The first time I returned, I told her I was Remira Kyler, daughter of her former lover Mathson, here to bestow small gifts and tokens of his affection. She flushed and trilled when I arrived at her door with a basket of food and expensive winter clothes, courtesy of “Mathson.” She didn’t question it. Aja has a childish kind of hope that died when she had me. Without me, it’s back.
I keep my wrist covered when I see her, so she never knows I was born in Ophera—in this house, in fact. With its scuffed wooden furniture, windows with bars, and sparrows inked onto the walls. They’re the only decoration. Sparrows are Aja’s favorite, so she took a jar of ink, and together we painted them onto every drafty wall to make it feel like home.
“Please don’t,” I say as she reaches for her sparse collection of firewood. “We’re fine. Save it for the next snowstorm.”
“If you’re sure,” she says hesitantly. She always does.
“I hope you don’t mind that I’m here so late, and that I brought a . . .” I glance at Kaidren, unsure what to call him. “A friend. Would it be all right if we stayed for the night?”
Aja looks surprised, but not unhappy. “Of course.” She tilts her head to one side. “Did something happen? Is Mathson all right?”
Kaidren bristles at the question but doesn’t say anything. He’s smart enough to bridle his curiosity for now. It infuriates me that Aja’s first instinct is to ask about the piece of scum who hasn’t thought twice about her since her supposed death. I give a thin smile. “He’s fine. We just need a place to gather our bearings for a few days. And you don’t have to worry about feeding us. We have food.”
Aja looks relieved. “Perfect.”
“I’m sorry I don’t have any gifts for you this time.”
She waves me off. “Don’t worry about that. Your company is gift enough.”
She means that. It fills me with a warmth that has nothing to do with magic.
There are only two rooms in this house: the main room and the bedroom. When I lived here, the bedroom was mine. Mymother had a mattress she sometimes dragged before the fireplace at night. Most nights, when she was between men, we shared my bed, because it was warmer to huddle together and I used to get nightmares. She would sing lullabies into my ear to soothe me. On nights when my dreams were especially terrifying, we’d go outside and watch the stars. She’d make up stories about them. How they were watching us right back and protecting me, even in my sleep.
Tonight, Aja takes the bedroom and leaves Kaidren and me in the main room with a spare blanket. I refused her offer of firewood, so I do what I did as a child—use magic to heat the embers in the hearth.
For a few minutes, Kaidren and I sit in silence, soaking in the warmth, before he heaves a dramatic sigh. “That woman is your mother, isn’t she?”
“Yes.” It comes out softer than I intended.
Kaidren waits, expecting me to explain. When I don’t, he nudges his shoulder into mine. “Are you going to make me ask? I thought your mother was dead.”
I hug my knees to my chest, refusing to look away from the hearth. “She doesn’t remember me.”
“Seemed like she remembers you just fine.”
I shake my head. “She thinks we met for the first time seven years ago. She has no idea I’m her daughter.”
Kaidren stills. “You took her memories. Like the cart attendant.”
My body feels heavy as I nod. “Yes.”
“Why?”
It’s a good question. I’ve never had to articulate the answer before.
When I was a child, my mother lied to me constantly. She told me we weren’t hanging precariously over the edge offinancial ruin, that she wassurewe had enough food to survive to the next week, that the men who came and left didn’t break her.
I could always tell when the stories she wove were crafted from smoke and dreams rather than truth. For her sake, I accepted them. I pretended to believe her with a smile on my increasingly gaunt face. Until she lied about eating.
It started when I was nine. She worked two jobs, but her hours were irregular, I was growing out of my clothes faster than she could keep up with, the costs of food and our home were ever rising, and it all combined into the simple fact that there wasn’t enough. Not for both of us. So, she’d feed me and lie about feeding herself.
“Don’t worry, Mira. I already ate,” she’d say as she set a piece of stale bread in front of me. It was hardly a meal, but I didn’t complain because the heat in my belly told me it was more than she’d eaten in days.
The lies kept coming—“I ate before you woke up”—and I watched her wither away.Her skin stretched tighter and tighter over her bones, and her dark, glossy hair lost its shine.
My heart was breaking, and I wasfuming. The man who’d made me, and cost my mother her stable employment in Virdei, was cozy and fed at the top of the mountain.
We needed a miracle, and the best miracles came from magic. I started collecting tshira before I had a plan. Took bits of it from wherever I could. Stole it from the stalls of charlatans and siphoned it from sledges returning from the mines.
