The flight felt longer than usual, and the plane less comfortable. Everything felt familiar, but wrong somehow. Like the world he was traveling through was only the reflection of the real world in a dark surface. He went through the motions, getting into the airport in the dark of the night, and allowing the one of the family’s chauffeurs to speed them towards the family home. He was certainly in no state to drive himself.

Good, he thought. At the very least, she will die at home. She deserves that comfort. She deserves so much better than what she got.

When they got to palace, Kehlan practically ran through the foyer, stopping to ask a staff member where he’d find his mother.

“She’s in the morning suite, isn’t she? By the garden?”

The servant nodded, and gave a slight bow.

“Yes, sir.”

Kehlan walked solemnly toward the morning suite, his legs leaden and his mouth dry. The hallway was dark and shadowy. The lights had been dimmed. Kehlan couldn’t remember if this was usual or not, but it felt right.

When he got to the suite and stepped in through the door, the first thing he heard was the beeping of the machines. He could have screamed at them. It felt like an insult—these things that were a part of the career he had chosen and that had driven a wedge between them, here are the end. Necessary, sure, but out of place. This was not the dignity in death that his elegant mother should have.

He heard the sound of someone clearing their throat, and it brought him back to the room before him, clearing his eyes. A few of his female cousins were there, by the Sheikha’s bedside. Kehlan didn’t know what to say to them, but was spared the need to figure it out. He must have looked as lost and angry as he felt, for they disappeared wordlessly back down the endless hallway from which he had just come.

And then, it was him and his mother, and the beeping, blinking, offensive machines. Alone together for the last time.

She was sleeping. She didn’t look peaceful. He knew that sometimes dying people didn’t. There was a lot of pain involved, and sometimes that pain couldn’t fully be managed. Not if they were trying to preserve life, so that they could last just a little bit longer.

So that, say, a disrespectful, prodigal son could return.

He sat next to his mother and took her hand in his. The chair was still warm from his cousin, as was his mother’s hand, but the room around them felt cold. Dawn was breaking, and the morning garden would soon be beautiful, positioned as it was to make the most of the early light. But for now, it was only barely lit by the first, weak rays.

He hoped that his mother would get to see the garden in its glory before she went. He hoped she would get to see him before she went.

He was sorry. He needed to tell her he was sorry.

He’d been fighting off thoughts the whole flight over. All the time over the States and over the ocean and over Europe, he’d been telling himself that it was complicated, and that things were complicated between them. He’d told himself that there were many families that were complicated like theirs, and that hopefully he would find the words to speak to her, that were what she needed to hear, in spite of it.

But now, sitting here, looking at her wrinkled hand, he realized that he had been wrong. It was all so very, very simple.

Kehlan didn’t know how long he sat there before his mother woke. The line between waking and sleeping seemed to be a thin one for her, here at the end. But eventually, he realized his mother was looking at him, her eyes open.

“I’m here, Mother,” he said. “I’m here, and I’m sorry.”

She winced, and Kehlan didn’t know if it was the pain, or if it was from the memory of their fight, and what he had to apologize for. He couldn’t do anything about the former, but he could about the latter.

“You were right, and I was wrong,” he went on. “I was so focused on what I wanted to do, I wasn’t thinking about my responsibilities. I will come back. I will do what I always should have done. I will be a good son. I will be the son you deserved. The son you raised me to be.”

The Sheikha shook her head weakly. And then, as if the effort was too much for her, she coughed.

Kehlan leaned forward, supporting her by her shoulders with an arm and trying not to think of how frail she felt. How had she gotten this way without him doing something about it? Without him doing anything more than just suspecting, and being angry that she wouldn’t confirm his suspicions for him?

“No,” she said, when the coughing had abated.

“I will,” Kehlan insisted. But the Sheikha again shook her head, this time without setting off a coughing fit. As she had so many times before, Kehlan saw her dig down, and find strength. The strength to do what she needed to do.

