My mother opened the door before we knocked.
She'd been watching for us, then. The apartment was immaculate in the way it only ever got when she was frightened—every surface scrubbed, every object in its precise place, the kind of order that meant her hands needed something to do. She looked past us both to the empty street before stepping aside to let us in.
"You heard," I said.
"Everyone heard." She moved to the stove, filling the kettle with the focused attention of someone who needed to keep moving. "The Light God himself gave his blessing. Personally. Publicly." She set the kettle down harder than she intended. "I heard it from three different people before noon."
Ada stepped forward. "Then you know we wanted to tell you ourselves. That it's real, and that we're?—"
"I know what it is." My mother's voice was quiet. Too quiet. "Sit down. Both of you."
We sat. The apartment felt smaller than usual, the walls pressing in. Ada reached for my hand under the table and I took it.
My mother didn't pour the tea. She stood with her back to us, both hands flat on the counter.
"He accepted you too easily." She said it like she'd been rehearsing it for hours. "Gün Ata. The most powerful being in this realm, with a thousand noble families offering him their sons for Ada's hand—and he looks at you, a borderland apprentice with no name and no bloodline he should want anywhere near his daughter, and he smiles and says yes." She finally turned. The fear in her eyes was raw, animal. "That doesn't frighten you?"
"He's kind," Ada said carefully. "He wants me to be happy?—"
"He wants something." My mother's voice cracked. "No one rises to bless a nobody without a reason. He accepted you before he had any cause to. Before he knew anything about you worth wanting." She looked at me, and for a moment she looked ancient, hollowed out by years of running from a fear she'd never been able to name. "And that is exactly what terrifies me."
"Mother—"
"He sees everything, Hakan." She cut me off. "He has always seen everything. He watches this court the way a man watches a board of pieces he's already decided how to move. And now he has looked at you—at both of you—and he has smiled." She pressed her lips together, as if catching herself before she said too much. "I have spent two hundred years running from men who smiled like that."
The kettle began to scream. She turned back to the stove.
We left an hour later, the silence between us heavier than when we'd arrived. At the door my mother held Ada's hands in both of hers, searching her face with an intensity that made something tighten in my chest.
"Be careful," she said. Not to me. To Ada. "Both of you—but you especially. You're the one he loves most. That makes you the one who can be used."
Ada nodded, quiet and serious. "I understand."
My mother let her go.
Walking back through the darkening streets, Ada stayed close, her shoulder pressed against my arm. She didn't speak for a long time.
"She's not wrong," she said finally. "About him accepting too easily. I've been telling myself it was kindness. That he simply trusted my judgment." She paused. "But I've been watching him for months now. The way he looks at things. The way he looks at people." Her hand tightened on mine. "He doesn't do anything without a reason."
I didn't answer. Above us the palace lights rose against the darkening sky, golden and warm and watchful, and I found I couldn't look at them the way I used to—couldn't see warmth anymore, only the light that meant someone could see you.
That night I lay awake staring at the ceiling, my shadows unspooling in the dark.
He accepted you before he had any cause to.
My mother had been afraid my entire life. I had spent years dismissing it as the paranoia of a woman who had run too long from too many things. But she had known about my shadows before I did. Had used her own light magic to bury them when I was too young to remember, sealing away whatever darkness she'd seen stirring in her child. She knew exactly what she was hiding — and who she was hiding it from. And now the most powerful being in the realm had looked at me, a borderland nobody with nothing to offer, and opened every door.
Why?
The question turned in my chest like a blade. I pressed it down, buried it under the memory of Ada's face in the lamplight, under the warmth of her hand in mine, under every reason I had to believe that this was simply happiness, that it was allowed, that the future stretched out golden and unbroken before us.
I told myself I believed it.
I told myself my mother's fear was old fear, reflexive fear, the kind that had kept her alive so long it had become indistinguishable from instinct. She'd spent two centuries moving us from village to village, court to court. That kind of vigilance didn't switch off just because her son brought home a girl.
But the way she'd looked at Ada. The way she'd saidwhat he is, notwho he is. As if there were something about me she hadn't told me. Something worse than the shadows I was already hiding.
I thought of Milan — my father, the man who'd taught me everything, who gripped the back of my neck and called me son and looked at me with steady, uncomplicated pride. He was the reason we ran. That was the story my mother had told me since I was old enough to ask why we never stayed anywhere long. Milan's heritage — half Slavian shadow-blood, half Light Court — made him enemies on both sides of the border. People who wanted him dead, and anyone connected to him. So we moved. Village to village, court to court. And Milan stayed away — not because he didn't love us, but because his presence drew the wrong kind of attention. He came when he could. Stayed as long as it was safe. Left before the danger followed him to our door.
