For several minutes, I simply stared at the grave, breathing in the crisp morning air. I never knew what to say to my mother. In my memories, she was always turning away from me, always sweeping into another room when I was nearby, quick to put a solid door between us. Even in death, anything I could say, anything I could do, felt inadequate. Always inadequate—it was practically my motto.

“I hope you know what a mess you’ve left us in.” My hands curled into fists at my sides. “You should have told me. You should have trusted me. Now I have a chance to save Rhodaire, but I don’t know how, all because you had to do everything yourself.”

My throat tightened, but the words pushed through. “You never should have gone into that damn rookery!”

A nearby tree shook as a startled bird took flight. Leaves dislodged by its sudden movement fluttered through the air and resounding silence, settling on the grave. Something shifted inside me, like a rope given slack after an age of being pulled too tight.

“All this is because of you,” I whispered to the silence, to the earth, to the gravestone. To the memory that slept underneath. “And now you’re not even here to help us.”

My mother and I may not have been close, but in a way, she’d held us all together, held our kingdom together. Her death had splintered mine and Caliza’s relationship, sent me spiraling down inside myself, and set our kingdom unraveling.

Her legacy haunted us all, casting a shadow I couldn’t outrun. Even in Illucia, people had known her name, affording her a grudging respect even as they cursed her. They’d called her Crow Queen.

My fists closed tighter. Caliza had tried to be our mother and failed. I had failed too. We would always fail, and maybe that was for the best. We didn’t need to be her. I didn’t need to be her.

I needed to be better.

“Goodbye, Mother.” I set my hand on the tombstone.

A vibration like an earthquake shot up my arm. I tried to pull away, but my hand wouldn’t move. Voices in a foreign language echoed in my head, flashes of trees and silver eyes swirling in my vision. Then everything shifted violently. I smelled the warmth and hay of a rookery, felt the heat of flames, saw Illucian soldiers dying all around me—then a man with eyes like golden fire.

In an instant, it was over. My hand came off the tombstone, and I stumbled to the side, breathing hard.

I bolted for the castle, trying and failing to process what had happened. Had I hallucinated? The stress and nerves were finally getting to me. I was cracking.