“Mother.”
I cross the room and take her hand. She squeezes my fingers once before releasing me, as if even that small touch requires too much energy.
“Sit, please. Will you have tea?”
“Yes, thank you.”
Klara pours from a silver pot while my mother settles back into her chair. I take the seat across from her and accept the delicate cup with its painted dragons curling around the rim. The tea is too sweet, but I drink it anyway. Refusing would only prolong this ritual.
“How is Father today?” I ask, though I care less about his wellbeing than I do about the weather or the price of grain in the market.
Her face softens, as if she’s grateful that I’m asking the right questions and playing my part in this performance we’ve rehearsed a thousand times.
“He’s having a better day. Though he’s still not strong enough to leave his bed. But he ate some breakfast, and he’s been more alert than usual.”
“That’s good to hear,” I say.
She nods and smooths her skirts with trembling fingers.
“He’ll be happy to see you.”
I doubt that very much. I don’t say so, because there’s no point in shattering the illusions that keep my mother functioning from one day to the next. Instead, I lean forward and study her pale face.
“It pains me to see you isolated in this wing, Mother. You barely go out anymore. You don’t fly, you don’t visit the gardens…”
“I have everything I need here,” she says.
“You’re wasting away. I wish you’d come with me for a walk in the rose garden. The blooms are beautiful this time of year.”
She shakes her head, and her smile turns sad, tinged with resignation and a weariness that goes bone deep.
“I’m feeling frail today, and the spring air is too strong for me.”
“You always say that.”
“Because it’s always true.” She reaches across and touches my arm. “You worry too much, Altair. I’m fine.”
I want to argue and tell her that nothing about this situation is fine. But I know it won’t change anything. She’s made her choice, and she’ll defend it until the end.
So, I drink my tea and let silence settle between us. I wonder if she was always like this, or if my father broke something in her that can never be repaired. I wonder if she might have been different before she married him, brighter and full of life. I will never know. That woman is gone, if she ever existed at all.
“Do you want to see your father?”
“I do. I have something to tell him.”
Her eyebrows lift, but she doesn’t ask what it is. She rises, and I follow her through a carved wooden door into the adjacent bedroom. The change in atmosphere is immediate and oppressive.
The room is a monument to wealth, which only serves to make my father’s decline more pathetic by contrast. Tapestries hang on the walls, and a chandelier drips with crystal teardrops that scatter rainbow light across the floor. The rugs are thick and soft, woven with gold thread that catches the light, and the furniture is dark wood polished to a shine that reflects our faces like black water. In the center of it all is my father’s bed, massive and draped with silk that pools on the floor.
His skin is sickly pale, his body shriveled, and his eyes are glassy. His hands tremble on top of the blankets with a constant, involuntary motion that never stops. I know it drives him mad. He was always so controlled and precise in his movements. He doesn’t have his wings out because he can’t even half-shift, and I know it eats at him.
Wyverns keep their wings and tails visible even in human form as a declaration of our nature. But my father is too weak,and his body won’t obey him anymore. The loss of that basic dignity is perhaps the cruelest part of his illness.
I sit in the armchair beside the bed and unfurl my wings wider than necessary, letting them stretch out behind me in a golden display that fills half the room. My tail curves along my thigh
My father’s gaze flicks to my wings. Something dark crosses his face.
“Father,” I say. “How are you feeling today?”
