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As I stare down at the Shrike, the battle still raging beyond us, memories rise, a dark miasma I put to rest a lifetime ago. Blonde hair and eyes as blue as a Serran summer sky. A barge traveling along the River Rei, north, toward Serra. Long hours with her inside a cabin brightly lit with multifaceted Tribal lamps and strewn with pillows of a thousand colors. The comfortingthunk-thunk-thunkof my father’s men keeping guard on the decks.
A green string that danced in her hands, transforming into a broom and cat’s whiskers, a pointed hat, a ladder, a man with oysters on his back.
How do you do it?I remember asking.
Magic, little lovey, she said.
Show me, Mama.
Then strange sounds above us. The ominous steps of heavy boots. Shouts and smoke. Fire and unfamiliar faces pouring through the door, grabbing me. Grabbing my mother.
“You were a child.” The Blood Shrike brings me back to the killing field. To the battle. “It’s not your fault the Resistance took your mother. It’s not your fault they hurt her.”
I release the Shrike and stagger back. Yes, I was a child. A child who did nothing but watch as Scholar rebels killed off our guards and the bargecaptain. A child who was struck dumb even as my mother and I were kidnapped and taken to a grimy mountain lair. A child who wept and wailed as, in the room next to mine, those rebels tortured my mother.
A child who did nothing as her mother screamed.
And screamed.
And screamed.
The rebels wanted to get at my father. They wanted to strike a blow at one of the great Martial houses. But by the time he came, she was already dead.
“Your mother tried to be brave, Keris,” the Blood Shrike says, and I am so startled she’s still talking that I don’t bother to silence her. The Shrike should be dead. Why isn’t she dead yet?
“Your mother tried to be silent, but the rebels hurt her. The screams scared you at first. She could hear you begging them to stop hurting her.”
My own mother. My first love. I cried and then I begged and then I shouted at her to stop screaming because her cries drove me mad. She was weak. So weak. But I was weak too. I could have been silent. I could have been strong for her and I wasn’t—
“You were a child, Keris,” the Blood Shrike says, though I did not speak my thoughts out loud. Did I?
“What the Scholar rebels did to you and your mother was unforgivable. But what you did—crying out for her to stop screaming—skies, she forgave you for that the moment it happened. She only wants to see you again.”
The earth trembles, and a great groan splits the air. But I hardly notice, unable to look away from the Shrike. She staggers to her feet, not defeated as I expected, but grimly determined.
“She waits for you, Keris.”
Distantly, I sense the shadow that spins out of the battle seething around us. It slides a blade across the back of my legs, hamstringing me, and I drop—not understanding what has happened. The shadow knocks my scim free and whirls in front of me.
Then it throws its hood back and I am face-to-face with my own handiwork, a ghost out of the past, and my mind goes blank. For the first time in a long time, I am surprised.
“You die by my hand, Keris Veturia,” whispers Mirra of Serra, very much alive and still wretchedly scarred, her blue eyes burning with murderous fervor. Her blade is at my throat. “I wanted you to know.”
I could stop her. The Blood Shrike sees and screams a warning at Mirra, for instinct had me drawing a blade the moment she stepped out of the fray.
But I think of my mother.She waits for you, Keris.
And Mirra’s blade finds its mark.
Pain burns through my neck as the Lioness shoves the dagger into my throat, as she drags it across. She does not know my strength, that even bleeding out like this, I can stab her thigh, tear a hole into her that will leave her dead in moments. Even dying, I can destroy her.
But quite suddenly, I am not on the battlefield anymore. I rise above it, above my body, which is nothing but a shell now. Weak and useless and growing cold in the mud.
A great, violent maelstrom swirls down toward my army, tearing through it, annihilating it before my eyes.
“Lovey?”
“Mama.” I turn. And it isher, my mother, who I have mourned in the forgotten corners of my soul. Her smile is radiant, hitting me with the force of a sunrise. I reach out my hand to her.
