Page 5 of A Kiss of Healing & Honor (Darkstone Academy #4)

For over a year, I’d thought Mama drowned and lost beneath the unforgiving waves of the sea.

Yet here she was, her braided dark hair lightly streaked with silver, just as I remembered.

But the humble village healer I’d known all my life had been transformed into a Capitolan noblewoman. I’d never seen Mama like this before, her olive skin smoothed and tinted with subtle cosmetics, her large hazel eyes lined with kohl, and her lashes thickened with black paint.

Even her bearing had changed. But it was unmistakably, impossibly, her.

She wore a sumptuous gown of emerald-green silk, which complemented her complexion and dark hair. Her tightly fitted bodice featured intricate golden embroidery in a delicate pattern of vine leaves. The square neckline was cut modestly high and edged with delicate lace. Elbow-length sleeves ended in tiers of flared lace cuffs that draped over her forearms and ended at her slender wrists.

From the waist, a pale green underskirt cascaded in a series of precise pleats and folds to brush the floorboards. A short overskirt of the same emerald silk as her bodice and sleeves was slashed diagonally and gathered to one side, fastened at the hip with a large golden brooch encrusted with pearls and emeralds.

She wore golden pearl-and-emerald earrings with a matching pendant hung on a thick gold chain around her neck. Engraved gold bangles hung from her delicate wrists, and jeweled rings adorned every slender finger.

I stared at her. Joy and disbelief tangled up in my throat, choking me.

Lord Roderigo had taunted me with the news that his uncle held Mama captive, but I’d distrusted every word that issued from his lying lips.

Wide-eyed, Mama stared back at me for a long moment. Then her eyes narrowed and her sharp gaze swept over me from head to toe in a familiar assessment.

That was when I let myself believe it was really her.

She turned her head and said over her shoulder, “Leave us. I wish to speak with my daughter in private.”

To my astonishment, the guards bowed in her direction and left, closing the cabin door firmly behind them.

As soon as we were alone, Mama reached out with trembling fingers and skimmed my face. Her warm fingertips lingered over the newly healed abrasions and fresh bruises on my face, souvenirs of yesterday morning’s duel with Lady Erzabetta.

“Oh, Jacinthe, my dearest,” she breathed, tears shimmering on her painted lashes. “What in the name of the Mother did they do to you on that awful island?”

At the sound of her voice, I swayed and stumbled into her open arms. She smelled of imported sandalwood, and her embrace was both foreign and achingly familiar.

“They told me you were dead,” I choked out between sobs. “Drowned. I thought I’d lost you forever.”

“Never, my heart. I’m so sorry I couldn’t let you know the truth. But I’m here now.” Mama stroked my hair with a tenderness that made tears spill down my cheeks.

A year’s worth of aching loss poured out of me as I wept into the crook of her neck. I clung to her like a child, terrified that if I let go, she would dissolve into a cruel illusion.

Mama held me like she had when I was still a child, kissing the top of my head and stroking my back through the nightgown I still wore.

“I’m so sorry, love. I never meant for you to be dragged into this ugliness. If it wasn’t for Beltràn protecting me…”

Beltràn? I thought, horrified. Mama and the Duke de Norhas are on a first-name basis now?

I straightened in her embrace. “But wasn’t he the one who abducted us?”

Her eyes widened. “Only to protect us!” She hesitated, glancing warily at the closed door. When she spoke again, her voice was barely a murmur. “I promise I’ll explain everything when I can. For now, just know that I love you, and that Beltràn and I will do everything in our power to keep you safe.”

Keep me safe. The words rang hollow in the shadowy confines of the cabin with the weight of the magical restraint collar bruising my collarbones.

A sense of wrongness twisted my gut. Was Mama under some kind of charm? I peered at her, but the cursed restrictor collar blocked my ability to see her aura.

“Mama,” I began, my voice thick with emotion, “what happened after you left Bernswick? I thought… we all thought you were dead.”

Pain flickered across her features. “I know, my dearest. And I’m so sorry about that. There’s so much I need to tell you, but first…” She took my hands in hers, her grip fierce. “Tell me about you. How did you end up at Darkstone Academy, of all places? I thought I’d left you safe in Baldwin’s care!”

“Safe? Hardly.” A bitter laugh escaped me. “After you—after we lost you—Baldwin changed. I mean, he never liked me, but things got really bad after he married Narcissa—”

Mama gasped. “He married that scheming fraud? What could he possibly see in her?”

“Her successful business?” I asked snidely. “He needed her money after he ran your shop into the ground. He even stole the apprenticeship fees you put aside for me.”

“What?” Her voice burned with outrage.

I told her everything then. The words poured out of me in a torrent as I related how Baldwin had treated me like a slave after Narcissa and her daughters moved into Mama’s house.

