Dalia watched her son watching her. She was able to do this while appearing to drink tea and enjoy his company. And she did. Enjoy his company, that is. But she knew he was preparing for something he didn’t want to say. She wanted to tell him to just say it, but she knew he wanted to say it the right way. It was the same reason he’d taken so long to propose to Lanthal; he wanted to do things right the first time. It was especially hard with unpleasant news, because he didn’t like hurting people. He’d always been the sweetest boy, and it was part of what made him such a terrible warlock. Not that warlocks were bad people of course; just look at her late husband, after all. He had not been a perfect being – who was? – and he had made mistakes, but she knew that Ash had done everything he’d done because he had thought it for the best. He was trying to be good, at least, and just gone about things in a bad way.
	And her girls, too, who’d been very good warlocks. Maybe not the best of the best, but Leiana had been sweet, genteel, polite and well-mannered, even when summoning dark agents to do her bidding. Felisa’d been a little more…assertive, but still, she was a good girl at heart. But still, you needed a certain spirit to be a warlock, and it was just something that Landoriel had never and would never have possessed. This same gentle spirit would have trouble telling someone something they didn’t want to hear, and she’d always known that.
	What she didn’t know was what, exactly, he had to tell her that he thought she wouldn’t like. She’d accepted his being in love with another male; it hadn’t been that difficult, but it had meant facing the fact that she’d never have biological grandchildren. Of course, Lanthal had turned out to be a very sweet boy, and one she believed would take good care of her only remaining baby; Fae, naturally, was everything adorable about little girls everywhere rolled up into an especially cute (and sometimes precocious) ball, and Dalia’d always hoped for granddaughters.
	She was over the moon about her little boy getting married (even if not to a female) because it meant he would be taken care of for life, and he was in love, and he was willing to let the world know about that commitment. It was everything any mother could want, aside from that whole biological grandkids thing, and that was a small price to pay for her son’s happiness. He seemed to have had so little in his life before now, and she wanted him to be so happy the rest of his life that it would make up for everything he’d endured prior. There was nothing in the world she could imagine Lando saying to her right now that would upset her.
	He cleared his throat, and she looked at him in innocent expectation, a look she’d long perfected as part of her wifely duties. Ash always thought he was telling her something she didn’t know, when she’d long since read his facial expression, body language, and, usually, already gotten the mail. Lando set his teacup down and stared into it, rather than look at her. She read that look and didn’t like it, but was sure he was making much of nothing.
	“Mom, this is going to be hard on you, and I wish I could think of a way to soften the blow, but I have wracked my brains and I… there’s just no easy way to tell you this.”
	She reached over and patted his hand, still wrapped around the teacup. “Dear, just start at the beginning.” She was still sure that he was being ridiculous; everything was so important to her son, so life-or-death. He obsessed over tiny details, and while she was sure that ability to seek out and pinpoint small things made him a good hunter, it also taxed him terribly.
	He sucked in a deep breath and exhaled. “The beginning, huh?” He still wasn’t looking at her. “You, uh…you said you suspected that I might…y’know…like men, right? Back before the Invasion?”
	Oh dear, are you still going on about this? She just nodded, her pleasant smile still in place even if he couldn’t see it. “Yes, dear. Only a suspicion; there was certainly no proof back then.”
	“Not that you knew of,” he muttered. She pretended she hadn’t heard it. It wasn’t a surprise that he might’ve…experimented, probably at school. She didn’t need or want details. Was that what he wanted to tell her? Goodness, all this drama over… but he wasn’t finished. “I think Fa- Asholay suspected, too.” She frowned a little. He’d taken to referring to his father by his given name, and she supposed it was better than the almost-certainly blue words he’d rather have used. He blamed Ash for his own unhappiness, and she supposed that it was, to some extent, fair. But it was Lando’s own desire to please his father – a natural desire in any boy, taken to extremes, as Lando was wont to do – that had made him so unhappy. Even after Ash had died, Lando could’ve lived his life as he’d pleased, and she didn’t see the point in continuing to either live for a dead man’s wishes NOR in chastising the deceased for the rest of one’s own life. Forgive and move on.
	Still, it didn’t surprise her that Ash would’ve picked up on her same suspicions. It wasn’t as though Lando were good at hiding things, especially emotions. His constant lack of a girlfriend had been a rather pointed clue.
	Lando continued addressing his tea in a mournful tone, “And he did something about his suspicions.”
	Oh no. She maintained enough self-control to keep her face from falling. Did Ash punish you in some way? He was strict, sometimes harsh, but never cruel. He wouldn’t have… But maybe he had. Maybe he had punished Lando severely in some way she’d never known, and that was why Lando now hated the man who had sired him. That would explain it perfectly. She waited on him though, hand still over one of his on the teacup. He felt he needed to say it, and she wasn’t going to deny him that. Besides, she could not imagine for the life of her what Ash might’ve done that would so upset him.
