His birth mother from his previous world.
The woman who had given him life and then taken it away with her own hands.
She wore a gown of pale blue silk that whispered with each step, her hair arranged in elaborate curls that framed a face he had tried so hard to forget. She was older now, lines of age touching the corners of her eyes, but still beautiful in that cold, porcelain way he remembered.
And beside her, his hand resting protectively on her arm, was Lukas.
The young man who had fought Jorghan in the street.
The one Jamie had called out to with such desperate concern.
Standing beside her now, Jorghan could see the similarities he had been too distracted to notice before—the shape of the eyes, the line of the jaw, and the way they both carried themselves with that same aristocratic bearing.
Realization dawned like a sun rising over a battlefield, illuminating truths Jorghan had never considered, never imagined.
Lukas wasn't just his cousin.
