Chapter 195

Kade

My mother was sitting up when I came in.

That was the first thing. Not lying on her back with her face turned to the window, the way she had lain for a month. Sitting. Propped against three pillows, with a blanket round her shoulders and her braid over one of them, and a cup of something in both hands that Daphne was watching her drink as if it might escape.

She looked up when I came through the door.

I stopped. I couldn’t help it. I stood in the doorway of that small room with my coat still on and the chalk from the training hall still on my hands, and looked at her looking at me, and couldn’t make my feet go any further.

She was so thin. Her face had fallen in round the cheekbones, and her skin had the gray, papery look of someone who has been a long way down and only just come back. There were dark shadows under her eyes. Her hands round the cup were shaking.

But her eyes were her own.

“Kade,” she said.

Her voice was a w