My dear son,

One day, you will understand why I do this.

One day, you will remember that I am a mother and you are still only a child. You do not know the years I've lived. You do not know my secrets. You do not know me.

But I have been teaching you. And you have been learning. You always were a good learner— I tried to convince your father of that, I really did. It's due to his own stubbornness that he didn't listen.

It's his stubbornness that you inherited. His inability to let things go. My apologies for comparing you to him— I know you hate that. Hate it more than you hate me. I am doing what is best for you, and I am stubborn too.

You won't stop chasing me. Fine.

I will not let you go either.

Love,

Mom

...

Keefe watches Fitz's hair blow back in the harsh wind, the note in his hand flapping until he fears it will be ripped right out into open air.

But Gisela glimmers into sight before he can, the skirt of her maroon dress whipping against her legs. It stands stark against the green of the grass and the green of the four-seasons tree she lands beside. She'd worn that in Loamnore that day, and he doesn't know if she's been able to change in the month since. Has she bothered coming back to Candleshade since she left them? Since the truth came out?

"Where is my son?" Gisela asks like she already knows. She doesn't look anywhere but Fitz, the stray hairs from her bun whisking around her head. For a moment, Keefe fears that she's somehow a telepath scanning the area for hidden minds.

"Not here," Fitz lies. He holds the paper in his hands up high enough for her to see it. "I found the note you left for him, and I'm here in his place."

Gisela laughs. "And, pray tell, why on earth would I want you?"

...

Dear Keefe,

You are still running, and I am glad to be the cause of it.

The only problem is that you are running away from me, too. And in doing so, you are running away from yourself.

Your legacy will come for you whether you want it to or not. The gears have already begun turning, and I am the only one who can keep them going. If they jam, you will die.

You need me, Keefe. All boys need their mothers.

And I need you. You are irreplaceable, precious, one-of-a-kind. All boys need their mothers, and all mothers need their children.

Come and find me before it's too late.

Love,

Mom.

...

"Because I'm important to Sophie." Fitz looks like a greek god lined up with the sun. It reflects off his eyes, turning the teal to gold. The branches of the tree cast shadows across his skin, dappling it in alternating dark and bright. He brings the note back to his side and it crumples in his fists. "I'm her cognate. They need me to help her find secrets—ones like the location of Elysian."

Sophie shifts next to him, on their stomachs in the grass. Nerves flow into Keefe in a distracting wave, gold flecks scraping against his skin in uncomfortable anxiety. She agreed to this, even helping Fitz write his speech, but still doubt lingers, shared by Biana on her other side.

Gisela waves her hand. "And she will find it no matter what. She can find a way. Why would you possibly be worth more to me than my son?"

"Because I can help you get him," Fitz tells her, and his voice breaks halfway through.

"How could you possibly make that happen?" Gisela asks, amused.

"He's in love with me," Fitz says, his voice strengthened, and Keefe can't stop a shiver from tracing down his spine. The words in his mouth don't quite fit. He's in love with me. All his secrets laid bare. "He'll follow where I go. If you take me, he will come."

Gisela studies him with cold eyes. "Why would you give both of you up when you could simply let him go?"

"In exchange for me—" he takes a deep breath— "you have to let him go. He does what you need him to, and then you let him go. You won't need him anymore after that, but you will still need me to control Sophie. If I lose him, you lose me, and you lose Sophie, too."

"So this is a sacrifice," Gisela says.

"Yes."

...

Dear Keefe,

You are not a disappointment because your grades are slipping. You are not a disappointment because you run away. You are not a disappointment because your father is not proud of you.

You are a disappointment because you still do not understand why what I do is necessary, for your future and for the future of our world.

Yes, you are learning. But I know more than you ever will.

I regret that I was taken away before you joined the Neverseen. You were forced to listen to Fintan and the foolish plan that could never come to fruition. But I know what I am doing. The only piece I need is you, and what you can find for me.

You have this power for a reason. Use it.

I am not disappointed in you for hating me.

I am disappointed in you for being a coward.

Love,

Mom.

...

Keefe starts moving then, Biana clinging to his hand and Sophie enhancing her on the other side. Her invisibility spreads over them slowly, and they walk on tiptoes through the clearing to avoid making huge footprints in the grass. The leaves from the old gnome leaders rustle above them, a warning and encouragement in one.

His mother can't see them. She keeps talking.

"How valiant," she muses. "How brave. Perhaps Sophie would forgive you for betraying her. But that is how ruthlessness works, is it not? You must be prepared to not be forgiven. That is what makes it a sacrifice."

Fitz's skin pales—or maybe the light changes. Maybe he swallows, or his eyebrows twitch together, but Keefe is too far away to see. He is past halfway to his mother, and she still does not see them.

"And I am willing to make it."

"Ah, if only you'd been my son. The Council would already have fallen."

I always liked you better than my actual little brother, Alvar had told him. If Keefe is Alvar's brother, and Fitz is Gisela's son, how can they possibly know where one starts and the other ends?

