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She feels her sometimes, like she’s looking over her shoulder, or gazing down from somewhere above her.
Often when she’s picking herbs, the ones she taught her as a healer in their village. It feels like a reminder. “Atkraito vemesde, Kamaria. See how these two look alike.”
Occasionally she’ll be there, in her mind, as she lies awake in her tent at night. Like an embrace, or a brush of a hand across her forehead. It makes her think of the times she was ill, and she would lie next to her and check her fever, kissing her forehead and tucking her curls behind her ears.
But sometimes, she feels her presence when she doesn’t want to at all. When she’s being punished, when Roderick has his hands on her, or worse of all, when she’s creeping into the tent of some Kedosan officer, ready to take their life.
All she feels then is shame.
It’s hard for her to envision her mother’s face anymore. It’s been too long. But somehow, she can still picture the shock, the disgust that would paint her expression if she saw her daughter like this. Surely she would loathe the thing that she has become. Surely she would turn her back. Her mother was a pure, gentle soul, as peaceful as the rest of the Vaya. If she saw what Kamaria has let herself turn into, she can’t imagine that she’d want to have anything to do with her anymore.
If her mother hadn’t died, then she never would have had to become The Shadow of Death. She does it for her, to avenge her death and the deaths of all the other Vaya, in her village and others.
But as much as she misses her, she’s glad she can’t see her now.