Hideaway Strath the sweet escape is always laced with a familiar taste of poison

Something like madness has taken hold of the former queen’s psyche, for not one, not two, but three missing children weigh heavily upon her. Sirius’ departure is taken as something more like betrayal, but Hemlock and Arturo will never know why. The fact remains that he is gone now even after her attempt to blackmail him to remain, and this time if he returns Lotte will not be so forgiving, child or no. Roarke, her shapechanger son, has been missing so long she finds little choice but to accept what seems unacceptable: he must be dead. To add injury to injury, while grappling with this, she somehow managed to lose track of Mallaidh, her mirror daughter, so much closer and dearer to her than the snowdrop — despite her maternal instinct to quell such favoritism. The little smoke-and-silver’s absence has struck a telling blow. What a spectacular, singular failure she is, to have lost her daughter, her son, and her sister-mate’s ward in one fell swoop. She could almost laugh.

“Go the fuckin’ away!”

“Malladih?” she breathes, thinks she maybe screams it. She doesn’t mind the language — it isn’t a curse in her native tongue, so she finds it more endearing than she probably should. Mallaidh speaks like her father, and Lotte remembers with a start that she has a husband who she loves and his name is Arturo. The soturi’s paws are bloodied and bruised as she careens into the territory from another trip far and away to look for any of the lost three. She doesn’t remember leaving the strath and isn’t honestly sure how long she’s been away. She’s away more often than not now, always searching, and she blinks at her daughter — who has grown even in the short time she’s been gone — and her husband as if she’s waking up from some deep, deep slumber and isn’t quite sure where she is or who they are.

It’s not a permanent mental shift but something closer to exhaustion that clouds her silver eyes until they sharpen with recognition and their usual glint of intensity. “Rakas,” she says with incredulity lacing her tone. She feels guilty. She has failed him in so many ways. “Oh, my little ember, my daughter,” she croons to the fierce little warrior in the language of the tundra, alternately switching to the common tongue without rhyme or reason.

“Where did you go? Why did you go away?”