“You already are a good son. You always were.”

Kehlan stared at her, his mind not absorbing the words.

“But I—”

“You stood up for what you believed was right. The way a good son should. The way a good royal should. You were always like your father that way. Like your father, before you were born, when I first met him. Before all this got to him.”

She weakly motioned around them.

“I always wanted this life. These things. To serve in this way. I chose it. But you didn’t.”

He leaned in yet further, as though he could will the woman he’d known back into existence, rather than this woman who was giving up on everything she’d always wanted.

“But I will. I’m trying to tell you, I—”

“You will do no such thing.”

Even in his mounting dismay, and the seriousness of the situation, Kehlan could almost laugh. She was his mother, right to the end. All fire and command, even as she was granting him a pass.

“You will live the life that you want to live. Your cousins have no choice, but you do. And you will be a better ambassador to the world if you are happy. This I believe.”

She reached up, and put her hand on the side of his face.

“My boy. My only boy. My miracle boy.”

He shot her a look of confusion.

“Miracle?”

“Yes, did no one ever tell you? No, of course we didn’t. We never talk of such things. It was a shameful thing, I thought, after I married into the royal family and then could not get pregnant. For years we tried, and nothing. I felt I was a waste. I felt that I had let my husband down, that I had let his family down. And they told me so.”

Kehlan had a hard time imagining his extended family saying such a thing. And it must have shown on his face, for the Sheikha smiled and shook her head, leaning back down.

“It was a long time ago. Things were different, then. But when I had you, I thought, ‘Ah! Now I am able to give the family the prince they want!’ And I put that on you. I wish I had not.”

It wasn’t an apology. The Sheikha didn’t really do apologies, and to grant her forgiveness in so many words wouldn’t have been right. Instead, he squeezed her hand in silent gratitude for her explanation. It was understood between them. All was understood.

With her confession complete, the strength she had summoned for it left her. She seemed barely able to turn her head to look out the wide-open doors to the garden, which was now lighting up with the sunrise in full swing.

For a long while she lay, Kehlan’s hand in hers, looking at the garden. She was fading even as the sunlight was growing stronger. It felt like a trade. It wasn’t a welcome one.

“Tell me about Washington,” his mother said, after a while, the English word sounding unmistakably foreign on her tongue. “They told me you went back to Washington, even though the conference was called off. What is there for you? What did you find?”

Kehlan felt his heart warm at the opportunity to tell him mother everything.

“A woman,” he said softly.

“What sort of a woman? A serious woman?”

Kehlan smiled at the thought of Paige being serious, in the many ways she often was.

“A woman I am serious about, yes. Very serious.”

With marked difficulty, the Sheikha raised her eyebrows.

“Well, I have lived long enough to see the end of days, then.”

Kehlan laughed, and happy as he was that his mother would hear his laugh one last time, the sound still felt profane bouncing off the walls of the morning suite.

“All these years, I was only ever so…unserious because I hadn’t met her. She’s who I want, mother. For the rest of my life. I’m only sorry you won’t get to meet her.”

If the Sheikha was saddened by this, she didn’t show it.

“You are all the best parts of me. So, the best parts of me have met her. That is enough. Anything else would only be disappointment. And, Washington. You like it? The people there, you like them?”

Kehlan nodded, though he realized that his mother’s gaze was fixed in a way that felt final on the garden outside. He searched around for every detail of Stockton he could tell her, and realized he hadn’t mentioned Dylan.

“He reminds me of me, when I was younger,” he told his mother. “The way he cares for animals. He wants to be a vet, the way I once did. And sometimes, he reminds me of Father, with the connections he makes.”

“Children are a blessing,” his mother said. “I am glad you will be blessed as I was with you.”

He told his mother of the lakes and the way the mountains always felt like a protective crown around the town. He told her about the town’s inhabitants and every little thing he loved about Paige. And, slowly, while she listened to the voice of her son and felt his hand in hers, the Sheikha fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.