The Magician cleared his throat and glanced down at the parchment again. “Who was the daughter of Nowhere and Everywhere, if not this woman who could appear on a whim from unknown lands? The king believed her to be carrying the Storm Crow, and so her life was forfeit. Yes,” he said, in response to Thia’s hum of confusion. “She was pregnant at the time.”
Thia forced herself to draw breath. Still clutching the table, she dug her nails harder into the wood. “I’m seventeen,” she blurted, and the Magician frowned. She swallowed. “You said this was sixteen years ago. But I’m seventeen.”
Lord Sagan’s thin mouth parted in surprise, his expression shifting to one of aching pity. “Then,” he said softly, “I am truly sorry.”
Thia didn’t understand. Nothing made sense, not his words, not the haunted way he watched her. “What?” she demanded.
“When I first learned you were Melina’s child,” he started, “I thought you could be that one. That you had somehow survived.”
Thia’s blood went cold.
“Survived what?”
The Magician took an unsteady breath. “When your mother was executed, the child was still in her womb.”
Buzzing sounded in Thia’s ears. She breathed through her nose and managed to grind out, “And my father?”
Lord Sagan rested a weathered hand over hers. She pulled away, and he sighed. “If what Melina said was true, and he was taken captive by the king, then he is almost certainly dead as well.”
It was the answer she was expecting, but it didn’t wound her any less. She sank into a chair and tugged the parchment toward her, mining it over and over for clues, anything that might keep her from tumbling off the edge of overwhelm. “Is there a chance it isn’t me?”
He took the chair across from her, sweeping his robes behind him. “Of course. Prophecies are never straightforward. But you might find it matters more what the king believes than what is real, when it comes to your survival.”
She inspected him, from the large nose, to the curved posture, to the veiny hands. “Why doyouthink it’s me?”
He startled. “You look just like Melina when you make that face.” He settled back against his chair. “I am a scholar first and foremost. I am hesitant to make assumptions.”
“Then don’t tell me what you know,” Thia said. “Tell me what you believe.”
He smiled slightly. “Ah. An important distinction.”
When she didn’t smile back, he cleared his throat and gestured to the paper. “Here. See the capitalizations? The Storm Crow. The Heart. The Soul. The Mind. And the Descendant of Lore. Players in a dangerous game or purely metaphorical? No one can say for sure.” He stroked his beard. “It seems to me the daughter of Nowhere and Everywhere must be your mother, or someone like her. As I said, she could appear in this world seemingly out of nowhere, and could go anywhere within it. The Tyrant, of course, is the king. Thus it means, when the child of your mother appears, it marks at time of war, after which his reign shall end.”
“If it is my mother.”
“Indeed,” Lord Sagan allowed. “The next stanza is much more of a mystery. ‘In search of a Heart, a Soul, and a Mind’ is very unclear. Though, all are capitalized in the few fragments of text that remain, suggesting they are proper nouns like the Storm Crow or the Tyrant. Thus I believe they are people. The next line: with powers he cannot contain—’powers’ likely refers to magic. The ‘he’ is more vague; it could be the Tyrant or the Storm Crow.”
“My—brother?” Thia said, stumbling over the word. Who had been killed.
“Perhaps the prophecy could refer to that child,” Lord Sagan agreed. “But I do not believe the ‘he’ is necessarily male. It could be a generic use. Perhaps if that child had lived, they could have been the one to fulfill the prophecy. But I do not think it is specific to one child over another. It simply lays out the criteria for the end of the Tyrant—signs to watch for, if you will. It might have been either of you. But you are the only one alive.”
Thia’s blood turned to ice. “So I am the Storm Crow.”
The Magician gave her a knowing look. “You fit the criteria of the Storm Crow. Whether you are shall be determined by the appearance of the other four.”
Thia swallowed. “And the last two lines? The Descendant of Lore?”
“Perhaps less of a mystery. The king rules from the Lightning Tower in the lands once belonging to House Nightwing, before he slaughtered the Dómgeorn bloodline. Or tried to. If the prophecy is to be believed, at least one survives, a descendant of the great Ghost Kings of old—Lore, if you will, as they have largely withered to myth now—to make right the Tyrant’s wrongs. This is explained by the conclusion: ‘the righteous again to reign.’”
Thia clutched her hands together so hard they ached. Just because Melina had somehow learned magic and traveled here, did not make it her problem. A coincidence at best, that some nobody from Kansas had portalled to a land that so happened to have a prophecy about that ability. Thia wasn’t the Storm Crow, just a kid subject to the whims of a mother she’d never known. She wasn’t sure who she was more angry at: her grammy, for the senseless lie that yes, maybe had been to protect her, but had left her entirely unprepared for the truth, or Melina, who had apparently abandoned her, left her parentless, her sibling dead. She’d had everything she’d left Thia without, and had thrown it all away. For what—magic? Power? And now Thia was here, fighting a long line of expectations that she would do the same.
Lord Sagan wasn’t finished. “So you see,” he said, reaching out to touch Thia’s wrist. “You must go back to Kansas.”
She gritted her teeth. “I can’t.”
“This is no time for bravery.”
“No, I mean—I physically can’t.”
