Instead, the truth fell out of my mouth before I could catch it.
"Because I love him."
The silence that followed was absolute.
I hadn't planned to say it. Hadn't rehearsed it, hadn't built up to it, hadn't chosen this moment — my first time meeting his mother, with lamb grease on my fingers and ash still smudgingmy cheekbones — as the moment I'd speak the words I'd been circling for weeks.
But there they were. Out in the air. Impossible to take back.
Beside me, Hakan had gone completely still. I could feel his hand around mine, feel the sudden rigidity of every muscle in his body, but I couldn't look at him. If I looked at him, I might lose my nerve, might qualify or soften or retreat into something safer. And I was done being safe.
"You love him," Elif said. Her voice had gone hollow. "You love my son."
"Yes."
"Do you know what that means? Do you understand what loving him will cost you?"
"Elif." Milan, gentle but firm. "Perhaps this isn't the time —"
"There's never a time." She turned on him, and I saw tears glittering. "There's never a right moment to tell her what she's walking into. What he is. What will happen if —"
"Mother, stop."
"Good." She looked at me with raw, terrible fear. "She should be scared. You should both be scared. Because I've spent two hundred years running from what hunts him, and I can feel it getting closer. Every day. Every hour. It's coming, and when it arrives —"
She stopped. Her hand flew to her mouth.
"I'm sorry. I can't — I need a moment —"
The bedroom door closed behind her.
Milan cleared his throat. "Well. That went better than I expected."
"Better?" Hakan's voice was rough.
"She hasn't threatened to ship you off to the borderlands yet." Milan rose, gathering plates with practiced ease. "Give her time. She's been terrified since the day you were born, and now you've brought home the Light God's daughter. That's a lot to process."
"Is she always like this?" I asked.
"Only when it matters." Milan paused. His eyes found mine, and for a moment I saw something complicated move behind them — warm, yes, but layered with things I couldn't read. "She loves him more than anything. And she's spent two centuries convinced that something terrible is going to take him from her."
"What something?"
He didn't answer. Carried the plates to the basin and left the question hanging in the air like smoke.
Elif came back before we left. She crossed the room and pulled me into an embrace so fierce it hurt — her arms locked around me, her body trembling, her face pressed against my hair.
"Please don't let them take him from you," she whispered. "Whatever you learn about what he is — whatever happens — don't let them take his heart."
I held her back. This beautiful, terrified woman who'd spent two hundred years running from something she couldn't outrun. I thought of my own mother — dead so long I had no memory of her face. I thought of what it would mean to have a mother who loved you this desperately, this fearfully, this completely.
"I won't," I said.
I meant it. Even though I didn't understand the warning. Even though I didn't know what she was asking me to protect him from.
I meant it.
* * *
