Chapter 10 #2
It should have made me sad. Instead, it made me look at Hakan — really look at him — and feel something fierce and possessive tighten in my chest. Because I had what his parents didn't quite have.
I had a man who loved me and whom I loved back, and I'd almost let pride and pain and the memory of cherry blossoms destroy it.
Then Elif set down her fork.
"My son tells me you're courting."
The warmth drained from the table. Milan shifted. Hakan's hand found mine beneath the cloth.
"Yes," I said. "He has."
"And what are your intentions toward Hakan?"
"Mother —"
"No. I want to hear it from her."
Elif's amber eyes bore into mine. I recognized the look — not cruelty, not disapproval. Fear. The bone-deep, marrow-soaked fear of a mother who'd spent a lifetime protecting her child from something she couldn't name and couldn't stop.
"I don't understand the question," I said carefully.
"You're a princess. He's a scholarship student with no family name and no prospects beyond what he can claw for himself. You could have anyone — lordlings, princes, men with fortunes and titles. Why him?"
The question should have made me defensive. Should have triggered the diplomatic training that had been drilled into me since childhood — the careful, measured responses designed to reveal nothing and offend no one.
Instead, the truth fell out of my mouth before I could catch it.
"Because I love him."
The silence that followed was absolute.
I hadn't planned to say it. Hadn't rehearsed it, hadn't built up to it, hadn't chosen this moment — my first time meeting his mother, with lamb grease on my fingers and ash still smudging my cheekbones — as the moment I'd speak the words I'd been circling for weeks.
But there they were. Out in the air. Impossible to take back.
Beside me, Hakan had gone completely still. I could feel his hand around mine, feel the sudden rigidity of every muscle in his body, but I couldn't look at him. If I looked at him, I might lose my nerve, might qualify or soften or retreat into something safer. And I was done being safe.
"You love him," Elif said. Her voice had gone hollow. "You love my son."
"Yes."
"Do you know what that means? Do you understand what loving him will cost you?"
"Elif." Milan, gentle but firm. "Perhaps this isn't the time —"
"There's never a time." She turned on him, and I saw tears glittering. "There's never a right moment to tell her what she's walking into. What he is. What will happen if —"
"Mother, stop."
"Good." She looked at me with raw, terrible fear. "She should be scared. You should both be scared. Because I've spent two hundred years running from what hunts him, and I can feel it getting closer. Every day. Every hour. It's coming, and when it arrives —"
She stopped. Her hand flew to her mouth.
"I'm sorry. I can't — I need a moment —"
The bedroom door closed behind her.
Milan cleared his throat. "Well. That went better than I expected."
"Better?" Hakan's voice was rough.
"She hasn't threatened to ship you off to the borderlands yet." Milan rose, gathering plates with practiced ease. "Give her time. She's been terrified since the day you were born, and now you've brought home the Light God's daughter. That's a lot to process."
"Is she always like this?" I asked.
"Only when it matters." Milan paused. His eyes found mine, and for a moment I saw something complicated move behind them — warm, yes, but layered with things I couldn't read.
"She loves him more than anything. And she's spent two centuries convinced that something terrible is going to take him from her. "
"What something?"
He didn't answer. Carried the plates to the basin and left the question hanging in the air like smoke.
Elif came back before we left. She crossed the room and pulled me into an embrace so fierce it hurt — her arms locked around me, her body trembling, her face pressed against my hair.
"Please don't let them take him from you," she whispered. "Whatever you learn about what he is — whatever happens — don't let them take his heart."
I held her back. This beautiful, terrified woman who'd spent two hundred years running from something she couldn't outrun.
I thought of my own mother — dead so long I had no memory of her face.
I thought of what it would mean to have a mother who loved you this desperately, this fearfully, this completely.
"I won't," I said.
I meant it. Even though I didn't understand the warning. Even though I didn't know what she was asking me to protect him from.
I meant it.
* * *
The streets were darker on the way back. The Inspectors had finished their rounds and the border district had settled into the uneasy quiet of people who'd survived another day.
Hakan hadn't spoken since we'd left the apartment. His hand was in mine, his grip tight, his jaw set in that way it got when he was feeling too much and didn't know where to put any of it.
