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“You do, though?”

“I’m your mother.” She takes my hand and runs her crooked fingers over the Sigils that run from the back of my hands up my forearms, smirking when she reaches the metal wings embedded on the outside of my forearms. “I never liked Eo,” she says quietly.

I twist my head up to look at her.

“Not for you. She could be manipulative. She kept some things from you.…”

“I know about the child,” I say. “I know what she told Dio on the scaffold.”

Mother scoots closer to me, her hands grasping mine and bringing my knuckles to her lips. She never gave much comfort. She’s awkward in it now. But I don’t mind. Father loved her for the same reason I do. Everything she does, she means. There’s no falseness to her. No deception. So when she tells me she loves me, I know she means it with every part of her.

“Eo was not a cruel girl, you know that,” she says, pushing back so she can look into my eyes. “She loved you with everything she had. And I loved her for it. But I always feared she’d make you fight her battles. And I always feared how much she loved to fight.”

That’s not quite the Eo I remember. But I don’t find fault with my mother’s words. I can’t. All eyes see their own way.

“But in the end, Mother, Eo was right about this. About Gold.”

“I’m your mother. I don’t care about what’s right. I care about you, child.”

“Someone has to fix all this,” I say. “Someone has to break the chains.”

“And that someone is you?”

Why is she doubting me? “Yes. It is. I’m not being foolish. I can lead us out of here. Out of slavery.”

“To where? To the surface?” She speaks of it familiarly, as if she’s known the truth of Mars for years not minutes. Perhaps she has. “Where we will do what? All we know is the mines. All we know is how to dig, how to harvest silk. If what you say is true and there are hundreds of millions of Reds on Mars, how will there be enough homes for us up there? How will there be enough work? Most won’t leave the mines, even if they know. You’ll see. They’ll just stay miners. And their children will be miners. And their children’s children, except the nobility will be lost. Do you think about these things?”

“Of course I do.”

“And do you have an answer?”

“No.”

“Men.” She rubs her right temple. “Your father was one to jump without looking.” Her expression tells me what she thinks of that. “Helldivers all think they provide for the clans. No. The women do.” She gestures around. “Everything you see, made by a woman. But you know how to shape the world, don’t you? Know how it should be.”

“No. I don’t,” I say. “I’m not the one with the answers.” Mustang is. Eo was. Mother is. “No one man or woman has all the answers. A thousand, a million bright minds will be needed to answer what you’ve asked me. That’s the point of this. What I can do, what I am good at is tearing down the men and women who would keep those minds shackled. That’s why I’m here. It’s why I exist.”

“You’ve changed,” she says.

“I know.” I pick dust from the floor and rub it between my palms. The dust looks strange on these hands. “Do you think … Is it possible to love two people?”

Before she can answer, feet pad down the stairs.

My mother turns to look.

“Grandma?” a small voice says sleepily. “Grandma, Dunlow isn’t in bed.”

A small child stands on the stairs, nightshirt scraping the floor. One of Kieran’s. She’s three, maybe four. Born just after I left. Her face is heart-shaped. Red hair thick and rusty as my wife’s. Mother looks back to me, worried how she will explain my presence. But I activated my ghostCloak soon as I heard the noise.

“Oh, he probably snuck out to cause trouble,” my mother says.

I squeeze her hand before sliding back from the room toward the door. My time here is at an end, yet I linger. The little girl gingerly steps down the stairs, one foot after another, rubbing sleep from her eyes.

“Who were you talking to?”

“I was praying, child.”

“Praying for what?”