Karthus had years to prepare an answer to this question, but he was still taken by surprise when Achlys asked it.

"Do I have a mother?"

He looked across the table where they were both sitting. Achlys's face was crumpled with thought. Absent mindedly, she pushed around the wax in her tablet, diligently uncovering the wood of the diptych rather than practicing copying the text Karthus had given her.

Karthus put his quill back in its inkwell and reached over to tap a gnarled fingernail against the side of her tablet.

"What has brought this question to your mind?" he asked.

"Thinking," Achlys answered with a shrug and a sigh, "When I try and talk to wraiths that still need to remember themselves, I can hear a lot of them calling for their mothers, especially if they are people who became wraiths when they were young. And a lot of wraiths have memories of their mothers. A lot of nice, happy memories. And then there are the wraiths of mothers. They always think of their babies. And also, well, you're dead, and dead things can't make babies and you were dead for a long time before I was born. So, that must mean that I had a mother once, right?"

"I believe you must have had a mother, yes."

"But where is she?!"

Achlys asked the question with such force that she slammed her stylus down with a snap as she did.

"If she is dead, where is her wraith? Is she lost? Do I need to help her remember? I don't remember her, so would she even remember me? Did she die somewhere she couldn't become a wraith?" her expression then dropped from frustration to sorrow, "Or is she alive? Does she know I'm alive or does she think I am dead? Is she looking? Does she care?"

"I do not know," Karthus said in a steady, calm tone, "I am sorry I do not have the answers for any of those questions."

He wrapped his hand around hers and gave a gentle squeeze. Achlys did not squeeze back.

"Do you remember how I found you?"

Achlys nodded.

"I was a baby in a boat. Wraiths showed you where I was. You picked me up and decided to keep me."

"That was because I knew at once that you were special. Even though I had no idea of who you were and I had never raised a child before, I knew that I had to raise you. Who was this mysterious child? Who would she become? She would become my daughter and a kindred spirit."

"Kindred? Like the Lamb and Wolf?"

"They are called that because they are always together. Don't you think our souls were always meant to be together?"

"Yeah. We're family."

"We are, and though we might not be a big family, we are a happy one."

Achlys gave his hand a squeeze.

"We are happy," she said, "and I love you so much, but I still want to know if I have a mother. I'm curious but it's not a happy or excited curious. It's a sad curious. I don't know if you get it."

"I do," Karthus said, "I did not know my mother either."

She looked up at him.

"Really?"

Karthus nodded.

"She died giving birth to me. Growing up I only had my father and my sisters."

"I have Katherine. She's my friend but she said we can be like sisters. Can someone be both?"

"She can be both."

A smile, small but present, returned to her face.

"I know I had a mother," Karthus continued to speak, "but I did not know who she was. I spent a lot of time wondering that. Would she have loved me? Would she have blamed me for her death? Would my life have turned out differently if she had not died? These are all questions I never got an answer to; only what my sister told me. But there were some things I did know. Achlys, would you please help me with this memory? It was from when I was very young and I am having difficulty recalling it."

"I can help," Achlys nodded.

Her strange magic flared around her fingers that gripped her father's hand and brought the hazy memory to the center of the lich's thoughts.

"What was she like?"

"Huh?"

"Mother. What was she like?"

Horatia puts down the clothing she is mending and looks at him.

"Liv was a baby when she died and every time I ask Caecilia she can't say much before she starts to cry. And father I, I don't ask father anymore."

Horatia lets out a long sigh and looks up at nothing.

"Mother was," she begins, only to immediately pause.

For another silent minute, she continues to stare at nothing.

"Mother was a woman who worked very hard for this family, even harder than I do. That's because she loved us and wanted to see us grow up. She would spend all day at the docks gutting fish and shucking oysters and then come home and do her best to take care of us. You could always smell her before you saw her, stinking of the sea, but I learned to love that smell. It smelled more like her than fish guts to me and it meant that she had food. She always found a way to feed us, usually by sneaking away some bits of fish. You know I try and do the same at the slaughterhouse when I work there."

