Aizhana couldn’t read the expression on Nikolai’s shadow face, but she knew he did not want to be here. She looked around at the dingy room—even at a boardinghouse as disreputable as this, a hooded woman who refused to show her face could rent only a room in the shack behind the decrepit inn’s main building—and she saw the home she’d offered her son through his eyes. The straw mattress crawling with lice. The washbasin in the corner, cracked and stained brown and yellow-green by things better left unknown. The stench from the outhouse just outside their window.
“It is better than nothing,” Aizhana said.
“I have my doubts,” Nikolai said, turning for the door.
“Stay.”
“Why?”
“Because I want you to.”
Nikolai hesitated.
Did her love finally mean something to him? Or had he simply been forsaken by everyone else? Either way, hope bubbled inside her, like a mud pit in a sulfur spring. It was an awful thing to hope that her son’s former friends and mentor had abandoned him, leaving Aizhana as his last resort, but if that was the only way . . .
“It’s not much,” she said, “but at least you would have me. Which I realize also isn’t much. And if you have nowhere else to go . . .”
Nikolai pointed to the mattress. “I won’t sleep on that.”
“This is the only place that will take me,” Aizhana said. “I’ve tried.” She hunched over herself. Nikolai’s resistance shriveled her black heart even more than it already was. All she wanted was to be close to her boy. Through eighteen years of ante-death underground, that was all she’d wanted, and it held true even now.
She watched as he shook his head and took in the room again, his disgust palpable. Should she tell him that it was actually she who’d given him the energy he needed to escape from the Dream Bench? Would that win him over? Or would he hate her more, because of where her power came from? He’d mentioned time and time again that he didn’t want anything to do with her energy.
But Aizhana didn’t have a chance to say anything before Nikolai spoke again. His tone now softened. “I meant I won’t abide this filth. I won’t have you staying in quarters like this.”
Nikolai snapped his fingers at the bed of lice, and it burst into an accelerated but contained fire, quickly burning itself to nothing. Then he snapped his fingers again, and two solid oak frames appeared. They were followed by a mattress and a heavy brocade blanket.
He narrowed his eyes. “Two mattresses, damn it,” he muttered.
“What do you mean?” Aizhana asked.
“I meant to conjure two fine horsehair mattresses. Not a single lumpy one.” He scowled at the bulge at the foot of the mattress.
But the muddy bubbles in Aizhana’s soul simmered giddily. Her son had attempted to take care of her. And he’d conjured two bed frames. “Does this mean you’ll stay?”
Nikolai nodded and sank onto the edge of the mattress-less bed frame, as if he were suddenly too tired to even be angry. “Thank you for taking me in, even though I’ve been less than grateful.”
“You owe me no apologies, my son. I am overjoyed you are here with me. And your magic—you have your power again.”
Nikolai sagged as his silhouette flickered. “Apparently not. Transforming the beds has taken much of the energy I have, and I didn’t even do it right. I’m sorry, Mother. The second mattress will have to wait, and the washbasin . . . perhaps tomorrow.”
Aizhana grinned with what remained of her teeth. She couldn’t care less about the washbasin. Nikolai was here. With her. And he’d called her “Mother.”
“I challenged Pasha,” he said. “I intend to take the throne. But I’m a fool if I think I can beat him like this. He has Vika on his side.” Nikolai’s shadow was fading, as well as losing its shape at its borders.
“I would do anything in my power for you. I will help you overthrow Pasha—”
Nikolai shook his head. “I don’t want your help.”
There it was again. Aizhana sighed. But she pulled him to his feet and led him to the bed that had a mattress. “Rest,” she said, as she draped the blanket over him. “And do not worry about your magic. You can always glean more energy.”
Nikolai yawned and nodded. “Right. I can always borrow more.” He sighed quietly and lowered himself onto his bed. Even with the fatigue, his movements were elegant, like the principal dancer in the Bolshoi Ballet, lying down to slumber onstage. Or so Aizhana imagined, for she’d never seen a ballet, but she had been a beautiful dancer, too, when she was young and her body was new. Her son had the same rare grace she’d once possessed. Probably more. Pride swelled in her putrefied chest.
Nikolai fell asleep within seconds. Poor dear, Aizhana thought.
He had made it clear he did not want what she could offer, but Nikolai needed this energy whether he wanted it or not, so she reached over and rested the pads of her fingers on the back of his neck, mindful to avoid grazing him with her claws.
This way was not optimal. Nikolai could wake and throw Aizhana across the room, or worse, cast her out into the street and never speak to her again. But this was her curse: condemned to trickery and sneaking in the night, even when it came to her own son.
But so be it, she thought. For mothers will do whatever needs to be done.
She poured energy into Nikolai until he shaded darker and his edges were less blurred again. He remained insubstantial—that was his curse, for now—but he was more here than not.
Here, with Aizhana.
“I love you, Nikolai,” she whispered.
Then she released him and kissed him on his forehead. “Sleep well. I shall return soon. I am going to have a little chat with your former mentor. One does not reject my son without consequence.”