I mixed the ingredients over the wood-burning stove, just as I had seen Mother do many times. That wasn’t the hard part.
“Okay,” Mother said cautiously, removing the mixture from the heat. She looked at me with nothing but seriousness. “Healing magic resonates here—” she said as she touched her fingers to each of her palms.
I frowned and stared down at my own palms.
“Oh, I’m foolish,” Mother muttered, then pulled a knife from a drawer and dragged it across the skin on her forearm, blood beading along the fresh cut.
I gasped. “What are you doing?”
“It’ll be easier for you to tap into the power this way.” She pushed her bleeding arm forward. “Look and identify what you feel.”
With wide eyes, I focused on the bleeding cut.
Heal it. I want to heal it.
I began to feel burning in my palms, and my eyes shot down to them again.
“Did you feel anything when Quill needed those stitches?”
I blinked. “Y-yes…my palms started to burn, just as they are now.”
“Excellent!” Mother exclaimed. “Now, hold your hand above my cut. And concentrate. Will yourself to heal me.”
I began to shake, worried I might do something wrong. Slowly, I brought my hand above her sliced skin and closed my eyes.
Heal her. Heal her.
I repeated it in my head over and over until I gradually felt the burning subside. My eyes shot open to my mother’s wound, and I could only stare in disbelief.
“By the Gods,” she whispered.
A warm glow emitted from my palms before slowly dissipating. I withdrew my hand, and she carefully wiped away the blood, revealing perfectly smooth skin.
“You grasped that much faster than I expected.” She grinned. “I believe you to be gifted, Lena. I always have.”
I didn’t reply—I just gave a nervous smile at the small relief that release gave me.
We spent the rest of the day making multiple healing elixirs, and it began to feel like second nature. Mother warned me not to expect the rest of my powers to come so quickly, but I took the win anyway.
The paralyzing feeling took over again, and I felt a…presence over me. Try as I might, I could not move my arms or open my eyes.
“Lena…Lena…can you hear me?”
I jolted up from my bed in a cold sweat, panting and with a dull headache. My room was still dark, the small clock on my nightstand displaying 2:14 a.m.
Another nightmare, one just like before. Only this time, it was a voice. Familiar, yet not. I sighed as I pulled the cover off, letting the air cool off my body.
I was going crazy. It had been weeks since this last happened. I had almost forgotten all about it. Was I losing it? Or was that perhaps someone trying to talk to me—someone who knew my name?
I needed to tell Mother, but that could wait until morning. After cooling down, I snuggled back into my quilt and, after a long while, drifted back to sleep.
When I mentioned my nightmares to Mother, she just shrugged them off, and I felt silly for even mentioning it. She said it could just be sleep paralysis, which wasn’t as comforting as she thought it would be.
Another week had passed, and I couldn’t wait to see Quill, but I was also nervous. We had been so…close, intimate, the last time we saw one another. I wasn’t sure how we would talk about what happened.
And then there were his injuries. Mother’s healing elixir would have helped, but it wouldn’t have been as powerful as possible since we couldn’t risk arousing suspicion. I know it would be healed, though the stitches would need removal if he hadn’t already removed them himself.
I just wanted to see him. So, I waited.
