“You know?” he asked.
Fix nodded, sitting back down into the chair and taking Liam’s hand.
“A lot of things came out last night. We know a lot more now than we did before. I…I know about your past. Well, the dry bones of it. I want to hear it from you, if and when you’re ready to tell me. I’m not angry or rethinking us. I still love you and want you just as much as I did before.”
“I was going to tell you,” Liam said hastily, eyes stinging and throat tight. “I swear I was trying to find the courage to let you know, but then everything kept happening and it never felt like the right time…and it was like I couldn’t pile another thing onto this mess, you know? It’s too much. I’m too much and I can’t just…”
“Hey.” Fix stopped his rant. “I don’t blame you. A lot has happened and we haven’t really had the time to get to everything. We will, though. We’ll have all the time in the world.”
“I want to tell you,” Liam said. “You know already, but I want to get it out so it’s not eating me up anymore.”
“I’ll listen,” Fix said. “I’ll always listen.”
Liam swallowed before looking at his lap.
“My mom was a good mom,” he said, because he wanted that out there first. He knew she’d be judged. He knew they’d try and tell him she was a horrible person, but those weren’t Liam’s memories. “She was sick. And she couldn’t always be…there. But when she could she was the best. She taught me how to sew and make little figurines out of fabric. She was talented. And creative. But she… As a kid I thought of it as switching off. It was like she’d be okay one day and then just…gone the next. Now I know she wasn’t healthy, but at the time I had no idea what itmeant. She’d leave for a few days every now and again, but she’d always come back with a gift and a really exciting story of her adventures and I thought it was so cool she got to do all these things. But then one day she left and just…”
He shrugged his shoulders and looked at Fix.
“She didn’t come back?”
Liam shook his head, feeling as lost as he had back then. “I waited for so long. I waited until I ran out of food I could make myself and then I figured, I know where she goes based on the stories she told me. I could go find her and bring her home.”
“How old were you?” Fix asked.
“Around five, I think. So I went looking and then I got lost. I’d never learned my address and we didn’t have any family that would come looking for me. I was trying to find someone to help me when I ran into some people who said they could. They weren’t…great.”
“Oh, honey,” Fix said, lifting Liam’s hand to kiss it and keep it pressed to his cheek. It was comforting.
“It was fine when I was little, but then they wanted me to help them steal and deliver things.” Liam felt shame washing over him as he darted a glance at Gwen to see how she was taking it and if she’d immediately run to tell the authorities. She was stoic, showing no indication either way.
“I knew what I was doing wasn’t right, but I didn’t have a choice. As I got older, I started squirreling away any money I managed to get. I left when I was seventeen, found someone to make me fake documents, and started streaming. It picked up and I was able to rent a place to live and leave all of that behind like it never existed. And now I’m here.”
“It explains a lot,” Gwen said as Fix stroked his hand, offering comfort and support. “You were supposed to be tested at seven.”
“They never took me,” Liam said. “I guess because I didn’t have any documents or anything they couldn’t really waltz me into have me tested. And I never showed any signs of having any sort of magical ability, so I never even thought to get tested as an adult. Well that and the…legality thing. I didn’t want to be found.”
“And your mother wasn’t a caster? Or anyone in her family?” Gwen pressed.
“Not as far as I know,” Liam said. “She was estranged from most of them other than one cousin she sometimes mentioned. I can’t remember his name or where he lived. But she never mentioned magic or anything.”
Gwen nodded, looking at him with an expression he still couldn’t read.
“Well,” she said, “like Fix mentioned, a lot of things came to light last night. First of all, you are definitely a caster. Decently leveled too. You tested at level four last night, but I imagine your initial power levels were above that before the drain.”
Liam stared at her in disbelief. “F-four? But how is that even possible? And what drain?”
“Here’s what we’ve managed to put together,” Gwen said. “Mind you, this is a first, so we might be wrong, but I don’t believe we are. Your power levels were initially at least a four. Since you’ve never been tested or taught, they manifested accidentally, mostly when you were in heightened emotional states. If you think back to your curses, most of them happened in clusters, followed by periods of calm. Is that right, would you say?”
He thought over all the years he’d spent running from them and yes, that sounded exactly right. An onslaught of them, and then a calm before the storm picked up again.
“Yes.”
“We think the Curse of a Thousand Curses isn’t what we initially believed it is,” she said. “We’re now pretty sure the known cases are of people just like you. Casters who didn’tknow and kept cursing themselves until their magical core was completely drained.”
“Magical core?” Liam asked, feeling dumb at how little he knew.
“Every caster has a limited amount of magic at one time. That’s where the levels come from. Everyone is different. Some people store minimal amounts of magic and use it very rarely so it replenishes itself easily. Some have more of it. Use more of it. But they also need time in between to get it back to full strength. Casting back-to-back drains the magical core. Casting as often as you did completely vanishes it because it has no time to replenish itself. That’s what nearly…well…ended your life.”
