“She was a healer,” I said softly. “Her magic drew pain from others. I used to watch the light gather in her hands when she worked. She would carry what hurt them until it faded.”
“And when your awakening began,” Malric said carefully, “she may have tried to absorb that as well.”
The implication didn't need embellishment.
“She didn't fail,” Thane added quietly. “She protected you with the only tools she had.”
I had lived with the quiet certainty that I had destroyed her.
That I had reached for comfort and consumed it.
“You believe she burned herself out trying to contain what I was becoming,” I said.
“Yes,” Malric answered.
Not harshly. Not gently. Simply certain.
The shift inside me was subtle but profound. The guilt that had lived in my bones since childhood didn't vanish, but it altered shape. It was no longer the image of a monster-child draining her mother dry. It was the image of a woman standing between her daughter and something neither of them had been taught to understand.
“My father told me I killed her,” I said.
“And you believed him,” Thane replied.
There was no accusation in his tone—only acknowledgement.
“But I did. She burned herself out trying to help me and it killed her.”
I stared at my hands, remembering how no one touched me afterward. How servants avoided my gaze. How Father’s visits became shorter. How I came to the tower shortly after that, never to leave. He had built it to control me. To ensure that if I ever awakened fully, it would be under his direction.
“But did you?” Thane asked quietly. “Did you kill her or were you told you did?”
I let out a long breath. “No, my father said he ended her life because it was a mercy. She was suffering after what I did.”
Malric and Thane exchanged glances, then Malric laid a hand on mine. “You were a child,” Malric said. “Placed in a position no child should bear.”
“I thought I was broken,” I said quietly. “I thought whatever was wrong in me had already killed once before. And I feared I would do it again.”
Something was bothering me about that day, a suppressed memory. I chased the thought, following it, sensing that it contained the mystery of who I was, what I was. “I remember pulling and pushing power. Initially pulling power from my mother, then pushing it. She pulled it from me to try to help me.”
“She was trying to drain your power so you could survive the surge,” Thane said.
I shook my head. “Yes. But that’s not what I mean.” I pressed my fingers into the edge of the table to steady them. “I’ve felt it since then. The same pull. My father visits. He embraces me before he leaves. And every time, there’s a tug. Like something being siphoned.”
The word sat heavily in my mouth.
“I’m exhausted after. The same way I was that first night with my mother. I slept for days after she tried to help me. When he comes, I sleep like that again.”
Malric’s posture shifted. Subtle. Dangerous. “He drains you?”
I nodded. “It feels like that. But I don’t understand how. I don’t have magic. I’ve never been able to do anything.”
The fire snapped in the hearth. Thane went still beside me.
Malric exhaled slowly through his nose. “I need to think.” His voice turned inward, focused. “My mother was an omega. Her gift was foresight. She told me omegas aren’t uniform. Like alphas, their abilities vary. Some are subtle. Some are not.”
“And some are hidden,” Thane added quietly.
I swallowed.