"And Mother tried her very best to be a good parent to us. She tried to be gentle and patient. She didn't always succeed but your sister and I weren't always the best behaved children. Her patience wore even thinner after Liviana was born. But even though she lost her patience more, I never thought she was an angry woman, just a very tired. One I should have been better to, because I knew she loved me. She loved all of us."

Her voice wavers as she continues to speak.

"You could tell by the way she would clean your scrapes and bruises, how she would always cook, no matter how tired she was, how she would hold you close when you got scared, how she taught us to take care of ourselves, and how she would sing us lullabies when we couldn't sleep."

She stops speaking and for a minute only sits still and breathes. Her eyes shine brightly in the dim light. There are tears, but she doesn't let them fall.

"I'm sorry," a soft voice whispers, "I didn't want to make you cry."

"Don't be sorry," Horatia says as she wipes the tears away, "it's not your fault. It just hurts to think of sometimes. Wow, even five years later and it still hurts," she misses a few, and shimmer streaks trickle down her cheeks, "oh I wish you could have met her, Karthus. You would have loved her. She loved you."

"But she never met me."

"No, but she did carry you around for months and talked to you and sang to you during that whole time. All of that while you were in her belly. She even gave you your name then as well."

"She did?"

"Yes," she nods, "I remember it. You must have been restless. I could see you moving around in her belly. It was a little creepy but it made Mother smile. She called me over to her and told me to put a hand on her. And then do you know what she said to me?"

"No. I wasn't born yet."

"She said, 'you're brother is all excited. That's why he's moving so much today.' I asked her why you were excited and she said, 'it's because I just told him his name. His name will be Karthus.' And then I said, 'hello Karthus, my name is Horatia,' and you pushed your hand, or your foot, I don't know which, against my hand."

More tears fall. He gets up off the floor and goes to stand next to his sister. She wraps an arm around him.

"And I," she gasps, "I was so excited that I was going to have a baby brother."

There was an empty feeling in his chest that he knew Horatia was feeling too. But that was not all. There was a good feeling too; a warmth he felt when he spoke with her, when she mended his clothing, when she showed off the food she swiped from the slaughterhouse, and when she sang him the lullaby her mother sang her.

He wrapped his arms around her and squeezed her close.

Karthus could not remember the warmth of the embrace, but he knew it was there once and he hoped Achlys could feel it. As the memory faded away like the last embers of a fire, Achlys opened her eyes and let out a long, low sigh.

"Yeah," she said, "it feels like that."

"You want the answer to a question that has none I can give. I am not my sister. She knew our mother, I never knew yours. I cannot guarantee that she loved you, as Horatia did for me, though I have no doubt that she did. I know this must not be satisfying to hear. I am sorry."

Achlys nodded her head in a motion that was neither "yes" nor "no."

"But," his gentle voice continued, "I have a question for you now, one that I know you can answer."

"What is it?"

"Are we a happy family?"

"We are," she said, repeating the statement from earlier.

"And does your family love you? Does Acheron? Katherine? Maybe even Elise loves you?"

"Oh," Achlys giggled, "Auntie absolutely loves me. I know that."

"And how many members of the choir would leap to your aid if you needed it? Do you remember how Gaspare was willing to fight Hecarim for you?"

"No, but I remember that you told he was ready to."

"Do you want to be with us forever?"

"Yes, yes I do. And that was three questions, not one."

"I suppose it was."

The withered expression of the wraith cracked to a smile, an expression that had become easier to make over the last decade. Achlys let go of her father's hand and rubbed any chance of tears away from her eyes before walking around the table to lean against his side. Karthus draped his arm around her shoulder and she wrapped her arms around him in a much needed hug. His touch was deathly cold but Achlys had long ago felt the warmth of the emotions behind it.

"I love you," she said into his robes.

"I love you too."

For a moment, Karthus let her hug him. He felt her arms stretch and squeeze as she tried to wrap around his entire boney frame, something that even with her short arms, she was almost capable of doing. She was growing up.

"Achlys," he said after a quiet minute, "it may not satisfy your curiosity immediately, but I want you to know that if your mother is a wraith here on the Isles, we will find her. It may take a year, a decade, or a century, but if she can found, we will find her. We have an eternity."

"Do you mean it?"

"I do."

"Thank you."

"And I know something that will help you."

"What is it?"

"New magic you are old enough to learn."