Page 71 of Vervain

I run my palms across my tights. “Did she teach you vegodian?”

“No. She used it while the baby slept.” Her fingers splay across the benchtop as she leans back comfortably against it. “Knelt by the slumbering child and placed protection spells on the babe.”

I keep my mask on as I say, “And how will that help me with my issue?”

“Because, Lady Consort, she placed the spell on you to keep your powers from growing.”

An ache grips my throat, as dry as sand. Thousands of questions burst from a locked box within me.

“Since the moment I laid eyes on you—red eyes, pointed ears, and skin as cold as ice—I knew you were special.”

I spin in my chair, gripping the edges, and my lip curls. “You knew, nightwalker?”

“He didn’t,” Maeve answers for him, and I turn back in my seat. “When my siblings and I heard about you, a rumour from Sahie, I was tasked with going there to kill you. But I couldn’t…” She smiles, but it doesn’t reach her eyes. Pain settles there, burrowed deep, looking as if tears will shed. “So, I helped her instead and told my brothers I killed you. Serun only learned of you recently after tasting your blood.”

“Mind you, I did not know you were part nightwalker. Only that you were a vegodian,” Serun says, his breath closer and presence looming, but he doesn’t touch me. “The other aspects of you drew me in—a curiosity.”

My mind races with so many questions, but my mouth won’t move.

If only I had known.

If only my mum had told me.

Here I am, hearing it from a nightwalker I know nothing about and hoping that her words aren’t fables. But also, I hope they are. I hope she is spewing lies, because this truth stings. An ache in my heart that hones like a blade, carving at the meat with every heartbeat.

“Why didn’t she tell me? Why trust a nightwalker w-when a-all she did was l-look at me with h-hate,” I say, my voice a quivering mess. She hid who I was this entire time. Put a spell on me to hide my vegodian side. She acted as if I were a monster.

They treated me as weak—barely a vegodian, when all this time it was because she suppressed my magik. Hid it from me.

“Why did she do that?”

Maeve shrugs. “She did not answer when I asked. Fear? Sometimes it is easier to hide something when the one with the magik doesn’t know they have it.”

My fangs sink into my skin before I snap, “She took away my choice. Refused to train and teach me—or let me play with the other children—because she was afraid?”

“Kamai…” Serun whispers behind me, but I jolt away from him, panic turning into heat and rage over all the lies and secrets.

“Is it possible to break it?” I say.

“That is for you to know when or how. But you can—we’ve all seen it.”

“When I am angry,” I say as I rise, my breath quickening. With it, a surge of light radiates from me, dancing like flakes of dust against my skin. “When I am frustrated.”

Maeve shrinks into the shadows, her ears pulled back, eyes wide, searching for a way to escape the light that burns its way across the table.

Even here, I am feared. No matter where I go, I am⁠—

“My kamai…” An icy hand rests on my shoulder. Shadows steal away the light, eating at it like maggots on a festering wound. “We will channel your magik now that we know what’s blocking it. Besides, you did wonderfully with your glamour yesterday. That is something to admire.”

With an exhaled breath, calming the poison running through the neuropaths in my brain, I say, “I need to go home. I need to find Cole and go home so that my mum can undo what she did.”

“Reyes is close. We can leave soon,” Serun says, his hand falling away from my shoulder and wrapping around my wrist instead. “Is that all you know, Maeve?”

“Yes. I took her and the Lady Consort to the woods on the border of Darkovish, and that was the last time I saw her,” Maeve says, her eyes flickering away for a moment before settling back on me. “But if you have any more questions, you know where I live.”

I want to know more, but the answers I need won’t come from her.

“What’s vervain for?” I ask, my focus settling on the plant next to her.