I feel my mother’s presence before I see her standing by the window: a shadow among the many others cleaving to the wall. Like Latif, my mother’s skin and hair are gray, and so is her worn sari. In the yellow moonlight, I can almost pretend that her eyes are green the way Papa said they were when she was alive. For the first time, I see bits and pieces of myself in another person—in the slant of her jaw, the protruding tip of her nose, in the smile that now curves her lips. My stupid eyes want to brim over. I blink them dry.
“My precious boy.” Unlike Latif, who strides with the grounded gait of a man still alive, my mother doesn’t walk as much as she floats, her fingers brushing me as lightly as butterfly wings. “At last. At long last I can show myself to you.”
“Why?” I don’t attempt to soften my tone. “Why now?”
Her hand drops from my cheek. “You have every right to be angry with me. I abandoned you, didn’t I? Or it certainly seems like it. But what you don’t know, my son, is that I did stay for a while. After giving birth to you, my body died. But my soul didn’t. It still languished, longing to brush your face with a hand, to see you happy and safe. So I came back. Weekly at first and then daily when I realized you could see me. You always smiled when I appeared, did you know?”
The sadness in her voice tempers my rage. I will myself to remain silent.
“Your father saw you trying to talk to me when you were very small. You must have been about two years old. Ma, you kept saying over and over again. And then he knew. He understood what I’d become. He urged me to leave. To not show myself to you. ‘What will I tell him when he starts asking more questions?’ your papa demanded. ‘When he asks how he can see living specters, but I cannot?’
“Now, wait,” she interrupts before I can express my outrage. “Before you judge your father, think carefully. His hold on you was precarious. If the government discovered that you weren’t his son—or that you were a seer—it would have done its best to make him give you up. Seers are that rare and valuable. To the world, you had to appear non-magus. You needed to be Xerxes’s son. I agreed with him. Three years went by. My longing to see you increased. When you were five, I came to see you again. You’d grown so much. I wanted to touch you so badly, I reached out, forgetting that I wasn’t supposed to. That you could see me.
“You were amazed, of course, and shocked. You went and told your father that you saw me, even brought him to the place where I revealed myself to you. The moment I saw Xerxes’s face, I knew what a mistake I’d made. It took everything in me not to reveal myself to you then—to stay away.”
My head spins, unable to process the enormity of what I’m hearing. “But you didn’t come even when I found out the truth about my blood. When I called for you at the temple in the tenements. Why did you stay away then?”
“I thought you’d see me differently,” she admits. “You were so angry, Cavas. I was afraid you wouldn’t love me anymore.”
“You are my mother. I can’t not love you!” I force myself to breathe deeply. “I was angry with Papa. He was wrong to keep you away from me.”
“He didn’t keep me away. I chose to keep myself hidden. To make sure you were safe. Cavas!” she cries out when I slowly rise to my feet. “Cavas, you’ll hurt your leg!”
“It doesn’t hurt as much as what you’ve already told me,” I say bitterly. Grief presses down, crushing the breath out of me. “Everything hurts.”
“I know, my son,” my mother says. Her cool arms wrap around my shoulders, pulling me close. Angry as I am, I can’t bear to pull away.
“Ma,” I say after a pause. “Who was he? My … the man who…” My voice trails off. I’m unable to use the phrase my real father or even the man who sired me.
But my mother understands.
I sense it from her tightening fingers, from the growing coldness of her embrace. I’m not entirely surprised when I open my eyes a moment later and find that she’s gone, and that I’m alone once more in a darkened room.
40GUL
They won’t let me leave my room except to use the toilet. And even there, I’m accompanied by someone—usually Kali or the woman named Esther, her starry face so striking that it makes me speechless the first time I see it. I try to step out on my own—to see where I am, to find Cavas, who Esther said was in a room a few doors away from mine—but my head spins so much that I fall to the floor.
“If you move again, I’ll shackle you,” Kali threatens. “Neither of you are ready to step out of your rooms. It’s a miracle you both woke up after inhaling all that dust.”
“Cavash.” My voice slurs. “Hish leg … Is it…?”
“Esther says it’s healing well.” She hesitates, as if wanting to say something else, but then simply says, “Sami will bring in your lunch for you.”
I grab her wrist. “Kali, w-wait—what about Juhi … Am-mira?”
“Imprisoned, from what we know, but still alive.” Kali forces a smile. “You know how stubborn they both are. They’re probably giving their interrogators hell.”
My empty stomach turns over. I’m not fooled by Kali’s bravado. “H-how … Who t-told you—”
“You’ll find out everything soon,” Kali says, gently withdrawing from my grip. Her face looks like it has aged several years. “Rest now, my