"Your mother's hiding something," I said.
"I know."
"Something about you. Something that frightens her more than anything in the Light Court."
"I know."
"Have you ever asked her directly?"
"Every time I ask, she either deflects or she cries. Or she gets the look she got tonight and I can't push harder." He stopped walking. The alley was narrow, dark, the buildings pressing in close. "I've spent my entire life watching her be afraid, Ada. And I still don't know what of."
I looked at him. The shadows under his eyes, the tension in his shoulders, the way he held himself like a man bracing for a blow that hadn't landed yet.
I thought about what I'd seen tonight — the border district, the Inspectors, the fear in people's eyes. I thought about Elif's trembling hands and Milan's sad smile and the apartment with no mirrors. I thought about the execution I'd watched from my window, the crowd cheering while a man burned.
I thought about the fact that I'd told this man I loved him in front of his mother before I'd told him to his face.
"I love you," I said. Directly. No audience, no defiance, no chin-lifting bravery.
Just the truth, in a dark alley, with ash on my cheeks and his hand in mine.
"I didn't say it tonight because your mother cornered me.
I said it because I've been choking on it for weeks and I couldn't hold it in anymore. "
Something broke in his expression. Not dramatically — a small fracture, a crack in the composure he wore like armor, and behind it I caught a glimpse of the boy I'd grown up with. The one who used to race me through the borderland forests and let me win because he liked the way I celebrated.
He kissed me. Soft. Almost careful, as if I were something that might shatter if he pressed too hard. Which was absurd, coming from the man who'd had me screaming his name in a stolen corner of the Academy that afternoon.
"I don't know what's coming," he said against my mouth. "I don't know what my mother's running from or what it has to do with me. But I know I'm done running from you."
"That's the most emotionally honest thing you've ever said to me.”
"Don't get used to it."
"You still haven't said it back, you know."
He pulled away just enough to look at me. That infuriating almost-smile. "Said what?"
"You know what."
"I want to hear you ask for it."
"Absolutely not."
"Ada." He tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, and his voice dropped to something quieter.
Something that wasn't performing. "I have loved you since you bled on your dress in my fort and told me your terrible lump of wood was a fox.
I have loved you every single day since, including the days I was cruel to you, especially those days, and I will love you when we're old and you're still reaching for strawberries that will make your face swell shut.
" He paused. "But I wasn't going to say it first. I have a reputation. "
"You're unbelievable."
"I'm also in love with you. Since we're stating the obvious."
"Don't get used to it."
I laughed. He kissed me again — less careful this time, more like himself — and for a few moments the dark alley and the border district and the weight of everything we didn't know disappeared into the simple, stupid, miraculous fact of his mouth on mine.
We parted at the palace gate. I slipped through the servants' entrance and made my way back to my chambers through the passages I'd memorized, peeling off the gray servant's clothes and scrubbing the ash from my cheeks.
In the mirror, I looked the same. Princess Ada. Gün Ata's daughter. The golden girl in the golden palace.
But something had shifted. Some tectonic thing, deep beneath the surface, that would take time to understand.
I'd said I loved him. Out loud. In front of people. And the world hadn't ended.
His mother had wept and warned me. Milan had smiled and said nothing. Hakan had gone still as stone and then kissed me like I'd handed him something he'd been starving for.
*Please don't let them take his heart.*
I didn't know who *them* was. Didn't know what Elif had spent two centuries running from. Didn't know why the apartment had no mirrors or why a woman that beautiful flinched at her own reflection.
But I knew what I'd promised. And I knew what I'd felt in that tiny kitchen — not just love, but certainty. The bone-deep, immovable kind that doesn't flinch when a frightened mother asks you to justify yourself.
Melo was waiting on my windowsill when I turned from the mirror.
She sat perfectly still, turquoise eyes fixed on me with the same ancient intelligence she’d carried since I was a child.
Tonight she looked at me the way Elif had looked at me. With fear. With something that might have been grief for things that hadn’t happened yet.
“I know,” I said softly. “I know something’s coming. Everyone seems to know except us.”
The fox held my gaze for a long moment. Then she turned and vanished over the ledge, a flash of russet against the dark.