Grace's tears have long since dried, but they've left her feeling profoundly spent. The emotions she's only sporadically let herself feel in full over the past several years have all poured out of Grace at once, and she's almost numb in the wake of it.
Grace now sits on a chair directly across from Lohna, her mother holding Grace's hand in both of hers in case Grace simply disappears on her again. Lohna's expression as she stares at Grace, at her strange eyes and altered bearing, is not disbelieving so much as overwhelmed. Lohna attempts to keep the facts she's just been told straight in her head. "You're really Exalted?" Lohna has lived in the shadow of Dragon-Blooded for decades, and is an educated woman besides, whatever her current station. She knows what the word means, even if the form of it that Grace is trying to explain is strange and unfamiliar.
"Yes," Grace says. With the slightest effort, her Caste Mark flares on her brow, lighting the dim room in gentle blue.
Tentatively, Lohna reaches out to touch her daughter's forehead, finding the mark entirely cool to the touch. Wonderment and confusion seem to war behind her eyes.
"You recognise Venus's symbol," Grace says.
"I do," says Lohna, taking her hand away slowly. "Chosen by the goddess of love..." she looks into Grace's eyes again, seeming to see past the unfamiliar colour and the glittering stars, recognising something less than happy there. "Aren't you lonely, though, Flower?"
"I have been," Grace admits. "And still, sometimes. But I have friends in heaven now. People who care about me. We're all good about looking out for each other." To a fault, at times, despite factional bickering and routine manipulations. Her mother doesn't need the messy details. "It was very hard, at first. Everyone forgot me at once. Lady Ambraea just... looked right through me, like I was another strange servant."
"I always hoped she'd look after you," Lohna says, horrified. The hand that still holds Grace's squeezes tighter. "I thought she would."
"It wasn't her fault," Grace says. "Dragon-Blooded aren't all-powerful, whatever they like to think. It wasn't because she didn't care."
"I know they aren't," Lohna says, sighing. It's a dangerous sentiment for her to express if she said it the wrong way, to the wrong person. "It really was like you said — she wanted to take me away from the palace, give me a retirement. She can't do that anymore, though, with Her Excellency gone."
Grace feels a touch of fear for her mother's safety, thinking again about her status as a slave belonging to a vanished Empress, in a Realm that may yet fall to war. If Ambraea can't help Lohna, then who else does she have but Grace herself? Dropping her voice to a whisper, Grace asks: "If I could get you away from here, take you somewhere safe, would you go? I could take you back to the Neck, or anywhere. I could... I could free you."
Lohna freezes up, a fearful look coming into her eyes. She glances around, as if making sure that no one had heard that. "I... I've seen what happens to slaves that run," she says, voice very quiet.
"Do you think I'd let that happen? That I'd let anyone hurt you?" Grace asks.
Lohna slowly makes herself relax, although it's clearly difficult. "No," she says, "not if you could make it otherwise. But please understand, I haven't seen my homeland in well over two decades. It's part of a satrapy now, the 'Lesser Cowries', governed out of Amphiro. When I saw it last, it was burning. I don't know how many of my family survived that invasion, if any of them did. There's no home left for me there."
"But I can't just leave you alone here," Grace says.
"Won't you be able to come see me, sometimes?" Lohna asks, hopeful in a way that breaks Grace's heart. "It won't be so bad that way." As Grace averts her eyes, Lohna frowns. "What's wrong?"
Grace takes a deep breath, and tells her, her voice very small. "When I leave, you will forget about me again. Just like before."
"No!" Grace is startled by the forcefulness of the denial. Lohna lets go of her hand, and pulls Grace into a tight, desperate hug. "No, please don't say that."
"I can't—" Grace's voice comes out thick, choked up. "It will be easier in a way, won't it? You can't mourn what you don't know you've lost."
"Flower," Lohna says, "Flower, I have been heartbroken for the past three years, never knowing why. It was all worth it, everything that happened to me, knowing that you could have a good life. Without you, what was any of it for?"
"I'm sorry," Grace says. "I didn't do this on purpose."
Lohna continues to hold her tight for a silent minute. Then she says, as if she can barely bring herself to think it: "Do you swear that if I go with you, we won't be caught? Please remember, whether or not she's here you will be robbing the Empress." The fear of being caught and punished is still there, but Lohna has just been presented with something she's even more afraid of.
"I swear," Grace says, meaning it as much as any promise she's made in her life. "Where do you want to go, if not to the Neck?"
Lohna only hesitates briefly. "Can't I stay with you?" she asks. "Is that allowed?"
"I... " Grace falters. Gods keep mortals in heaven, after all — as consorts or servants or curiosities. Legally, she should be able to bring her mother there. Grace hadn't considered the possibility of actually bringing her mother home with her before now, but if it's really what Lohna wants...
"Yes," Grace says. "I have a very large house in heaven, inherited from my predecessor. There would be room." Specifically, it's a Celestial manse passed down to her by her previous incarnation, a structure of such opulence that Grace doesn't know what to do with it most days. "I should say," Grace says, "you wouldn't be a slave there. But most humans do not have very much legal status in heaven, you would be reliant on me. And you would still forget me. We can't prevent that."
"But I would remember you again sometimes?" Lohna says, releasing Grace enough to be able to look her in the eye again. "I did it once, I can do it again."
"Maybe," Grace says, not wanting to give herself false hope. "It can get... easier over time." Arcane Fate is supposedly easier to overcome with sufficient knowledge of it, and of Sidereals in general. But especially for a mortal, it was never going to be kind enough to relent entirely for any being bound to fate.
"As long as I don't have to lose you again," Lohna says. "Please believe that I love you even when I don't know your face."
"I do, mama," Grace says. Her feelings are a heady mixture of elation and anxiety and dread, but it seems that they're committed now. "We'll make it work."
Lohna nods. "I... would like to give Lady Ambraea an explanation before we go. If we can."
Grace very nearly balks at that — it adds a further element of risk to what can currently only very generously be described as a plan. All the same, she finds herself nodding. Dynast or not, Grace does believe that Ambraea loves Lohna, in her way. And Grace has enough care for her that she doesn't want to be responsible for Ambraea losing the woman who raised her without so much as a word.
Lohna gives a sigh, looking around at her surroundings as though the thought of leaving them is still strange to her. "I raised you both. I gave her all the care I could, and tried to make her into a good woman, despite a thousand things in her life that might make her otherwise. I'm proud of her, most of the time. But you are my daughter, first and always, and you need me more than she does."
"Thank you," Grace says. This will have to work — she can't let herself think otherwise.
