Nikolai just stood there for a moment. He’d been seething on the way here, but Vika’s kindness suddenly doused the anger.

“If you attempt more than a simple good-bye, though,” she said, “that I will notice. And when you’re done, you and I have some unfinished business.”

“I . . . thank you.”

Vika nodded and turned to look at the sconce as she’d promised.

Nikolai began to charm open the locks on the door. As the final one clinked open, Vika said, “And tread carefully in there. I have a couple of alligators inside, and they haven’t been fed.”

Nikolai laughed unintentionally. “Of course you do. Thank you for the warning.” He eased open the heavy wooden door and stepped inside. It was even darker in here than in the hall. He conjured a candle in his hand and shut the door. “Mother?”

Shackles clinked in the far corner, on a platform raised just out of the alligators’ reach. “My son. You have not been lost.”

“It is not so easy to be rid of me,” Nikolai said. “I believe it runs in the family.” He snapped his fingers and two short lengths of rope appeared. They wrapped themselves around the alligators’ snouts and secured tidy knots, and Nikolai stepped over them as if they were merely logs. He crossed the cell and examined the icy chains on Aizhana’s wrists, ankles, and around her entire body. She was shivering. “I’ll get you out of here.”

“No,” she said. “They mean for me to die today, and I will. I only wanted to see you once more.”

Nikolai still focused on the chains. He could undo the charms. They were much less complicated than the painted egg. “What are you talking about?”

“I was selfish in the past,” Aizhana said. “I pretended I was selfless in giving a part of myself to you, but in truth, I was the opposite, for I did not give you everything, Nikolai. I wanted to live, too, so I could see you grow. I was selfish, because I wanted to be able to be your mother.

“But that isn’t what you need from me, is it? You don’t need a mother; you’ve survived on your own. I’ve only made things more complicated. So I’ll give to you what I should have given you long ago, and the only thing I have to give. . . .” A black tear trickled from her golden eyes, down her skeletal cheeks.

Nikolai frowned at the tear. There was something familiar about it. . . .

“I’ll give you my entire life,” Aizhana said.

He shook away the half-formed thought about her tears. “Mother. No.” He could not ask her to die for him.

“I am as good as dead already, Nikolai. I won’t run from here with you. I would only bring you more trouble. So either I die now, on my terms and gifting my son all that I have to give, or I die on their terms, alone on a snowy platform with a noose around my neck. Have mercy on me and say yes.”

“I—”

“Say yes.”

She was horrible. She’d killed villagers on the steppe, soldiers, his father. . . . But she’d done it out of love. Misguided love. But love. How could Nikolai deny her one last act of love and mercy as her dying wish? Especially when this harmed no one. Not anymore.

Nikolai dropped to his knees before her. “All right, Mother.”

Her tears flowed now, a slow and painstaking trickle like tar. Aizhana circled her bony fingers around Nikolai’s shadow wrists, where they were exposed between shirtsleeve and glove.

“I love you, Nikolai,” she said, her throat dry, her voice strained. “Know that everything I have ever done has been for you, and that I am proud of you. Not because you are an enchanter, but because you are intelligent and passionate and strong. And because . . . because even though you may never truly love me, you showed me tenderness. You let me into your life.”

Aizhana closed her eyes. She nestled her head against Nikolai, and then she began to send her energy into him. It started as a thin stream, cold and sharp, and Nikolai gasped as he received the energy she’d gleaned from parasites that fed on rot and death, and from the bodies of all the people she’d killed.

Deuces . . . It was thick and sticky black. Like her tears.

Like the shadowed feeling that had been roiling inside him ever since he broke free of the steppe dream.

“It was you,” he said as Aizhana’s grip on his wrist grew tighter. “You transferred energy to me when I was unaware. That’s how I had enough power to escape the Dream Bench, and to enchant the Neva fete, and to free myself from the painted egg.”

“For the first and second, yes, I gave you my energy while you were asleep. For the egg? I don’t know about an egg. That was your friend Renata.”

“Renata? But how could she make me so strong?”

“I passed Galina’s energy on to her.”

“What?” He ripped his hands away from Aizhana. She cried out as if the loss of the connection caused her physical pain.

Nikolai staggered away, shaking his head. “You forced Renata into your service! And Galina isn’t abroad, is she? Oh, devil take me, you killed her, too.”

Aizhana swayed and buckled to the splintered platform. Her skin was so dry now from gifting him her energy, it crumbled in flakes off her face. The sinews in her neck strained, and the golden light in her eyes was like a candle flame about to expire. “You expected less from me?” she rasped, every word now taking enormous effort. “It had to be done. She deserved it.”

“No, she didn’t.” A complicated cocktail swirled through Nikolai, a mix of gentlemanly horror with the desire to heap misery and trauma upon Aizhana. Galina had not been particularly kind to Nikolai, but she had taken him into her own home and spent years training him. She deserved a better end than what she had been given.

Aizhana stretched her hand out to him. Her arm trembled from the effort. “My son. Please. Let me give you what remains.”

He looked down on her. She recoiled. His disgust must have been palpable, even on his shadow face.

Nikolai turned and started toward the door.

“Wait! Have mercy.” Aizhana’s chains rattled against the platform. “Don’t leave me!”

Nikolai stopped in front of one of the alligators. “I left you a long time ago,” he said without turning. “But because I’m a gentleman, I’ll grant you a measure of mercy and not force you to face your death publicly on the gallows.” He stepped over the beasts to the door.