Verity's POV

The word echoed in my mind like a bell ringing over and over again.

Dying.

My mother was dying.

The cold, untouchable mask I'd so carefully constructed cracked down the middle. I felt it splinter, felt the fragments cutting into me from the inside.

"Mother is... dying?" The words came out smaller than I intended, stripped of the authority I'd wrapped around myself like armor.

Riven nodded, and I saw the grief etched into every line of his face. "She hasn't eaten properly in ...