Chapter 92: The Mothers Speak Back

The shadow women stood in a crescent around the great hall, their forms flickering like smoke caught in a draft. Nora felt the cold coming off them--not the clean cold of Frosthold's winter, but a damp, rotting chill that smelled of old cellars and closed rooms. Seraphine's laugh echoed from somewhere above, though Nora could not see her. She did not move from the center of the salt circle. The moonstone dust still glowed faintly at her feet, and she forced her voice steady. "You say you know their names," she said. "But you never asked them to speak." The shadow on her left twitched. Its head tilted at an angle that should have broken its neck. Nora turned to face it directly. "What is your name?" The air around it rippled. The other shadows drew back, and for a moment she thought the thing would dissolve into nothing. But then the shape steadied, and a voice came through--thin, cracked, like ice breaking on a frozen river. "Lira." The name hit the circle like a stone dropped into still water. The salt and ash at Nora's feet flared once, white and gold, and the shadow woman's form flickered. For half a breath Nora saw her as she had been--young, dark-haired, wearing a servant's apron with a stain over the heart. "She was a nurse," Nora's mother's voice said, soft and hollow. "She held me when I bled." Nora kept her eyes on Lira's shadow. "Who bound you?" "Seraphine took my daughter," Lira said. "She told me if I served her for one year, I would see the child again. I served for twelve." "Did you see her?" "On the last day. Through a window. My daughter did not know me." The shadow's voice broke. "She was wearing a collar." The cold in the room deepened. Nora heard Darius shift behind her, but he did not cross the circle's edge. She moved to the next shadow. "What is your name?" "Elara." The name burned through the circle again, and the shadow form wavered. Nora saw a woman in midwife's robes, her hands stained with blood that never washed clean. "She was the one who cut the cord," her mother's voice said. "She asked Seraphine for a blessing over me. Seraphine told her the blessing would cost her firstborn." Elara's shadow raised its hands. The stains on them glowed a dull red in the firelight. "I did not believe her. I thought she was testing my faith. I spoke the blessing anyway." "And?" "My son was born still." The shadow lowered its hands. "I have been here since." One by one, Nora called them forward. Each name weakened the damp cold. Each story pulled a thread from the darkness. The freed women did not disappear--they stood around the edges of the circle, visible now, solid enough to cast their own shadows. Eighteen names. Eighteen women. And still Seraphine's voice had not returned. Nora stopped before the last shadow. This one stood apart from the others, taller, wrapped in a cloak that did not move in the air around it. "What is your name?" Silence. Nora felt the cold press against her throat like a hand. The shadow lifted its head, and she saw the face underneath--not young, not old, lined not with age but with something that had worn her from the inside. "Mara," Nora said. "You are the one they sent to the healer's house after I was born." The shadow did not deny it. "What did Seraphine promise you?" "Freedom." The word came out dry as bone. "She said if I told your mother one lie, I could leave the nursery forever." "What lie?" Mara's eyes met Nora's, and something moved behind them--grief, or guilt, or the beginning of a choice she had not made yet. "That you were born dead."