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‘I could havekilledthem, Em.’ She bit out the words without any of that casual fae cruelty, that joyful bloodlust of alves, that indifference towards murder that came with life in a world of war. These were the words of a woman whose violencemeantsomething. ‘When I first spoke with them and they kept telling me how they’d finally gotten rid of you, how they hadn’t wanted you in the first place, as if they expected praise for being heartless cowards …’

My chest was drawing tighter, tighter, tighter. Breathe, I had tobreathe, but the air escaped my lungs in squeaking gasps, and my throat felt like coarse sand – and yet the pain was different this time, not that gaping hole in my heart. It was closer to anger, this feeling. Closer to fire.

It burned behind my eyelids, too, threatening to spill over.

‘I couldn’t make sense of it,’ Rosalind whispered, unseeing eyes trained on the floor between our feet. ‘I still can’t, truly. How dare they get what I so desperately wanted and then handleit so poorly? How dare they refuse so heartlessly what I could hardly bear to give up?’

I no longer felt my fingers. I no longer felt my feet.

‘I held you for half an hour. After you were born.’ Her voice was barely audible now. ‘The most beautiful minutes of my life, and then I had to let you go without knowing if I’d ever see you again. And now you’rehere, Em, and I can barely make sense of that either—’

And just like that, the fog shattered.

Just like that, it was real.

Gone was the paralysis, that dreamlike haze clouding my mind; I stood without thinking, moved without thinking. Who needed reason, after all? Who needed thoughts when instinct took over with such brilliant clarity?

I fell into the seat beside her as if I’d never done anything else. Curled up against her shoulder like a small, scared child and clutched my arms around her willowy frame, soaking up the soft jasmine scent of her body, the quiet strength of her touch, the soothing, unmistakable warmth of living human skin. She let out a choked sound and cradled me in her arms, forehead bumping against the crown of my head – my mother, holding me.

A hot tear dripped onto my temple, and then another one.

‘My baby girl,’ she whispered, voice shaking on the edge of sobs. ‘Oh, my darling, darling baby girl …’

And then, finally, I was crying too.

Chapter 24

We were halfway througha late and rather teary lunch of scrambled eggs, slightly stale bread, and a wrinkled apple from the back of the pantry when the letter was slipped underneath the door.

Rosalind flipped it over, scanned it, and handed it to me with a heartfelt scoff. The note was short, just a few scrabbled lines:

Please tell the girl she’ll have to leave the city tomorrow morning. If you wish to go with her, we can make arrangements.

- Norris

‘Arseholes,’ Rosalind said, one cheek bulging with egg.

I stared at those few short sentences and tried to squash the sense of failure creeping back up on me.

As easy as it was to ignore the fact between these walls, sitting in my mother’s small yet tidy kitchen and exchanging stories of our respective times at the Crimson Court … The world outside hadn’t changed. The war hadn’t been averted. Soon I’d be back in the Underground, having won a parent but lost the dream of a human army, and then what would we do?

Smooth magic, after all?

Those hollow eyes … My stomach clenched violently.

‘It might not be so bad,’ Rosalind said, watching me closely. ‘Perhaps I’ll be able to help. Some of the human communities out there might feel reassured that a former consul of the White City is joining the cause.’

They might. And then again … they might not.

‘Yes,’ I said, forcing myself to shove Norris’s letter aside and pick up my fork again. ‘We’ll see.’

She gave me a small, encouraging smile. ‘So, what were you saying about the Mother’s throne before we got interrupted?’

We spent the rest of the afternoon that way – first with more tea, then with a bottle of wine Rosalind pulled from somewhere and that she claimed was too good to be left behind. She told me about Furja, the island where she’d lived until her father had unwisely argued for lower tribute rates in a bad year. I talked about Ildhelm, about Miss Matilda, about the dresses. She treated me to a decade of political city gossip, until we were both crying with laughter over the consul who had, three years ago, resigned after his mother marched into a confidential meeting and threatened to spank him for his poor treatment of his wife.

She did not speak a single word about Agenor, and I did not ask.

Evening fell. We dined on leftover parsnips and soft-boiled eggs, for lack of motivation to go out and get some moreproper food. Outside the building, some clamour arose around nightfall, but it died away swiftly; the dusk offered no clues as to what it might have been. While footsteps passed through the corridor outside our door ever now and then, no one was brave enough to knock and disturb us.