Mama’s face blanched under her mask of cosmetics as she listened to me describe how Baldwin and Narcissa had beaten and starved me before indenturing me to the Dominion Bureau of Apprentices. She looked green-sick, but she didn’t interrupt me.

“He ordered the DBA to send me to a brothel, Mama,” I finished. “If Clerk Petri at the DBA office hadn’t taken pity on me and assigned me to the kitchens at Darkstone Academy instead…”

I couldn’t finish. The horror of it, the sheer betrayal, still haunted me.

“That… that Trickster-cursed lowlife,” Mama hissed. “I knew Baldwin had his flaws, but to treat you like that, to sell you into… Merciful gods!”

She closed her eyes for a long moment, visibly struggling to collect herself. When she opened them again, they burned with a fury I’d never seen before.

“To think, I once thought him a good but flawed man who loved me. More fool me,” she said bitterly. “I should have seen it. But he treated me so well, I thought he’d eventually come to love you. Especially after your sisters were born.”

“He didn’t deserve you,” I said fiercely. “He never did. You were too good for him, Mama.”

“I wish I’d seen that earlier.” Her lips thinned. “I’ll make sure everyone in Bernswick hears about his treachery.”

She doesn’t know?

I took a deep breath and told her the rest. “Mama, I think Baldwin and Narcissa are both dead.”

Mama inclined her head. “Beltràn told me that Baldwin passed into the Mother’s embrace last summer. And to think I actually mourned that miserable excuse for a man!”

“He didn’t pass peacefully,” I said, my tone sharp. “Lord Roderigo—the Duke de Norhas’ nephew and castellan at the academy—told me the duke’s agents questioned Baldwin and Narcissa while they were searching for me. He boasted the agents killed them afterwards, to keep them from telling anyone about who you and I really were.”

“Oh. Oh, no!” Her eyes widened in shock. “I had no idea.”

From time to time, I wondered what had happened to Narcissa’s daughters. Probably killed alongside their mother and Baldwin. Despite their treatment of me, the four girls had been young and hadn’t deserved to share their mother’s cruel fate.

“Oh, Jacinthe.” Mama pulled me into another fierce hug. “I’m so sorry,” she murmured into my hair. “For everything you’ve been through. I should have been there to protect you.”

I shook my head. “You couldn’t have known what would happen when you left home to escort Talisa, Mira, and Juno to the Imperial Academy in Neapolis Capitola.”

Mama sighed deeply, and her arms loosened their hold on me. “I didn’t expect anyone there to recognize me after all this time. I was wrong.”

“Have you heard anything from them?” I asked. “I wrote them once I was settled in my new life at Darkstone Academy. But I never received a reply.”

Mama smiled. “Beltràn assures me that the girls are safe at the imperial academy and doing well in their studies.”

Relief rushed through me. After everything that had happened to me over the past nine months, I’d worried that my younger sisters were also being subjected to harsh ordeals.

Then Mama stepped back and took my hands in hers.

She raised them one after the other, turning them this way and that in the beam of light from the porthole. She frowned as she examined the pink scars and rough, reddened knuckles marring my smooth brown skin. They were a legacy of my time in the castle’s kitchens. The endless rounds of scrubbing and disinfecting as the junior infirmary apprentice hadn’t helped, either. “And you, my dearest? Are you still bound to the academy’s kitchens?”

I shook my head. “I’m an infirmary apprentice now under Mage-Healer Armand.”

“Armand?” Her expression lit with incredulous joy. “Niccolò Armand? He’s still alive?”

I nodded. “He’s in charge of Darkstone Academy’s infirmary and he has four apprentices, including me.”

Mama’s smile was as bright as the sun breaking through clouds. “Thank the Mother! I feared the worst after—”

She stopped speaking. Her smile vanished, and her lips thinned in an expression I remembered well.

I have secrets I can’t reveal to anyone, she seemed to say. Not even to my daughter.

Except, her secrets were secrets no longer. Lady Erzabetta and Lord Roderigo had claimed to know some of them.

Their version of Mama’s past had been persuasive and had explained many mysteries. But I didn’t know whether I could believe them.

“I’m so happy to hear Mage Armand was here to look out for you,” Mama continued. “And even happier to hear he’s taken you under his wing as an apprentice. He was my mentor too, you know. Back in Neapolis Capitola, when I was a student at the Imperial Academy. I owe him a great debt.” She sighed deeply. “And how did I repay him? By dragging him into my mess. Getting him exiled to Darkstone, all because he helped me fake my death.”

“So, all those things Lady Erzabetta and Lord Roderigo said about you… they’re actually true?” I tried and failed to keep my tone neutral.

She’d kept her past a secret from me for my entire childhood. Now I needed answers.

Her eyes widened in dismay. “What did they say?”

Even now, it seemed she wouldn’t volunteer any information.

