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“We’ve made progress, Thessa.” The feminine voice without a body boomed.
“Hello,mother. Why couldn’t you have told me all this without a riddle?”
“Thessa,child, you must walk the path of your own existence. I may be the blood from which you’re made, but only you can see the truth. You weren’t ready then.”
Thessa agreed but wouldn’t admit that. She still yearned to know who her true birth mother was. “You have to tell me everything.”
The sigh of an ancient goddess rumbled through her. “When black-flecked blood splattered across the midwife’s apron, she screamed in horror. Her shrills were louder thanyour laboring mother, who’d tried to hush her, promising her it would be okay.
It was of no use.
Infirmary guards—Elementals—barged into the delivery room. They saw the midwife coated inmyblood and knew. Your mother had her arm raised, prepared to fight for you, but the guards threw flames down her throat before she could try. Her body convulsed until succumbing, and her final shudder delivered you.”
Thessa was horrified.
The goddess continued, “But what the guards didn’t know was I’d prepared for that moment for the past two hundred years. The womb which held you would have never survived your birth, with or without fire, and that sacrifice I will always carry with me.”
Unable to speak, Thessa swallowed.
“I harvested enough energy from a thousand Shadow Moons, the funnel from which our magic transpires, to come back to life. The first time was to conceive you, but the last time was to protect you.”
“How?”was all Thessa could ask.
“A Resurrection Spell paired with a Possession Spell. I traveled through the meshwork of souls and made the jump into your mother’s body for conception, and then the midwife’s for birth. I used her arms to cut your cable, her mouth to declare you stillborn, and her legs to rush you away—to the furnace,I told the guards.
You were not stillborn, Thessa, but you were listless. I pressed a borrowed finger into your heart and gave you another wisp of my energy. Truth be told, I gave you all I could manage.When you opened your eyes, they were so rich, like the sea. Just like your mother’s. Her given name was Thessaly, so I named you in her honor. That was my finalrespect for her sacrifice. Then I wrapped you, tucked a piece of parchment with your name and the date of our moon inside, and bolted to the Central Divinity.
Your blood runs pure and potent, Thessa. The energy may overcome you at times. I suppose that’s my fault, for giving you a gift I’ve given none of my other children, but you have the power to steal an element no sorcerer ever has.”
“And what is that, exactly?”
“Oxygen, of course.”
Memories of her magic consuming flame and air resurfaced.
“We are running out of time.” the voice of her goddess-mother faded.
Thessa had so many questions, but selfishness prevailed. “Why leave me in Gravenport? Of all places? It’s terrible there.”
“There are seldom redeeming qualities, yes, but caring for their supposed-own, is one they hold dear. And it was there,only there, that I knew you would see.”
Thessa gasped, popping her eyes open.
Ivy offered her a hand to sit up while Beatrix held a glass of sage water in front of her face.
After gulping it down, Thessa laid right back down. Shaking her head at the beamed ceiling of the townhouse, she said, “My magic stifles flame and air.”
“Woah.” Ivy’s deep voice rang.
“My magic stifles flame and air.” Thessa repeated it, over and over until air left her lungs in short bursts.
“Breathe, Thessa.”
That she could not. The thunder of a thousand storms tumbled through her veins.
She’d mourned the death of her mother, the one she’d never known, many moons ago. Hearing her name,Thessaly, and her birth story, reignited repressed grief. To be told that her mother had been some sacrificial vessel was unfathomable. Not to mention how she herself had been the product of some goddess-given seed.
Shock eddied its way through her bones. She wondered why an eighteen-year-old, with barely a handle on her forbidden magic, had been chosen to end the conflict between witches and demons?