“They’re both gone,” she whispered. Tears began streaming down her porcelain face. “Takashi and Kioshi are both gone and I didn’t—I never told them—”
She stumbled forward.
I lurched to catch her.
She fell into my arms like a puppet with cut strings, sobbing into my chest with a violence that shook us both. I held her, this woman who’d never really embraced me, who’d barely touched me, who’d spent my whole life glaring from a distance. Now, she clung to me as though I was the only solid thing left in a world that had turned to mist.
“I never told them I loved them,” she wept. “I was so busybeingEmpress, being proper, guarding my heart . . . and now they are gone and . . . they will never know—”
“They knew,” I said, though I wasn’t sure it was true. “Gods, Mother, they knew.”
“And now you.” She pulled back enough to look at me, her face paint marred by tears. “Tomorrow I will lose you, too—not to death, but to something worse. You will become Emperor, and I will lose my last son to duty and the gods and I cannot—” Sheshook her head helplessly. “I cannot lose you, too, Haru. Gods, I . . .”
“You’re not losing me,” I said, holding her tighter. “I’m right here.”
“No.” She pressed her forehead against my chest. “You are already gone. I saw it today at the funeral. I saw it in the way you stood and the way you spoke. You are already becoming something I cannot reach.”
I glanced up at a sound outside the door and realized Esumi must still be out there. He must have heard Mother’s breakdown, must have stayed to make sure she was all right, to make sure I was all right. The thought of him standing in the corridor, listening to this, made me ache.
Mother buried her head in my chest and wept for what felt like hours. I held her through all of it while she anointed my mourning robes with tears and grief. Eventually, her sobs quieted into shudders. Then shudders quieted into trembling. She pulled back, her face red and swollen, and looked at me with eyes that were clear for the first time since Father’s death.
“I am sorry, Haru,” she whispered. “I should not have—”
“Don’t apologize. Mother, please—”
She reached up and touched my face, a gesture so tender and unexpected that my own eyes burned. “Be a better ruler than your father. Be a better man,” she said quietly. “Be stronger. Be kinder. Do not let the throne make you cold the way . . . in the way it made me cold.”
I gulped back something I might never understand. “I’ll try.”
“And Haru?” She dropped her hand. “Whatever happens tomorrow, whatever you become—you were a good son, better than I deserved. Remember that.”
I couldn’t speak.
She stepped back, composing herself with visible effort. The Empress Dowager’s mask settled back into place, piece by piece, until the woman who’d wept in my arms was hidden again.
“I should go,Heika,” she said, her voice steady once more. “You need rest. Tomorrow will be . . .” She couldn’t finish.
“Tomorrow will be tomorrow,” I said. “We’ll face it, whatever comes.”
She nodded, then turned toward the door. She paused with her hand on the handle. “The boy is waiting in the corridor. He never left. That is . . . that says something about him, I suppose.”
“Mother—”
“Be careful, Haru. Be careful with your heart. The Empire needs an emperor, not a lovesick boy.” She bowed deeply, then turned and left before I could respond.
I stood alone in the silence, my robes still damp from her tears, my mind reeling. My mother had broken down in my arms, had called me a good son, had given me her blessing, in her way. Of all the things I’d witnessed and heard over the past few weeks, that might’ve been the greatest shock.
I tried to count the words she’d spoken, more words than she’d said to me in a dozen years. She’d been honest about our relationship, about how her eyes only sought my brother, only cared for the one who would wear the crown. I never thought of it as such, as a queen protecting her power and station. All I knew was that my mother chose another for her affection, that she held so little love in her heart she couldn’t afford to divide it between her children.
She couldn’t afford to give it to me.
And so I lived without the love or warmth of my mother’s palm against my cheek. I lived with the knowledge that my family, those who should’ve been my greatest supporters, were precisely the people who believed in me the least.
Kioshi was the only one. Kioshi and Grandmother. They loved me without reservation, without worry or fear or that gnawing dread I saw each time I looked into Mother’s eyes.
Father tried. In his own way, I knew he loved me. Was he proud of the man I’d become? I was less sure. He hadn’t seen me grow these past months. He hadn’t seen me face my own trials or struggle with my place or battle the demons who sought to drag us all down. He’d only known the hapless youth who’d found his only solace in the bottom of a bottle.
No, he’d not known pride.
