No. I was the child, not her. I was the one she had chosen to bring into the world, then starved for love and forced to attempt murder. I was the one half-delirious in the Underworld. She should be comforting me. And yet—And yet—

It was so hard to be angry at someone so small and insubstantial. I had never seen The Lady cry before. I hadn’t known she could. There was so much about my mother I hadn’t known.

“So you’re stuck down here,” I monotoned at last, shuffling my feet. “In the Underworld, instead of going to Core.”

She nodded woodenly. “But I can rejoin the parade anytime I like. My emi-ehran’s waiting for me there.” She smiled weakly. “I’ll go back to them. Soon, I expect. But I had to see you. I . . . I shouldn’t have locked you in that house. Always so cold, so lonely, with no one to talk to . . .” She shuddered and rubbed her arms, as if reliving my childhood misery. “And your suffering got so much worse after meeting the prince. It’s no wonder you tried to forget. But I was mistaken, Tarisai. And I’m sorry for the mother I wasn’t, even though I was only trying to secure your future.”

I smiled grimly. That last phrase—that thread of my mother’s indignant pride, which she could not relinquish even here, in the heart of hell—removed any doubt that this shade was my mother.

The Lady—the great and powerful Unnamed Raybearer, commander of an alagbato, feared by kings and emperors—was here in front of me. And she was sorry. Actually sorry.

“I forgive you,” I said, and to my surprise, I decided that I meant it. For now, anyway. Some days I would change my mind. My mother’s toxic legacy was permanent, like the scars on Dayo’s face, and whenever I dwelled on it, I’d be livid all over again. But for now, standing before that fidgeting shade of a little girl, surrounded by my reflections, I felt only a sad, resigned peace.

“I can do you a favor,” The Lady said then, holding out her dainty hand through the mirror. “The abiku have dug another route out of the Underworld. It’s closer than the Oruku Breach. I could take you,” she said eagerly, gesturing to her translucent hovering feet. “I can fly, after all. You’ve got several days’ travel left using the stairs to the Oruku Breach. But there’s a new exit to the Overworld now, much closer. I could take you.”

“Really?” I breathed.

“I think the abiku have been working on that exit for years,” replied The Lady. “I’ve been curious: Have you heard any news of creatures appearing in the Overworld? Escapees through a new breach?”

My eyes widened. She was telling the truth. There was a new exit from the Underworld—Sanjeet had found it.

“I’ll take you,” The Lady said again, extending her hand through the mirror. “Please, Tarisai.” If she had smiled then—that warm, radiant beam that had always molded my will to clay—I would have turned away, leaving her in the Underworld without a second glance. But instead, she only stared. Agitated. Desperate. I had seen that look before, on the face of a little Kunleo girl staring up at her brother, begging him to see her and let them be a family.