Chapter 106. The Queen Mother Awakens

Cassian POV

I’m frozen in place for a moment until my words come to me. “Mother?”

It’s like standing in the middle of a dream. When I left her back at the Oceana castle, she could barely finish a coherent thought. Her eyes were dull, lifeless. My father’s death—the death of her mate—had turned her into a shell of the woman she had once been.

This woman in front of me certainly looks like her, but her eyes twinkle and dance with merriment, alive, awake to the world around her.

“Cassian,” she says in a joyful, familiar voice I’d thought was lost to the world.

I still don’t make a move toward her, convinced I’m not really seeing what is right in front of me. It’s not just that she should be back in Oceana. It’s that she seems so full of life. I don’t know what miracle could have made th