"So is that your goal? The fall of the Council?" Fitz is buying them time now. Keefe is focused so hard on the way his finger twitches anxiously at his side that he trips on a stone and nearly falls. Biana catches him just in time to maintain their invisibility.

"That is everyone's goal," Gisela tells him, a smile curving her lips. "I'm simply the one with more to it. The destruction of a government is useless unless it can be rebuilt."

"And you are the one to rebuild?"

"I will be the savior—"

Keefe presses his knife to his mother's throat.

...

Dear Keefe,

Make my mistakes. This is not a lesson. It is an order.

Oh, you hate having to obey. You hate realizing that I simply know better, that you are stuck behind a wall of your own resolve.

I am running out of patience.

So hear this and remember it (this is an order): Everything that has been done to you is your own fault, and a result of your own actions.

Here, you have a photographic memory. Trace your paths and discover what could have gone differently. What you could have done differently.

Had you stayed in the Neverseen, or had you joined me, perhaps the world could already have been saved.

But you didn't.

So it is not.

Love,

Mom

...

Gisela does not scream or struggle like perhaps he hoped she would. Instead, she laughs and tilts her head back. The blade digs into her neck and sends a trickle of blood down pale skin, just another scar.

"You are no one's savior," Keefe says.

"Ah, there's the trick," Gisela says. "I was waiting for you to find one."

She snaps her fingers and they all flinch as something shiny falls into her hands. She points it at Fitz and it snaps into reality as a melder, finger curled easily around the trigger.

Sophie and Biana are still invisible at his side, but he feels the fear and fury pouring off Sophie, curling in the pit of his stomach into something sour.

"Let go of me," Gisela tells him. "Or your little boyfriend will be in unbearable pain faster than you can blink."

Fitz shakes his head. Somehow, his voice is steady, jaw set. "You need me," he reminds her. "This just proves my point. If you hurt me, Keefe will never work with you."

She smiles. "My son knows ruthlessness. He has been learning. But not fast enough. I will not die at his hand with or without this melder, but letting me go might be preferable over your pain."

"You could die," Fitz argues when Keefe doesn't say anything. Sophie's feelings batter down his numbness until he feels too much all at once. His emotions twist into a knot in his chest, corrupted by emptiness, powered by Biana's anger and Sophie's terror, bitter and sweet all at once. He doesn't trust himself to speak.

"That's so. But Keefe cannot kill me." His mother reaches up to pat him on the cheek. Her hand is warm against his skin, and his hand shakes further. "You can't, can you?"

He can't speak over the lump of feeling in his throat.

This was so much easier in his head. The fantasy where he is the savior who kills his mother easy as breathing because he wants it enough for the guilt to leave him, the fairytale of good killing bad and it's okay because it's in black and white. He thought it was simple. Pull the blade across her throat and she falls down and then he's a hero.

But his hand releases the dagger without his approval, and it tumbles down into the grass with a soft thump. Gisela releases herself from his weak grip and steps over it, turning to face him as soon as it becomes a barrier between them.

Then she shoots Fitz with the melder.

He doesn't fall immediately; it's more gradual, as his face contorts in an effort to stay upright before his knees slowly buckle, and he barely catches himself with his hands. Gisela shoots him again, and he jolts forward, twisting to land hard on his side. She steps closer and fires a third time, and he curls up in the grass, shaking.

"Mom!" Keefe's voice screws in on itself in a strangled shout, eyes burning in the wind. As soon as he reaches her, she twists and points the melder at his head. "You promised not to hurt him!"

"I never said that," she says, her mouth twisting into a smile. "I said that I'd shoot him if you didn't let me go. I never said you could keep him safe by not killing me. That would have been a lie, and I have never lied to you. You need to pay more attention to the details."

He sees her more clearly now, silhouetted in the sun like she's lit on fire. Her dress isn't maroon like he'd thought in the darkness of Loamnore, but a bloody crimson. Perhaps a bit too obvious, but for all her subtle plans, she's always been just as dramatic as Fintan. Her face is stretched and puffy from whatever she'd done to get rid of her scars, but her cruel smirk stays the same: assured of her victory and his loss. She's always the cleverest, the wisest, the strongest. A savior. Perhaps that's what she'd fancied herself all those times that she'd sheltered him from Cassius's anger.

Sophie and Biana blink back into being next to Fitz, Biana falling to her knees beside her brother and easing his head into her lap. She lays a cool hand on his cheek and runs the other over his hair, whispering something into his ear. Sophie runs to Keefe's side, her anxiety leaking into him and adding to the knot in his chest.

"Turn yourself in now," she orders, every inch a leader. Her hair whips behind her, tangling in a gold halo around her head. "And I will not inflict on you."

"Ultimatums! So the little moonlark has finally become a leader," Gisela sneers. "The same choice I just offered my son. Pain for pain. Blood for blood. You inflict, I shoot. Maybe you capture me, I escape again. Maybe you'll give me to King Dimitar, or take me to Exile, but there's no point. You are living proof—your friend, Prentice, the one who knows sacrifice, living proof that Exile can be accessed without permission."