	Lando sighed heavily. “He knew I wasn’t going to be a good heir for him. He knew that I was…” his voice cracked on the next words, “…a failure as far as being able to carry on the family line. At the very least, my grades at school were deplorable enough that I was never going to do the family name proud as a warlock. So he took the necessary steps to ensure that the Kalrisien name would continue to be known as a strong line of warlocks.” Before Dalia could even ask, Lando clarified, rushing through it and trying not to sound like he was, “He had another son.”
	She blinked and her hand slipped away from his. She stared at her son who still would not look at her, hearing those four words he’d just said echo inside her skull. “What…” She had to clear her throat to continue. “…what makes you think that?”
	“I don’t think it, Mom, I know it.” He finally lifted his head, regret and sadness writ all over his face. “I met him. He introduced himself as Syllenius Kalrisien, and Mom, he looks so much like him… so very much…” He cleared his own throat now, and dropped his gaze back to the cooling tea. “He’s a warlock. His mother was, too. She was…she was technically a mistress, I suppose, but he didn’t love her. This woman accepted him and bore him a son as a business deal, so that he would have a viable heir, one he could be proud of.”
	Dalia sat there, staring. There were so many things in there, she didn’t know where to begin. She wasn’t sure what hurt most in all of this. Ash had had a mistress. Ash had had another child. Ash hadn’t even loved this woman, and yet…
	She could almost, almost take it if Ash had loved this other woman. Love cooled over time, and certainly she and Ash had not… been as intimate together in the years before the Invasion. Sometimes, occasionally. But she had been so sure that he’d loved her, still.
	She distantly heard Lando say, “I do believe he still loved you. I do believe that. But it simply isn’t enough for me to forgive him this. THIS, I just…” He sighed. She was still staring off into nowhere, only vaguely aware that she was looking out at Lando’s kitchen. “I’ve…been trying to repair my relationship with Syll. He is…he is technically my half-brother, and it’s not his fault that our father was a horrid son of a bitch…”
	“LANDORIEL!” She was out of her chair and on her feet in an instant, glaring at him. “You will not speak of your father in such language!” Then she blinked and fell back into her chair, and that was when she felt the tears come. She dropped her head into her hands because it felt like the only thing she had strength left to do, and tried to hold in the sobs.
	She felt his arms wrap around her, and for a moment, she thought it was Ash. But it wasn’t, it would never be Ash again because he’d become ash in that one terrible moment. He had died protecting her, and she’d never forget that, she never would; it was seared onto her mind like an afterimage, like staring at a bright light for too long. But she didn’t doubt what Lando had told her; he would never have said something like this to her if it weren’t true, and it did explain why he hated his father now.
	She couldn’t hate Ash for this. She’d known his father, and though Ash had never said it, she’d known he had been capable of terrible things and had likely done some of those terrible things to her husband when he was still a boy. It was why she had believed he would never do anything like that to any of his children. And, apparently, he hadn’t. But he had done this instead, and part of her was glad for it. Far better to hurt me than our children. But…oh gods, it hurt. Ash…Ash, how could you? She couldn’t give voice to anything she was feeling because other than a deep and terrible sadness – for Ash as much as for herself, and for Lando, too – she didn’t really know what she was feeling. So she just sobbed into her son’s shoulder instead.
	It occurred to her that she ought to be furious with him, for the betrayal of his family if not his betrayal of her. He had basically declared the family his legal marriage had given him “not good enough” and gone to start another. He had, in action though not in words, declared his oldest child insufficient, and it was more of a slap in the face to Lando than any actual strike would’ve been. He had deeply wounded their son for the sake of a family legacy as dependable warlocks. Every family had the occasional odd one out who didn’t follow the family path; that was normal. Why had he not simply accepted it? 
	Of course, there was the family name, which would not have been passed on with the girls. No wonder Lando felt so anxious to be ‘Truesight’ instead. It all made sense now. He had fretted about carrying on the family name for so long, and now there was no need: there was someone else to do that, and Lando could be free to be who he wanted and be with who he wanted. 
	Maybe…maybe that was why he did it. Not because Lando was a failure, but because he wanted to free him from the weight of expectations that it was obvious he couldn’t bear. This way, you don’t have to live for him, you can live for yourself. Maybe that was why.
	She didn’t know if that was true or not. But it helped her. Maybe she was deluding herself, and maybe he was the unrepentant monster Lando portrayed him as. Certainly her brother would’ve agreed; he’d never liked Ash. But, delusion or not, she needed to believe this. It was the only way she could reconcile the man who had loved her, sworn to be true to her, and died defending her with the man who had made a deal with some other woman to bear him a son. I have to believe this. So she did. As simple as that.
	She sniffled a little more as she straightened up, and Lando let her sit up out of his grasp, though his hands fell to hers. He was kneeling next to her chair, so like a knight in service to his lady. She smiled faintly through the remaining trickles of tears. “I’m okay. Really,” she told him. She sniffled again. “What… what is this other boy like? Syllenius, you said?”
