EMBER’S POV
Silas is quiet for a long beat.
“…As you wish, sister.”
The scale flares. The cold, buzzing light reaches across the table and sinks into her.
And I have to sit there, choking on my own tears, and watch my mother die without her heart ever stopping.
I watch the light pull it out of her. I watch the deep, ancient grief drain out of her features drop by drop.
I watch the tension that has lived in her jaw for years smooth out into nothing.
I watch her weep for a thing she is no longer allowed to remember, until the tears on her face are just water on a stranger’s cheeks, meaning nothing at all.
The light snuffs out.
The room plunges back into silence.
Devika blinks. Her spine straightens slightly, the posture of a wealthy woman who has just awoken from a nap in a strange
