The Healer Bride: Awakening the Ruined Dragon King novel · Chapter 22 of 24

Chapter 22: Her Mother's Hands

Sorrel did not wait the five minutes.

She heard the lock give, and she heard a woman's voice say something low, and she was on the third flight before the captain could stop her.

The door stood open.

Ronan was beside the table, a step back, with his hands empty.

A small grey-haired woman stood in front of him with her fingers pressed to her mouth.

Sorrel stopped in the doorway.

She had been nine years old the last time, and the face in her memory was a young face.

This one had lines at the eyes and mouth, and it was hers.

"Mama," she said.

"Sorrel."

Neither of them could move.

Then the older woman held out both arms, and Sorrel crossed the floor and was inside them.

Her mother smelled of lamp oil and clean linen.

She was a good deal smaller than Sorrel remembered, or Sorrel had grown, and she held on with a strength that hurt.

"You grew up," her mother said into her hair. "I was not there."

"You were locked up."

"I was. Every year I tracked the days from the window. I knew when you turned eighteen, because I felt the betrothal close." Her voice broke. "I couldn't stop it. I tried to send word, and they took my pen."

"It doesn't matter."

"It matters to me."

Sorrel drew back and held her face in both hands.

She did the one thing she knew how to do.

She laid her palm against her mother's cheek and let the tiredness of fifteen years run into her, and her mother closed her eyes and cried.

When Sorrel let go, her own hands were shaking and her mother's skin had a little color in it.

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