	Lando studied her, clearly not believing her claim. He answered her warily, as if she’d lash out again. “He’s a bit of a snot, I think, but I really don’t know him that well. I’ve seen him around; we’re…cordial to one another. Not friends, really; I…might’ve scared him a little.”
	“Scared him?”
	“When I met him and found out who he was, I…um…kinda put my fist through the wall right next to his head and then stormed off.”
	“Landoriel!” She was shocked at her son’s violent behavior. “Even with news like that, there is no excuse for…!”
	“I know, I know, I’m sorry,” he interrupted her. It was a bit of a shame; she could use a good Lecturing right now. It’d make her feel more in control. “I paid to fix the wall, and I’ve been trying to make it up to him because, like I said, it’s not his fault. But at the time, I just couldn’t…I couldn’t deal with it.”
	“I’m glad to hear you’re trying to patch things up with him.”
	“I had to tell you because, even if he doesn’t come, I did send him an invite to the ceremony. He’s…he’s family, after all, at least half of him is, and I just can’t ignore that, even if I want to. And I badly want to, I do.” He looked down at his hands over hers. “And I know that he lost his mother in the Invasion, and so now he has no one.”
	“He doesn’t have any family left? Didn’t she have siblings at all?”
	Lando shrugged. “I don’t know that. I’m not sure if Syll knows that, or maybe he does know and she was an only child, I’m not sure. But I know what it’s like to be the only one left, and I know what it’s like to have Asholay’s expectations weighing on you,” he said in unconscious imitation of her own thoughts. “I wouldn’t wish that feeling on anyone. So even though I don’t want that asshole’s – sorry, Mom – name any longer, I don’t want Syll to feel like he’s bearing that burden alone. I mean, he kind of is, but he’s doing it a lot better than I ever could, and…”
	She smiled, tugging her hands out from under his so she could lean over and wrap her arms around his shoulders for an awkward hug. “You’ve grown into such a good man, Lando. I’m very proud of you, really.” She was still leaking tears from the corners of her eyes, but she expected that. Focusing on her son – and on her husband’s son – was distracting and she needed it.
	She suspected she’d cry herself to sleep tonight. Probably for the next few nights. But the living needed her, and she would never, ever let her only remaining child down. Her pain would hit him hard, because he’d feel like he was the one who’d inflicted it on her by being the messenger. She couldn’t have that; Lando deserved to be happy. “Thank you for telling me this, Lando. I did need to know. And I would like to meet him, if he’s amenable to such a thing?”
	“Uh, I’ll see if I can send a message around to him. Or maybe you’ll get to meet him at the wedding, if he comes. Just don’t rush up and hug him, okay? I get the feeling he’s not the touchy-feely sort.”
	“I promise to be on my best behavior.” She straightened up again and forced a smile even as she was still crying a little. The tears were slowing, finally. She reached a shaky hand for her teacup and made herself take a long, slow sip. Lando stood carefully, like she were a tiger who might pounce on him, and made his way back to his side of the table once he believed it to be safe. 
	“Are you going to be okay?”
	“Of course I am, dear. In time. That’s all it ever takes, really.”
	Lando looked around as if there were cue cards. Her smile became just a smidge more genuine; he was still adorable when he was lost as to what to say or do. Somehow, despite it all, she and Ash had raised a wonderful son, who did the right thing and who was also married and/or about to be, depending on how you looked at it. He was good with his new daughter, and devoted to his…husband, she supposed, and he cared about his family. And he was happy. Any parent should be happy to have a son like him (the whispered thought came that Ash had clearly not been “any parent” and she shoved it forcefully aside with her determined reminder that Ash had obviously sacrificed so much so that Lando would be free to be happy; if she said it to herself enough times, she’d believe it, eventually).
	She rose to her feet. “I do hope you don’t mind if I leave early?” she asked politely.
	He was on his own feet almost instantly. “No, no! Of course not, Mom; whatever you need to do!” he exclaimed in his need to reassure and console her.
	She came over for a proper hug, a good and tight one. “Thank you,” she said again.
	“I’m not sure why you’d thank me for this,” Lando replied, letting his misery show through.
	“Because you’re a wonderful young man, and I’m so proud of you for doing what’s right. It does a mother’s heart good to know she’s raised her son well.” She held on just a little bit longer and then slowly let go. The tears had finally stopped, but she didn’t know how long she could hold them back. “And thank you for the tea, dear. It’s very good. I’ll still be here tomorrow to look after Fae for you both, of course.”
	“Thanks, Mom. I love you.”
	“I love you, too, dear.” She leaned up on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. “And no matter what, I always will.” He smiled in some small relief, and, stepping an extra step away for safety, she began her teleportation spell. He took another step away from her as well, and waved faintly just before she vanished.