“Each time,” she said, “I told myself I was serving Orholam and the Seven Satrapies, and not just my family. But my conscience has never been clear.”

Shaken, he intoned the traditional words, offering her forgiveness.

She stood, looking at him intently. “Now, son, there are a few things you should know before I lay my burdens down.” She didn’t wait for him to say anything, which was good, because he didn’t think he was capable of it.

“You are not the evil son, Dazen. You were errant, but never mean-spirited. You are a true Prism—”

“Errant? I murdered the White Oaks! I—”

“Did you?” she interrupted, sharp. Then, softer, “I’ve seen that poison eating you for sixteen years. And always you’ve refused to talk. Tell me what happened.” His mother really was a Guile, if not by blood, by temperament. She’d wanted to talk about this all along.

“I can’t.”

“If not me, who? If not now, when? Dazen, I’m your mother. Let me give you this.”

His tongue felt like lead, but the images were there before his eyes in an instant. The leering faces of the White Oak brothers, the surge of fear paralyzing him. Gavin licked his lips, but he couldn’t force the first words out. He felt the hatred once more, fury at the injustice. Seven on one, more. The lies. “Things were already bad with Gavin. Blue and green awoke for me early, but I was starting to suspect I could do more. I told him. You know, we hadn’t been close since he’d been announced Prism-elect, and somehow Sevastian’s murder only made things worse. I guess I thought telling him my gifts were growing would bring him back. Like we could be best friends again. But he didn’t like it. Not at all.” From nowhere, a wash of tears came to Gavin’s eyes. He missed his brother so much it tore his soul. “I understand now how threatening it must have been for a young man to lose the one thing that made him special. I didn’t, then. The day after I told him I was a polychrome, I heard him urging father to betroth him to Karris. It was the greatest betrayal I could imagine. Her love was the one thing that made me special. It was some time before I saw the symmetry to that.

“Anyway, I thought Karris was as in love with me as I was with her. When father announced her betrothal to Gavin, we decided to run away together. She must have told someone. Maybe it was an accident. Maybe Gavin seemed a better prize. Karris and I were supposed to meet just outside her family’s mansion after midnight. She wasn’t there. Her maid told me she was inside. It was a trap, of course. The White Oak brothers knew I’d been trysting with Karris, and they wanted to teach me a lesson. Said I’d dishonored them, turned their sister into a whore.”

They’d grabbed him as soon as he stepped inside. All seven brothers. They’d torn off his cloak and snatched away his spectacles and his sword. He remembered the great, enclosed courtyard, servants peeking out from doors and windows. There was a great bonfire in the courtyard—plenty of light, but none for a blue/green bichrome without spectacles. “They started beating me. They’d been drinking. Several were drafting red. It got out of hand. I thought—still think—that they were going to kill me. I got away once, but the gate I tried was chained shut.”

“They chained the gates?” Felia Guile asked. It had become part of the story that Dazen had done that. Out of cruelty. Karris’s father had known better, but had said nothing to combat the lie.

“They didn’t want me to get out or any guards or soldiers from the outside to be able to get in to interfere before they were done.” Gavin got quiet. Glanced at his mother. Her face was all tenderness. He looked away.

“I split light for the first time that night. It felt… wonderful. I’d thought I might be a superviolet to yellow polychrome, but that night, I used red. A lot of red. Maybe I wasn’t ready for what red does to you when you’re already furious.” He remembered the shock on their faces when he started drafting. They knew he was a blue/green. They knew what he was doing was impossible. There was only one Prism each generation. Images of fireballs streaking from his bleeding hands, of Kolos White Oak’s skull smoking while he still stood, of the White Oak guards slaughtered by the dozen, limbs sheared off, blood everywhere. “I killed the brothers and all the White Oak guards. The fires were spreading. The front gate collapsed as I got out. I heard people screaming.” He’d gone, staggering, left empty and numb, to find his horse.

“There was a maid at the side door. The woman who’d lured me into the trap. She looked through the bars and begged me to open it. It was the same door I’d tried when I was trying to get out. It was chained on the inside, but she didn’t have the key. I told her to burn, and I left. I didn’t realize—I didn’t even think that all the other doors were chained too. I just wanted to get away. They couldn’t find the keys in time, I guess. With that casual cruelty, I consigned a hundred innocents to death.” Like it was better for the guilty to die than for the innocent to live.

Funny thing, he could weep about not being friends with his brother, but he had nothing inside himself for all those dead innocents. Slaves and servants bound to the White Oaks not by choice. Children. It was just too monstrous.

And most of the men who’d joined Dazen in the war later hadn’t even asked what had happened that night. They’d been happy to fight for a man whom they thought had killed an entire mansion full of people—because it meant he was indestructible. How he despised them.

His mother came and held him. And now, silently, he wept. Perhaps for those dead. Perhaps only selfishly, because he was losing her.

“Dazen, it isn’t mine to absolve you of what happened that night, or of all that happens in war that you carry still. But I do forgive you of all that I can. You are no monster. You are a true Prism, and I love you.” She trembled, tears streaking down her cheeks, but she glowed. She kissed Gavin on the lips, something she hadn’t done since he was a boy. “I’m proud of you, Dazen. Proud to be your mother,” she said. “Sevastian would be proud of you too.”

He held her, weeping. There was no absolution for him. Sevastian was still dead, and her other son rotted in a hell Gavin had created for him. She wouldn’t have forgiven that. But he wept and she held him, soothing him like a child once more.

Then, all too soon, she pushed him back. “It’s time,” she said. She took a deep breath. “Is it… is it acceptable for me to draft one last time? It’s been years.”

“Absolutely,” Gavin said, trying to put himself back together. He gestured to the orange panel of the wall.

She drew in orange luxin. Shivered. Sighed. “It feels like life, doesn’t it?” She knelt gracefully. “Remember what I said,” she said.

“Everything,” he swore. Even if I don’t believe it.

“It’s all right,” she said. “You’ll believe it someday.”

He blinked.

Felia Guile chuckled. “You don’t get all your smarts from your father, you know.”

“I never doubted it.”

She drew her hair back over her shoulders to give him a clear path to her heart. She placed her hand on his thigh, looked up at him. She let the orange luxin go. “I’m ready,” she said.