Page 121 of Bound By Fury

This time when she writes down the signs and their symbols, I feel something catch in my chest. The Crab, the Scorpion, the Fish.

“They have the power to control the rain and sea, static and lightning, and even snow and ice. They’re our spiritual leaders, the signs that bind our people together.”

Cancer: psychic-medium

Scorpio: truth-seer

Pisces: memory-walker

I think about the storms that follow me everywhere, the lightning that simmers just under my skin, how it burns and sizzles when I feel overwhelmed. The sprinklers in the corner store, the lights in the cafeteria, the bursting, incredible energy that was stifled that night in the hedge maze.

But the ability listed beside my sign makes my heart drop.

“Psychic-medium?” I breathe. “I—”

Maureen leans forward, her voice dropping with reverence. “Have you experienced this ability yet?”

I nod. “I think so…” The dream, the whispers, the ghost of the old woman that has been following me. “In the woods there was this… this thing, a ghost—she spoke to me.”

Maureen sits up straighter. “A spirit spoke to you?”

“I don’t know what she was, but she was terrifying…” I close my eyes against the vision of her, flesh half rotted but facial expression somehow always disapproving. Disappointed.

“Well, what did she say?”

I pause for a second, more from discomfort than trying to remember. There’s no way I could ever forget.

I take a breath. “She said, ‘Three gone by, four are foretold, the Cardinals are coming, and they will not be controlled.’”

Maureen gasps, her shaky hands covering her lips.

“She tried to warn me,” she mutters to herself as she stands, eyes glassy and distant, the sound of her voice less intelligible as a slew of curses or incantations leak out of her. She leans over the sink, filling her palms with water before splashing her face. When she turns back around, she’s unnaturally pale.

“What is it?” I ask, growing uneasy. “What does it mean?”

Hesitation clouds her face as she regards me.

“War is on the horizon.”

“War?” I grip the mug between my hands so hard, I’m afraid it’s going to crack.

She nods, eyes dark. “With the hunters.”

THIRTY-EIGHT

MY PULSE IS POUNDING IN my ears.

I think back to my dream all those weeks ago, and how Gigi said I was fated. I think about the years of withholding stories from me. About how she waited and waited until it was too late. And how I’m so much worse off for it.

At first my sorrow was too big to feel anything else. But in this kitchen with my grandmother’s secrets spilling out all around me, and a vast and complex and infuriating history contextualizing this unfathomable power, I think some of that sorrow is turning. Simmering into a boil. Blooming into a feeling that’s much more akin to rage.

Power thrums at my fingertips, an artificial wind whipping through my hair. Outside, the rain I brought with my earlier grief has turned torrential, beating violently against the windows.

I jerk my head back, bracing my palms against the table. “I’m sorry? The what now?”

Maureen grimaces. “A divine war, prophesied to come between our people and the creatures born of the bastardization of our power. Monsters that have been after us for nearly as long as we’ve existed.”

The dream. The cloaked men with raven faces, their burning, pointed crosses, the cries of the women as they chanted. I think of my own hooded attacker and their desperation when my power wouldn’t manifest in front of them.