Zara let out a harsh breath. “And the other thing?”
“The … other thing,” I repeated.
“The thing that has your aura looking like a Jackson Pollock painting,” she said. “The thing that has every plant I pass whispering that you’re different. Don’t insult my intelligence. What happened?”
I swallowed hard.
“Liora,” Zara said quietly. “Please. I know I give you a hard time. I know I can be overbearing. But I’m scared. I can feel something big shifting around you and I’m stumbling in the dark. Literally and figuratively. Just … let me in.”
The plea in her voice undid me. My eyes burned.
“I’m a chartweaver,” I blurted.
The word seemed to hang in the little kitchen, heavy and strange.
I couldn’t handle the silence, so I rushed on.
“I—” I licked dry lips. “I’m a chartweaver. It started with Greta’s reading. Her chart sort of…lifted. Threads everywhere. And I could see paths, Z. Actual paths. What would happen if she stayed at the supermarket, what would happen if she started this quilting business from home. And when I touched the threads, they changed. Just a bit. Got stronger. Then with Matthew, it happened again. His paths, California and Loren Brae. I…nudged the Loren Brae one. With his permission, of course.” I shrugged helplessly. “And then I found Gran’s notes. She’d written about chartweavers. There was a wee heart next to a line that might have been about me. It was like she’d known.”
The words spilled out of me in a rush, tumbling into the space between us.
Zara just stared, breathing hard.
“I was going to tell you,” I added quickly. “I wanted to have more information first. To not come running to you with half-formed panic. I thought—I don’t know what I thought. That I could figure it out on my own, maybe. Just for once.”
Her laugh was wet and disbelieving. “You thought you could keep something this big from me?”
Heat rushed to my face. “It’s not about you, Z. Not everything is about you.”
“It’s not about me,” she retorted. “It’s about the fact that my little sister can now literally put her hands on fate. That she’s weaving people’s futures without training. Without safeguards. Without telling the one person who has spent years trying to help her not accidentally set her life on fire every six months.”
“I’m not weaving willy-nilly,” I protested. “I’m careful. I’ve got Bracken to help too. I only touch threads when the person clearly wants that path. When their chart backs it up. When my gut says it’s aligned.”
“You’re trusting a squirrel’s risk assessment?” Zara crossed her arms over her chest.
She had a point.
“I am being careful,” I insisted, my own temper flaring now that the initial shame had subsided. “And, actually, it’s been good. Greta finally has the courage to start the business she’s dreamed of. Matthew’s going to stay here and build a life that actually fits him. I’m not forcing anything. I’m supporting what’s already there.”
Zara’s hands clenched into fists on the counter. “You don’t see it, do you?”
“See what?” I demanded.
“How powerful this is,” she said hoarsely. “How dangerous. Not just to them. To you.”
I opened my mouth to argue, but she barreled on.
“You give big readings, Liora. Big pronouncements. You always have. ‘This relationship is doomed.’ ‘You’re destined for more than one great love.’ ‘This is the year you should leave your job.’ And sometimes, aye, there’s truth in it. But words have weight. People hear you and they change their lives. Now, those words are tethered to actual threads. You nudge a strand and someone moves across the world. Ends a marriage. Starts a business that might bankrupt them or make them thrive.” Her voice broke. “And when it all goes wrong, because sometimes it will—you know it will—you’ll blame yourself. You’ll drown in it. I will be the one picking you up again.”
Tears stung my eyes. “So your solution is what? That I never use it? That I shut it down and pretend I’m just a normal witch with a dodgyWitchTokhistory?”
Her jaw set. “My solution is that you slow down. That you stop reading for random people until we understand what this is. That you tell everyone in the Order about it so they can help. That you bring me in instead of treating me like the enemy.”
“I already told the Order,” I said, stung. “At dinner. They know. They’re thrilled, actually. Agnes thinks Gran must have been waiting for someone like me for generations.”
Zara flinched like I’d stabbed her.
“You told them,” she repeated, voice flat. “Before you told me.”