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Iryana frowned. The one from the earth settlement?

Pyetar looked into her eyes, so much worry and pain there. His lips parted, but uttered no words.

“Pyetar?” she urged. But still, nothing.

She was strung tight enough to snap a bow and she didn’t have the patience to wait for whatever was weighing down Pyetar’s tongue. Stepping around him, Iryana pushed through the flap.

“Iri,” he protested but it was too late.

Iryana stormed into the tent, eyes locking onto the lone figure waiting inside. She heard her sisters stumble in after her.

She stopped breathing entirely.

It was impossible to process what she was seeing. Who she was seeing.

Arching brows over wide hazel eyes, lips pressed together with worry, a golden-brown braid pinned up around her head. It was like Hadima had aged three decades.

“Mom?”

Chapter Thirty-Eight

The woman stood, jaw clenched and face pale, eyes flicking between the three of them.

“Iryana? Hadima?” The woman gulped. “And Misha?”

Iryana was shaking. Spiraling. Combusting.

“No.” Iryana backed toward the tent’s flap. “This isn’t—you can’t be...”

She spun around, nearly bumping into her sisters. Hadima was frozen, staring at the woman with moon-wide eyes and a quivering chin. But Misha was looking at Iryana with a question in her eyes.

Gods. Iryana sucked in a rapid breath. Misha wouldn’t even remember what their mother looked like. She’d been too young.

“Is she…” Misha asked Iryana, voice strangely even.

As Iryana shook her head, the woman choked out, “You don’t recognize me, Misha?”

She knew that voice. Knew it to the very depths of her soul. It had sung her lullabies, explained the plants of the forest, begged her to behave.

“No!” Iryana shouted, turning to the woman again. “Our mom left. She’s gone. She wouldn’t just show up here after ten years!”

“You need to listen to me, little owl,” the woman wearing her mother’s face begged. “Please. You all do.”

Little owl.

Those two words tore through her, ripping her further apart than any beast could.

Iryana dropped to the dirt ground of the tent. Her left hip hit first, her arms catching her with a jolt to her shoulders. Her recently bandaged wound screamed, but she didn’t care.

Misha stepped partway around her. As if placing herself between Iryana and their mother.

“You’re our mother?”

Iryana couldn’t see Misha’s face, but her head was cocked to the side like when she was studying a new sword sequence. Hadima was still silent.

“You don’t remember me at all? You were this big last time I saw you,” their mother cried, holding her hand up below her hip. “You’ve gotten so big. You’re so beautiful.”

She reached for Misha, but Iryana grabbed Misha’s hand and tugged her little sister behind her. “Don’t touch her. You don’t get to touch her.”