I took a deep breath. Why was my heart pounding like this? “That Isabeau of Bernswick was a false identity,” I said flatly. “And that you’re really Princess-Royal Jonquil. The one that everyone thought died.”

She went utterly still. My throat dried up.

“Mama, is that true?” I croaked. “Are you actually Princess Jonquil?”

Mama sighed. Slowly, she inclined her head. “I… was. A long time ago.” The diamond-headed hairpins scattered through her crown of braids glittered like stars against the night sky.

I stared at her, waiting to see if she’d say anything else. Silence hung like a heavy velvet curtain between us.

Finally, she said, in a soft, halting voice utterly unlike her usual crisp confidence, “There’s so much I need to tell you, Jacinthe. So much I’ve kept hidden from you, all these years.”

She met my gaze, her hazel eyes haunted. “You’ve asked me about your father so many times. I need you to know that I loved him. Deeply. And he loved me. But our love was forbidden.”

“Because he was a Wind-Walker?” I croaked.

Isn’t it proof enough that I can wield Fire magic without harm? But I couldn’t trust the stories that Roderigo and Erzabetta had fed me. I needed to hear the truth from Mama’s own lips.

Another long silence. Then Mama’s shoulders slumped. “Yes. I—I met Prince Menelaus while he was a diplomatic hostage at Father’s court. We planned to end the long enmity between our two realms by uniting in marriage. But we were so different, I—I didn’t think it was possible I might get pregnant.”

I saw a blush darken Mama’s cheeks under her rouge.

“And your parents were angry when they found out?” I encouraged her.

“You have no idea. I told them, thinking—hoping—that it might sway them to consider the marriage.” Mama took a deep, shuddering breath. “They told everyone I’d injured badly myself conducting a magical experiment, and locked me up. One of the imperial councilors—Duke Cahill of Frankia—came to see me. He told me that Father planned to make an example of me. To prove that even a royal princess was not above the law.”

Shock ran through me at the mention of the Duke of Frankia. Ilhan and Alondra’s father knew Mama?

“My father would have killed you the moment you were born. I couldn’t let that happen.” Mama’s voice shook. “Duke Cahill enlisted Mage Armand’s help, and together we faked my suicide. After they got me out of the palace, I fled to the farthest corner of the Dominion to keep you safe.”

“But why did you seal away my magic? Why did you encourage me to keep trying to cast spells all those years?”

“I’m sorry.” She turned away from me, but not before I saw tears glittering on her cheeks. Another shock—I’d never seen my utterly controlled mother crying before. “I—I didn’t have a choice.” Her normally smooth voice was hoarse now. “Your magic awakened early, before you could even walk. After you set fire to the house, I knew I had to hide your true nature.” The tiers of lace cascading from her elbows whipped angrily as she wiped at her eyes. “And I was afraid to tell you the truth when you got older. You had such a temper—I couldn’t risk you inadvertently betraying yourself.”

I stared at her, my mind reeling as I tried to process everything she’d just told me.

So many secrets, so many lies. And all to protect me?

“Why didn’t Prince Menelaus help you?”

Boreas was so fiercely protective. And he was still a young Wind-Walker. Given what Boreas had told me about Wind-Walkers, I couldn’t imagine that Prince—now King—Menelaus was any milder in temperament.

Her back still to me, Mama said, “After Father locked me up, he imprisoned Menelaus and all the other diplomatic hostages, then exiled them all to Darkstone Island. I wasn’t allowed to see him, not even to bid him goodbye. And afterwards, he and everyone else thought me dead in a terrible accident.” She bowed her head. “I never dared to contact him, for fear that the imperial authorities would intercept my letter and realize I was still alive… and that I had a half-Dragon child. I heard he became the Dragon King shortly after his return home. I’m glad he survived and regained his freedom. I hope he found happiness with one of his kind.”

The pain in her voice tore at my heart. I pressed myself to her back and wrapped her in my arms. “I’m sorry you had to go through all that. Because of me.”

“No.” Mama turned in my arms and cupped my face in her hands. Her eyeliner had smeared and her painted lashes had left wet, sooty streaks over her cheeks. But her gaze was suddenly fierce. “Don’t you dare apologize, my dearest. You and your sisters are the best things that ever happened to me. And everything I had to do, I would do again, a thousand times over, to keep you safe.”

She pulled me into her arms again, holding me tight. “I love you, my darling girl. More than anything in this world or any other. And I will always, always protect you. No matter what happens.”

For the first time since awakening aboard this ship, I felt a flicker of hope.

The restrictor collar had severed my soul-bond to Tama, Boreas, Gwydion, and Ilhan, but I wasn’t alone anymore. Mama was here. Together, perhaps we could free ourselves from the duke’s captivity.

Her next words were like ice water, extinguishing that brief hope. “Beltràn has sworn he will keep us all safe from my parents. No matter what they try to do to us.”