"With what allies?" Sophie demands. "Ruy is—Ruy is dead. So are Brant, and Umber. Glimmer defected. Fintan is imprisoned. Vespera will never trust you, and you do not trust her anyway. Trix doesn't give a shit about your vision. You're all alone, and your new conjuring can't help you."

"You're forgetting someone," Gisela tells her. Behind her, Fitz lets out a shuddering breath and coughs, and unstoppable relief spreads through Keefe's body, wrapping tight around the knot of feeling. But he stiffens as she turns to him and extends her hand. "My son."

...

My son,

Your corruption is inevitable.

It's simply built into you, woven into your very genes. I drank darkness and light and made you, a living shade of gray. Learn to accept it, and you will finally fulfill your legacy.

This is only the beginning.

Make sure it is not the end.

Love,

Mom

...

"You are not my mother anymore," Keefe manages to tell her.

"Yet you are my son," Gisela says, tilting her head to the side. "If you were not, you would not be here, still undecided. You could tell me to die and I would be forced to obey. But you will not."

"And you could have conjured my knife off of your throat," he says. "But you did not."

"I did not," she agrees. "Because that, along with all else I have given you, was a lesson. And that—" she points to Fitz, stirring weakly— "is consequence. You should know them far better than you do."

Keefe blinks hard to keep tears from filling his eyes. "I'm a slow learner."

"You are a slow learner when you are uninterested," she corrects him. "Allow me to engage you a little better."

Before he can react, she points the melder at Sophie and pulls the trigger three times in close succession. Biana cries out, and it switches to aim at her.

"Stop!" he cries, holding out his hands like she will actually listen. But she does, turning to meet his eyes. They are the same as his, all icy, but she is also matter-of-fact.

He is taken back to that first blow, the one that started him breaking: on Mount Everest, when her hood had blown back.

Because it was supposed to be Cassius.

It was supposed to be Cassius who hated him, who was working against him, who would shoot at him and kidnap his friends and torture children and lower himself because how much farther could he possibly fall—but it wasn't. It was her.

I love you. But it won't be enough to save you from her.

Not from her weapons, from her words, her devious plans or her punishing guilt.

From her. From who she is.

From letting her take him over.

From letting him become her.

"Please," he says, voice breaking, and this time he allows the tears to fall. "Stop."

Gisela sighs. "Disappointing."

"I'm fucking sorry I'm a disappointment, mother! God! Fuck! I'm so sorry I won't shoot my friends in the goddamn head and slit your throat when you—" All his words are a jumble in his mouth, all coming out so wrong, twisted and dangerous, a razorblade under his tongue. He hopes it won't slice Fitz's lips if he ever gets to kiss him again. He has never been good at getting angry. All he knows is breaking and running because there is an art to running away, one he has mastered as well as painting, brushing it into being with each new place he escapes to.

Where is he running?

Where is he running?

Where does he plan to go?

"I'm just—" Your corruption is inevitable. "—why can't you just love me like a mother is supposed to?" His fingers fist into his hair, tears falling and blurring his vision, the wind snapping his clothes against his body in vivid gusts. Leaves from the four-seasons tree that four gnomes had given their lives to make shower against them, the two of them. It's snowing and raining and hailing and too bright and sunny and he can't take it. "You only had one thing to do! Don't you know there's a lesson in parenthood, in changing yourself to save me—"

"I am saving you!" Gisela's face twists into a scowl, the worst expression he's ever seen on her face. Like she was made to smile. "Haven't I rescued you? Aren't you grateful? You should be grateful!"

"Grateful for what?" he shouts back, his voice tearing itself to shreds.

"Grateful for the power I am giving you!" His mother takes another step towards him and drops the melder. For a moment, Fitz and Sophie are not on the ground, and Biana is not waiting with a hand over their cheeks, begging them to awaken. It is only the two of them, mother and son, flesh and blood, made of the ether and the void and the dark and the light. "I have given you everything!"

"It's always about power with you," Keefe cries, and digs his nails into his palm so hard he feels wet blood. "When will you find a way to say I love you?"

"You don't need that—"

"I needed you!" he screams, his voice hoarse with that knot in his chest, infecting him, taking over—he presses his hands to his cheek and feels blood smear on his skin— "I needed you to be my mother! Why can't you ever CHANGE?"

...

Keefe,

Meet me beside the four seasons tree. This is your legacy.

-Mom

...

Gisela takes another step, and she looks like she's ready to say something but her mouth isn't functioning and none of her is functioning, maybe, as she stumbles to her knees in the grass. The shadows that the tree of death casts over her face ripple, change—change—

"Mom?" he asks tentatively, but then the pressure is gone from his chest, the emotions all spent and he realizes what he's done with a lurch and a spike through his heart.

Gisela folds in on herself faster than he can move forward to catch her, but by the time he gets there, nothing is left to hold.

All that remains is a note in the grass.

In big blocky letters across the top, splattered with ink as if written in a hurry:

YOU ARE MY LEGACY

...

The world exhales.