An Ember in the Ashes (Ember Quartet #1)(121)

“Something like that.”

I don’t ask her anything else about it—she’s said all she’s going to. She stares at me in silence. I wonder what she’s thinking. Masks are supposed to be able to read people, to understand them by observing them. I can tell if strangers are nervous or fearful, honest or insincere, just by watching them for a few seconds. But my own mother is a mystery to me, her face as dead and remote as a star.

Questions spring free in my mind, questions I thought I no longer cared about. Who is my father? Why did you leave me to die? Why didn’t you love me? Too late to ask them now. Too late for the answers to mean anything.

“The moment I knew you existed”—her voice is soft—“I hated you.”

Despite myself, I look up at her. I know nothing about my conception or birth. Mamie Rila only told me that if the Tribe Saif hadn’t found me exposed in the desert, I’d have died. My mother wraps her fingers around the bars of my cell. Her hands are so small.

“I tried to get you out of me,” she says. “I used lifesbane and nightswood and a dozen other herbs. Nothing worked. You thrived, eating away at my health. I was sick for months. But I managed to get my commander to send me on a solo mission hunting Tribal rebels. So no one knew. No one suspected.

“You grew and grew. Got so big I couldn’t ride a horse, swing a sword. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t do anything but wait until you were born so I could kill you and be done with it.”

She leans her forehead against the bars, but her eyes don’t leave mine. “I found a Tribal midwife. After I’d attended a few dozen births with her and learned what I needed, I poisoned her.

“Then one winter morning, I felt the pains. Everything was prepared. A cave. A fire. Hot water and towels and cloths. I wasn’t afraid. Suffering and blood I knew well. The loneliness was an old friend. The anger—I used it to carry me through.

“Hours later, when you emerged, I didn’t want to touch you.” She releases the bars and paces outside my cell. “I needed to tend to myself, to make sure there was no infection, no danger. I wasn’t about to let the son kill me after the father had failed.

“But some weakness took me, some ancient beast’s inclination. I found myself cleaning your face and mouth. I saw that your eyes were open. And they were my eyes.

“You didn’t cry. If you had, it would have been easier. I’d have broken your neck the way I’d break a chicken’s neck, or a Scholar’s. Instead, I wrapped you, held you, fed you. I laid you in the crook of my arm and watched as you slept. It was deep night then, the time of night that doesn’t feel quite real. The time of night that’s like a dream.

“One dawn later, when I could walk, I got on my horse and carried you to the nearest Tribal camp. I watched them for a time and saw a woman I liked. She picked up children like sacks of grain and carried a large stick wherever she went. And though she was young, she didn’t seem to have any children of her own.”

Mamie Rila.

“I waited until night. And left you in her tent, on her bed. Then I rode away. But after a few hours, I turned back. I had to find you and kill you. No one could know of you. You were a mistake, a symbol of my failure.

“By the time I got back, the caravan was gone. Worse, they’d split up. I was weak and exhausted and had no way to track you. So I let you go. I’d already made one mistake. Why not one more?

“And then six years later, the Augurs brought you to Blackcliff. My father ordered me back from the mission I was on. Ah, Elias—”

I start. She’s never said my name before.

“You should have heard the things he said. Whore. Slut. Streetwalker. What will our enemies say? Our allies? As it turns out, they said nothing. He made sure of that.

“When you survived your first year at the school, when he saw his own strength in you, then you were all he could talk about. After years of disappointment, the great Quin Veturius had an heir he could be proud of. Did you know, son, that I was the best student this school had seen in a generation? The fastest? The strongest? After I left, I caught more Resistance scum alone than the rest of my class put together. I brought down the Lioness herself. None of that mattered to my father. Not before you were born. Even less so once you arrived. When it came time for him to name an heir, he didn’t even consider choosing me. Instead, he named you. A bastard. A mistake.

“I hated him for it. And you, of course. But more than both of you, I hated myself. For being so weak. For not killing you when I had the chance. I vowed I’d never again make such a mistake. I’d never again show weakness.”

She comes back to the bars and pins me with her eyes.

“I know what’s in your mind,” she says. “Remorse. Anger. You go back in your head and imagine yourself killing the Scholar girl, the way I imagined killing you. Your regret weighs you down like lead in your blood—if you’d only done it! If only you’d had the strength! One mistake and you’ve given up your life. Is it not so? Is it not torture?”

I feel an odd mix of disgust and sympathy for her as I realize that this is the closest she’ll ever come to relating to me. She takes my silence as assent. For the first and probably the only time in my life, I see something a little like sadness in her eyes.

“It’s a hard truth, but there is no going back. Tomorrow, you’ll die. Nothing can stop it. Not me, not you, not even my indomitable father, though he’s tried. Take comfort in knowing that your death will give your mother peace. That the gnawing sense of wrong that has haunted me for twenty years will be set right. I’ll be free.”