the time. Even love.”
I laughed, a little bitterly. “Yeah, well, falling in love with Lia was an accident.”
“Love is never an accident. We choose to love. It’s not a wave that overtakes us and sweeps us along. Love comes from our deepest selves, not some outside force. Love is active, something we do.”
“Even if it’s not returned?” I asked, sounding hollow.
“Does Sawehl’s sun cease to shine if Ejarat’s earth ignores him? No. Love as the sun shines, and you will be warmed by it, too.”
“Love can be a weakness,” I argued. “Anure uses it against people.”
“It can also be a strength. Again, these are choices that belong to you.”
“I didn’t choose Anure,” I retorted harshly. “Or choose to lose you, and Oriel, and Father, and Rhéiane. I didn’t choose those stinking mines.” At the thought of all that, the helpless black rage rose up, the bloody thirst for vengeance.
“We can’t choose what the world does to us, but we can and do choose what to make of all those things,” she replied sternly. “You’re not a little boy anymore, Conrí.”
“I know that,” I bit out. “Are you telling me I shouldn’t be angry? That I shouldn’t want Anure dead?”
“I think you should ask yourself the price of anger, of vengeance.”
“I gave up on vengeance. I know my blind need to kill Anure with my own hands got Lia captured and killed. I learned my lesson.”
“Have you? You no longer wish to destroy Anure and his empire?”
“I know that freeing Rhéiane and the other captives is more important.” There, I’d said it under the influence of the waters, so it must be true.
“Knowing a truth and acting on it are two different things.” My mother shook a finger at me, fond exasperation in it. “You are willing to rescue the royal captives because you also hope to kill Anure. There are no secrets here, not even from yourself. Especially from yourself.”
“Killing Anure will destroy the empire and liberate everyone. That’s why I’m doing this,” I answered stubbornly, ignoring the false ring to it.
“And what if restoring the many orphaned kingdoms requires you to let Anure live—will you be able to do that?”
“Are you saying that’s what it will come to?” I demanded. Ejarat take me, how I hated the vagueness of prophecies. Either tell me a solid prediction or don’t tell me anything. “Because I don’t see Anure just walking away. We have to destroy him if we have any hope of a lasting peace.”
“Do you? I would carefully consider what you hope to accomplish—and the cost to yourself. You’d be risking your own life.”
“Maybe my life is worth that,” I answered bleakly. I’d never planned to survive killing Anure. “Killing Anure is what I’ve lived for all these years.”
“Maybe you should change that,” she countered. “Dying for vengeance changes nothing, but living well, giving your life to creating a world worth living in, that changes everything.”
“I don’t know how to do that.” I thought of how I’d felt, sitting beside Lia’s throne, pretending to be a king and knowing myself for a fraud. “I know how to kill. Not how to make things live.”
“Dealing death is easier,” she agreed. “Just as it’s easier to destroy than to create. Death is always there, waiting for us, but life is not. Which is more precious?”
“You want me to say life,” I answered when she paused expectantly. “But I still don’t get what you’re telling me.”
She shrugged a little. “Think it over. Maybe you will. And now I must go.”
“Wait!” I reached for her but couldn’t move. Figured. “Sondra thought—I thought that I’d learn something I needed to know to win this battle. What is it?”
She shook her head, smiling still, but with that exasperation. “So like your father. It’s not always about winning. Sometimes enduring, surviving, is enough. Hasn’t your Lia taught you that yet?”
“I guess I thought this truth thing would bring more clarity.”
She laughed. “Clarity. Ah, yes. I’m not sure anyone gets to have that, much as it seems desirable. There are layers beneath layers, and it takes a great deal of scrubbing away to get to the core. Consider this a first layer. I love you, Conrí. Give my love to Rhéiane when you see her.”
“Then I will see her? She is in Yekpehr?” I felt like I was yelling down a long hallway as my mother’s image faded. “Don’t go yet! Mama, I love you, too.”
Love you too. Love you too. Love you too. Our voices, intertwined, echoed