“I know.” Lady Kiradin’s fingers brushed the bloody steel of Apara’s claws and closed about her wrist. “Oh my dear, I know. But I was afraid. Not of my reputation – that fades with age, whatever others might say – but of your judgement. That you wouldn’t forgive me the mistakes of youth. And so the years slipped by. It has been torment.”

Tears spilled unbidden across Apara’s cheeks. Sorrow mingled with the bitter mirth of disbelief. “A woman who orders the deaths of her children should know torment.”

“True. I have performed terrible deeds, and will yet do more, if called to. All I have done, I have done for the Republic, for she needs a mother far more than you ever did. She lacks your strength.” She set Apara’s unresisting claws to her own throat. “But if you cannot forgive me, then at least grant me a quick death.”

Apara tried to pull away. Lady Kiradin held her close. “You’d have me kill you?”

Wasn’t that what she’d determined to do the moment Sevaka’s body had slipped away? She couldn’t recall. Emotion had swamped motive.

Lady Kiradin’s eyes brightened with tears. “If that’s what you want. If that’s what it takes to settle things. I promise you, I shall feel nothing.”

Overcome by conflicting emotion, Apara sank to her knees. “I don’t know what I want.”

“Hush, child. I know.”

Lady Kiradin . . . no, her mother . . . crouched at her side and drew her into an embrace. Part of Apara screamed at her to pull away, to run from Freemont and never return. But the greater part came home.

“You have done a hard thing tonight,” her mother whispered, breath warm on her ear. “The hardest. I am prouder than you can ever know. If your sister had been half the woman you are, it would never have been necessary. But you are my firstborn. You are the best of me. Your sister . . . she is dead?”

Apara flinched. “I can’t be sure. Someone came. A knight of Essamere. The one who took my cousin’s hand, I suspect.”

Her mother sucked in a sharp breath. “A woman?”

“Yes.”

A sigh. “I see. Then we had best prepare for her arrival.”

Lilyana pressed the glowing flat of the dagger home. Sevaka’s lips parted, drowning the sizzle of burning flesh with a breathy wail.

“I said hold her down!” snapped Lilyana.

Josiri put his full weight on Sevaka’s shoulders and wondered how a woman so far gone into the mists could possess such desperate strength. At the far end of the blood-slicked table, Braxov tightened his grip on her ankles. The steward was nearly as pale as the patient, and little wonder. Sevaka’s belly was a torn, gory ruin. It didn’t matter how much Lilyana staunched or cauterised, there was always more.