. Her dress rustles. “I’m so glad to see you, darling.”
“No.” It comes out choked. I grip my knees, my attention on the mahogany skin set against my black trousers. Shadows make my hands the inky color of wet leaf mold, but sunlight reveals the ruddy brown tinge — a sickening shade that sucks all light into it. “Don’t call me that.”
She inhales but falls silent.
She stays that way so long that I peek up to see if she’s still there.
Her tender smile meets me first. Unshed tears glitter in her golden eyes. She tips her head to the side, and the rubies on her crown glimmer. “Do you think I love you less than your brothers?” A soft step closer. “That my heart doesn’t sing to see you?”
“I know it doesn’t.” Bitterness I don’t intend for her laces the words, and I rip my gaze away. But I can’t stop talking, spewing feelings I thought I’d long since subdued. “How could you be happy? How can you not —” My voice hitches. I grit my teeth and try again. “How can you not be…disappointed thatI’mthe one left?”
“Kirran.” Another rush of fabric, and she’s in front of me, kneeling. Her smooth, light brown hands grip my red ones. “I haveneverbeen disappointed in you.”
She waits until I look up, then smirks, mischief in her eyes that once mirrored my own. Before war ripped me to shreds and reassembled me as this.
“Annoyed with you at times, yes,” she says, “and exasperated, definitely. More often than I was with your brothers. But you are only joy. Seeing you…” She unwraps one hand from mine and touches my cheek. My breath falters, and I set my jaw. “I’m so deeply glad you’re home, my love.”
Everything in her manner melts too much of my resolve.
“Father’s not.” It comes out weak. Like a little boy’s voice. I haven’t been that in a long time.
She shakes her head and squeezes my hands as if she doesn’t notice the color or know what it means. “He is in his own way. Grief touches us all differently. As does fear.”
Grief and fear. Two things I know. Too well.
We sniff in unison, and she stands and shifts back. “By the way, this isn’t the room you were intended to stay in. Hence —” She gestures to the leaves and then the cobwebs in the canopy above me. I hadn’t noticed those before. Her expression turns solemn as she looks back at me. “You were to be brought to the bedchamber of the crown prince.”
A shudder seizes my chest, rebellion burning as sharply as the pain. “But I’m not —”
“You are, love.”
“I want this room.” I let out a breath and focus on the floor between us until I steady myself. “My room.”
She peers down at me, purses her lips, and nods. “Very well. I will inform the servants, then. For bathing purposes, use your brother’s room. Until they get everything ready here.”
It’s slight, but I hear it — in the way she won’t use Farrid’s name. What must it be like to have had four sons and only welcome home one? We grieve the same absences, but she’s right. We grieve differently.
She grieves as one who did not get to say goodbye.
I grieve as the one who watched two of them die.
Her voice pulls me from the ravaged battlefields, the human and fey soldiers strewn across the countryside. “You’ll be able to retire here tonight, after the ball.”
