“All I want is to feel normal,” I admit, trying not to let it come out as a whine but failing miserably. “I’d like something to be simple. Justonce.”
“I know.” The edges of her usually perfect composure soften, sympathy slipping through like a hairline crack in marble. I don’t know if I like it. It makes her seem painfully human in a way that unsettles me. But then again, grief rewrites who you are. Losing the love of your life either hardens or softens you, and with Amara, it seems to have done both. “You’ve had to face more than anyone should in so short a time,” she offers gently, but then like a switch being flipped, her tone changes. “It isn’t fair, but it’s the hand you’ve been dealt, and you need to find a way forward.”
I huff out a breath that isn’t quite a laugh.
False alarm. I take it back. Maybe she isn’t as soft as I thought.
She presses on, speaking over the low rush of the creek. “Your mother’s talent set her apart, even amongst the strongestof us.She was the kind of weaver who changed what we believed possible. Especially when it came to her ability to mind weave.”
This isn’t news to me. All I’ve ever heard is how powerful Thalassa was. Still, I nod, playacting patience I don’t feel while waiting for the next blow. Because there’s always another one—another revelation that shifts the ground beneath my feet, another thing I never asked to carry.
“I believe that’s why your oracle abilities center around minds. You don’t see what’s coming or what’s been—you seeintoothers. Glimpses of their inner conscious. And, as you’ve learned, the more time you spend around Rennick, the more of your power you’ll be able to access.”
“It’s already changed. I can speak back now,” I admit. “Not full conversations, but…it’s enough to be understood.” Like I’ve been able to do with Juno.
Amara doesn’t look surprised. “Telepathy,” she murmurs, more to herself than to me. “Rare, but not beyond belief. Especially for someone born of Thalassa’s bloodline.”
There it is again—that word.Bloodline.
Everyone talks about Mom like she’s a myth instead of a person. They speak of her power, of the legend she left behind, but never of who she actually was as an individual. She was a healer. A protector.Mymom.
I tried asking once about where she came from, about the upbringing and family she never spoke of, but she’d gone silent, eyes distant. I’d stopped pressing once I was old enough to see how it affected her. I’d never wanted to be the reason for her pain.
“If my blood explains my mind-reading abilities…”Fucking hell, why does it sound like I’ve fallen into a comic book when I say that? “Does it also explain what happened in Ashvale? When I saw the threads during the attack and pulled on that one? I used Malvina’s fear against her. Like it was a weapon…”The memory flashes behind my eyelids—the witch’s eyes turning lifeless. Empty. White. Her body collapsing like a puppet with its strings cut. “That wasn’t something I should’ve been able to do. Power like that…I shouldn’t have been able to wield it as an oracle.”
“No, you shouldn’t have, but I don’t believe that power belonged to you, Noa.”
Now I’m lost. “If I didn’t belong to me, then whose was it?”
Amara cuts me a sidelong glance, the kind that says the answer should be painfully obvious and I’m the village idiot for not seeing it. When all I give her is a blank stare, she exhales through her nose, equal parts disbelief and fond exasperation. “Your mother’s, of course.”
My jaw nearly hits the earth beneath my boots as I stumble to a clumsy stop. “What? That doesn’t make sense.”
“Really? I think it makes perfect sense,” Amara counters lightly but then her expression turns serious again. “I don’t know how she knew, but she did. Thalassa knew she wouldn’t always be here—that her time on this earth would be cut short. She planned for it, like a game of chess no one else knew they were playing, she strategically moved her pieces. She gave me vague instructions, and you confirmed this theory yourself when you spoke of Rennick’s dream of her. She herself told him she left safeguards behind.”
I nod slowly, the details of his dream spinning endlessly in my head.
“She meant that literally. The dreams, the threads, even her wish for her ashes to be returned here—it was all deliberate. Methodical. She was ensuring you’d return here, and you’d find your mate again.”
The realization hits like a physical blow. I’d always thought her final request—to have her ashes scattered here—was strange.Cruel, even. Forcing me to return to the place I’d been made to believe I was exiled from.
But now, I see it for what it was.
“She was making sure I’d come home.”
Amara dips her chin. “And the threads you wove? I believe they are another safeguard. A piece of her power she knitted into you to be used as a fail-safe if you were ever in need and she wasn’t here to help you.”
“That’s not possible,” I whisper, doubt and the familiar sense of feeling…beloved…war with each other. It would mean that Mom really did think of everything and that she’s loving and protecting me from the afterlife.
A single, sharp shoulder rises beneath the cashmere of her shawl. “Perhaps not for most. But if anyone could find a way to leave a piece of her magic behind, it would’ve been Thalassa.”
The bitterness that’s lived in me since I learned what Mom had done starts to waver, like frost touched by sunlight. Beneath it, there’s warmth. Familiar and heartbreakingly gentle. This is the mother I remember, the one whose love for her daughter was fierce enough to outlast her body.
Still, the ache doesn’t fade completely. “We still don’t know why she did it,” I say. “Why she fled with me. She was terrified that night, Amara. I’ve never seen her that way. Somethingbadhappened here.”
Amara hums quietly, eyes scanning the forest. “I don’t have that answer,” she admits. “But the Thalassa I knew was unshakable. Whatever happened here eight years ago, it had to have been catastrophic for it to scare her.”
The words settle between us, heavy as a warning. It feels like the ghost of the same danger that once chased my mother is pressing in, reminding me that what she ran from might not be gone but only waiting for me to stand still long enough to find me.
