She called for her parents again and took a few more steps. No one answered.

Instead of her vision getting used to the darkness, the shadows seemed to grow until they nearly consumed her. The flies came back, brushing against her face and clothes along with the foul smell.

She took another step forward. The trail of light from outside reached past her. The buzzing flies followed the sliver of light toward the shape of a limp hand.

She couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t move, but the reality hit her. Her parents were here, but they would never answer her calls again. They’d been swallowed by the dark, and if she didn’t leave right now, it might swallow her too.

It was just a cold roof, poor in construction, no different from any other roof in the Stacks. But it reminded her that once, she’d had people who’d protected her instead of having to do all the fighting alone. Here, she could allow herself to remember her parents without feeling weak for doing so.

Her parents had each been brought by their families from Mil Cimas when they were young, her father from the south and her mother from the north. People worshiped the Mothers not only in Sumerand, but also in Marin and Mil Cimas, so her parents had grown up with the religion.

It was odd to think of a place where people didn’t have to hide what they believed in, and so easy to forget that Sumerand’s view of religion was an exception rather than the rule. Only Sumerand and the north of Mil Cimas had banned the religion. People had tried to flee to Marin and southern Mil Cimas during the war, but travel was expensive, and Diamond Guards caught and killed many Inosen along the way. Her parents had considered fleeing, but hadn’t had the money and hadn’t wanted to put Aina at risk, so they decided to stay in Sumerand and kept up their faith even once the war began.

The cracked pavement in front of the house was still choked with weeds, but some yellow flowers stood out. Her mother had said they reminded her of her earliest memories, of the flowers that grew on the hills near where she was born in Mil Cimas.

“There was a flower in every color you can imagine,” she’d tell Aina, promising to take her there someday.

She would tuck the yellow flowers into her own short hair and Aina’s braids, reciting poems and singing lullabies in Milano all the while. Aina’s knowledge of the language had faded over the years with no one to practice it with, and now she could hardly remember the words to those songs.

Her mother’s face was a blur in her mind now, but when she was younger, everyone had told her how much they looked alike. Sometimes when she cleaned her daggers and caught her reflection on their surfaces, she saw her own eyes, her mother’s eyes, and imagined her parents telling her the Mothers’ teachings that life was precious and to take one was a sin.