“I’m not trying to defend myself,” my mother says. “I’m trying to apologize.”
“Well, you suck at it,” Vane tells her.
I feel my lips smile. But it fades when I force myself to turn to my mother. Spots of brown freckle her face, and I realize they’re dried blood.
I try to feel guilty—but all I feel is tired.
“Nothing you say will ever change the fact that Gus is dead because of the trap you set for us.” I dust the grass off my legs and stand to walk away.
“How about an explanation then?” my mother calls after me.
I can’t imagine any explanation could possibly make me understand.
But I stop walking.
“Make it quick,” Vane tells her. “We’ve got armies coming in from every direction. And I’m not sure if any of them are actually on our side. The Gales weren’t exactly happy with us when we left.”
My mother nods and stretches her uninjured arm, letting the breeze send goose bumps over her skin. Long seconds pass before she whispers. “I was trying to protect your father—or whatever little is left of him. Raiden’s Stormer crushed his form and stole his final breaths. But his songs live on. Surely you’ve noticed. They visit you far more than they’ve ever come to see me.”
A cold chill washes over me. “The Easterly?”
My mother nods, turning her eyes to the sky, where a flock of birds sails among the clouds. “I don’t know how to explain it. But I can feel that it’s him—some tiny glimmer of his former essence. And Raiden threatened to destroy it. With one snarled command he could turn the last whisper of your father into one of his mindless slaves. I couldn’t bear to even imagine it. So I agreed to call you over. I knew you were strong and could fight him. And I half expected to be ignored. Hoped for it, honestly.”
Vane shifts his weight, probably remembering that he was the one who convinced me to go.
But Gus was behind the idea as well.
“What do you expect me to say to that?” I ask. “That all is suddenly forgiven?”
“No,” my mother says. “But I hope you can at least learn from it. Raiden is the master of impossible choices. And before this is over, I have no doubt that you’ll be forced to make one. That’s always his strategy, so that even his losses can be called victories.”
I think of what happened with Gus and the cost of my escape.
It wasn’t truly a conscious choice that time, but I still paid the price for it.
It’s always more than a battle with Raiden.
It’s a game of wits.
“So what are his weaknesses?” I ask her. “You?”
Her smile is sad. “Even my vanity won’t allow me to believe he still cares for me.”
“But he did once, right?” Vane presses. “That’s what Audra meant about you being his queen?”
“Yes. Though I hardly knew he had such grand aspirations. When Raiden and I were together, he was simply a charming guardian rising through the ranks of the Gales, and I was the notorious beauty flirting my way through life, trying to decide my best option. There was something magnetic about him, and for a brief time I thought . . . maybe?”
“So why’d you reject him?” Solana asks. “Did you realize he had a darker side?”
“I’d love to claim such wisdom and foresight. But my motives were much more selfish.”
Vane snorts. “Big surprise there.”
“What does that mean?” I ask her.
“It means . . . I realized that Raiden needed me as much as I needed him. He was broken in ways—and don’t ask me for specifics. He never spoke about it, and I wasn’t interested in asking. I wanted someone to shelter me. Someone to help me shoulder my burdens. Not someone I had to fix. So I stayed with him until I found a better offer, and left him for your father. I knew I’d chosen the better husband, but I didn’t realize the mess I’d avoided until a few years later.”
I can’t decide how to feel about her story, except to drown in the irony that my mother’s fickle selfishness led her down the safer path.
“And you really have no idea what issues he was dealing with?” Vane asks. “Not even any guesses?”
My mother studies her hands. “Like I said, I wasn’t interested in knowing—though I did suspect it had something to do with his family. He told me his parents were both dead, and he never seemed sad about it—except one time, when he lost his whistlepipe and panicked—”
“Whistlepipe?” Vane interrupts.
“It’s a child’s instrument. Raiden always wore it from a chain around his neck. I assumed his parents gave it to him—”
“Do you mean this?” Vane asks, reaching into his back pocket and pulling out a small, silver instrument strung among several feathered hair ornaments.
My mother’s eyes widen. “Where did you get that?”