I laughed. “You likely will.”

“Your laugh.” Ezra stepped toward me and then stopped. “I have never heard you laugh like that before.”

“Really?” I felt my cheeks warming.

Her eyes glimmered. “You and Nyktos? He called you his wife.”

“He did.” Now my cheeks were really burning. “We are married.”

“And you love him?”

“I do.”

Ezra smiled. “That is lovely to hear when he’s clearly besotted with you.”

Then Ezra shocked me.

She reached between us and took my hand in hers. I experienced a rolling tremor as I felt her warm skin against my palm.

“I am happy for you, sister.”

Sister.

“Thank you,” I said hoarsely.

She released my hand, and I turned away, still feeling her skin against mine. I said goodbye to Marisol, or at least I thought I did. I was in a state of shock.

Ezra had touched me and had done it so casually. I could count on one hand how many times she had done that in the past.

If she had only done so because of who I was now, I didn’t care. It didn’t matter.

“Seraphena.” My mother rose in a quiet rustle of silk. “May we speak? In private?”

Age-old tension crept in, erasing the shock. My feelings when it came to my mother were still as complicated as ever, even though I had a little better understanding of why she was who she was. Still, I was about to say no because I didn’t need to continue allowing her to hurt me.

And that was both for my sake and hers.

But I remembered what I had seen snippets of, and what Ward had shared.

My namesake.

“We can,” I said, and Nektas didn’t look even remotely thrilled about that. “It’s okay,” I told him. “Can you give us a couple of minutes?”

“Do I have to?” Nektas didn’t take his eyes off my mother.

“Yes.” I walked past him, touching his arm. His bright gaze met mine. “Do not scare them.”

He huffed.

Without even looking back at Ezra, I knew she was brimming with excitement about the prospect of having a few moments alone with the very first draken.

Actually, as I closed the doors behind me, I was more worried about him than I was about her.

My mother waited across the hall, standing at one of the windows overlooking the moonlit gardens. She faced me, expression without emotion in the soft, buttery light of the gas lamps.

Maybe I should be worried about myself.

“Thank you for speaking with me,” she said.

I stopped a few feet from her.

She clasped her hands together and cleared her throat. “I don’t know where to start, and we surely do not have enough time for that.”

“No, we don’t.”

A faint smile appeared. “Is it true? You love him?”

Her question surprised me, and it took me a moment to answer. “I love him with everything I have in me.”

She nodded, her gaze skittering over my face, and I wondered if she saw any of herself in me. Or if she only saw my father.

“I didn’t mean to…upset you earlier when I asked what you were. Seeing you was a surprise. Seeing what you can do was a shock. I know that is no excuse,” she went on quickly. “And I also know that how I treated you was not right.”

“If you’re attempting to apologize, it’s not necessary,” I said. “Or needed.”

“But it is.”

“For you?”

“No.” She held my stare. “For you.”

Shaking my head, I started to turn away.

“I wasn’t a terrible mother to you,” she said. “I wasn’t a mother at all.”

Halting, I slowly turned back to her.

“You grew up without a mother, even though I was under the same roof.” Her lower lip trembled and then ceased. “I wish it had been different. That I had been better. Paid attention. Spent time with you. I just—” She cut herself off, her shoulders tensing. “It doesn’t matter why.”

But it did, didn’t it? Yes, and no.

Her gaze flicked to the lit gardens. “When I believed you had died, all I felt was anger. Not at you, but at me.” Her chin lifted a notch. “I just want you to know that.”

I eyed her, unsure if she spoke the truth. If I wanted to, I could look into her soul like I had done with Eamon, the guard, but I resisted doing so. It wouldn’t tell me if she was being truthful or attempting to get into my good graces now that I was the true Primal of Life, but…

“Why did you name me after the Queen of the Vodina Isles?”

Her gaze cut back to mine. “How…?”

“It doesn’t matter how,” I said. “Only why.”

She stared at me for several moments, then blinked. “Your father. He told me about the deal before we married. He wanted to give me a chance to back out, but I was already so very much in love with him.” Her voice cracked, and she inhaled sharply. “Most would not have shared what he did, but he was a good man. Caring. Thoughtful. Loyal. You have all his good traits.” She blinked several more times, and I felt the air leave my lungs. “I knew what I was agreeing to if we had a daughter. Like a child, I hoped that we would not, but that was not what fate had in store for us.” She swallowed again.

“When I held you, you didn’t cry. You just looked up at me with your father’s eyes, and I knew what you would face. I knew—or at least I believed—how it would end for you. You would need to be strong, tenacious, and even vicious to succeed. Just like the warrior Queen—the Silver Knight—who fought beside her King and slayed her enemies.” Her fingers fluttered to the jewel at her neck. “I thought it would be a fitting name.”

It was.

In more ways than one.

I tipped my head back, seeing the gold veining in the ceiling. Gods, I didn’t know what to say or how to even feel. I wanted to let it go like I had with Ezra, but my mother was different.

However, I was also different now.

“I get it,” I said, closing my eyes. “On some level, I get why you were the way you were. The deal. My father.” Lowering my chin, I opened my eyes and met her stare. “But I don’t know if I can ever forget all of that.”

“I know,” she whispered.

The back of my throat stung, and what I admitted to her next shocked me. “But I…I don’t think I would have survived all I have—and, gods, it has been a lot,”—my voice broke as my thoughts flashed to Kolis and then Tavius—“if I only had my father’s traits. They didn’t get me through any of it. My stubbornness and will? Even my temper?” I laughed hoarsely. “Those weren’t only the traits of the Queen you named me after. They are also yours.”

My mother had gone completely still and silent.

“I’m not sure what that says or even means at the end of the day, but I…I would like to be able to forget. To let it all go,” I said. And, gods, the truth I spoke did something miraculous. A little bit of the weight that was always on my chest lifted. I took a deeper breath. “I don’t know much about my father and would like to learn more. Perhaps you can tell me about him when I return.”

The former Queen of Lasania—the last Princess of the Vodina Isles, my mother—didn’t hesitate. “I would like that,” she said. “I would like that very much.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

“You’re very quiet,” Nektas noted as we entered the gardens.

“I’m just thinking.”

“Are they good thoughts?”

Passing the statue of Maia, I nodded. “They are.”

“Relieved to hear that,” he said. “Your mother is…”

“Something else?”

The sound that came from him was part laugh and part growl. “That is one way of putting it.”

A surprisingly wry grin tugged at my lips. I was still processing everything that had happened with my mother. We hadn’t talked long, but it felt like a major step in a good direction. I wasn’t sure what the outcome would be. There was a lot of messy stuff to sift through, but I meant what I said. I wanted to move on. Let go. And I wanted to have real conversations with her. Maybe I would tell her what had happened before my father died, what he’d attempted to do. Though I didn’t think that would bring her any peace.