She rushed forward, the train of her gown flowing out behind her, and embraced me. I froze, every muscle tense as she squeezed me tightly. Her heavy necklace pressed into my collarbone and I winced.
“You’re here,” she said in wonder, pulling away but still holding onto my shoulders, shaking me as if to prove to herself that I was real. “You’re alive.”
I nodded because I didn’t know what else to say to this woman I had never known but who called herself my mother, who claimed some maternal hold on me.
“Your father will be so happy to see you,” she told me and I froze, my fake smile faltering.
“My father?” I asked, stunned. “I thought he was dead.”
Her grin turned wicked at that.
“And I thought you were dead,” she mused. “Seems the Morningstars have a penchant for faking deaths.”
She raised one arched brow to Gemini, letting her judgmental gaze flick over her from head to toe. My heart pounded against my chest at her words. A penchant for faking deaths? Did she know about Lark, that he was still alive, that they had never executed him? How could she?
“We do what we must to escape those who would do us harm,” Gemini professed through gritted teeth, her gaze narrowed to a glare.
“And that’s me, I suppose?” my mother asked with a roll of her eyes as she strode past us and ascended the steps to the throne. She collapsed lazily atop it, propping her feet up on one arm and leaning her back against the other as she draped one arm lazily off the side and looked at us. “I always forget what they think of me in the Bone Court. Am I the mother who went crazy after losing her daughter and started seeking vengeance? Or am I some crazed, narcissistic autocrat trying to take over the realm? Remind me, dear Gemini, for I can never keep track.”
It caught me off guard, how callously she discussed all the perceptions of her that I had been exposed to for the last few months.
“All of that and more,” Gemini hissed.
“And today?” my mother asked, raising a brow. “What must I be today for you to finally return my precious child to me after nearly sixty years?”
“The woman who keeps tearing the world apart to find me,” I said.
My mother turned to me, a smile growing on her lips.
“Fierce, like her mother,” she observed with a grin.
I just gritted my teeth and did not answer.
“Where is Alban?” Gemini asked, narrowing her gaze at the woman sitting carelessly upon a throne that wasn’t hers.
“My father is indisposed at the moment,” my mother answered, not even looking at Gemini anymore. Her gaze, instead, was fixed on her nails as she inspected them one after another. After a moment, her gaze slid back to me. “But he will be so pleased to finally meet his beloved granddaughter.”
She shifted slightly and I noticed it then, the soft glow emanating from her necklace. No, not a necklace. An amulet. I stopped breathing.
“As much as I’m looking forward to so many reunions,” she started, her gaze darkening as she rose slightly in the throne, peering down at us again, “we have business to take care of first.”
She waved a hand and Gemini fell to her knees. I gasped and reached for her but then I was spinning away, floating upwards and toward my mother. The floor beside her bubbled and then rose, that russet marble material liquefying and shaping itself into a chair. She placed me firmly in it and turned back to Gemini who was struggling against some invisible bonds I couldn’t see.
“Such a strange thing, the mind,” Ariadne mused, sucking on her teeth as she watched Gemini’s struggle. “You don’t even have to be bound. You just have to think you are. Paralysis by thought. Neat, huh?”
“Let me go, Ariadne,” Gemini hissed. “I returned the girl. I brought her to you.”
“And I will keep that in mind as I mete out all necessary punishments.”
Punishments? My gaze snapped up to my mother’s as she raised a hand and called out.
“Bring them in.”
Horror filled me as I turned to the doors on the opposite side of the room to find Rook being led inside by half a dozen guards in bronze armor. He was shackled with chains of some material that I didn’t recognize but could feel as it ate away at my power even from this distance. I couldn’t imagine what it was doing to him against his skin. Behind him came Cass, her hair half unbound, her eyes dreary and full of sorrow. Then it was Lark’s turn. Over a dozen soldiers surrounded him, yanking painfully on his chains as they walked. After all of them came a gorgon, Lycurgus, I hazarded a guess.
“No,” I gasped before I could stop myself.
I tried to rise but my seat grew manacles around my wrists and locked me into place. I met Lark’s gaze and felt a weak attempt at reassurance. My heart fell when I realized that this was why it had been so difficult and so rare to feel him while he had been away. It wasn’t the distance between us. It was those chains restricting his use of magic. My breath hitched. How long had they been captured?
