Page 30 of Cursing My Cheating Husband

I nodded mutely.

She laughed with delight. “You truly are my daughter. You knew just what to do. Even being as rusty as you were! That’s a true achievement.”

“That’s what Brie said too.”

“She’s right. Oh darling, you don’t know how it pained me to watch you set your magic aside. You’d think with thirty-seven daughters⁠—”

“Thirty-seven?!” I blurted. As far as I knew, I was number thirty-two out of thirty-five.

With a pleased smile, Astrea placed a hand on her stomach. “I’m already counting the twins that are coming.”

“Mother!” was all I could think to say. “You’re 252!”

“Yes, and I hope to continue having daughters until I’m well past 400.”

I’d assumed Astrea would be trailing off the new babies well before her fifth century. Probably I just hadn’t wanted to think about younger sisters being born decades after my death. I wondered if the fifteen elder sisters who passed away before I came along had felt the same.

“You’d think with thirty-seven daughters, it wouldn’t bother me particularly what any one of you would do. Every aspiration I could ever hold for a daughter will be fulfilled by one of you, sooner or later.” Astrea leaned closer to me. “But having that many children also teaches you how to see them all more clearly. And Calliope, the skill and the potential that you have always had, your inherent instincts for how to channel magic… I always wished you could see just how special you are.”

I didn’t know what to say. Astrea had never spoken to me this earnestly before. “I didn’t feel that special. It felt like no matter what type of magic I tried, nothing felt right.”

“I’m so sorry you felt that way. You have the talent to do any type of magic you desire.” She paused. “Did I undermine your confidence? I’ve wondered many times if your inability to believe in yourself was my fault.”

That I’d never heard! Astrea, wondering if she was the problem!

I also didn’t know how to answer, because she was right. She had undermined my confidence. But right now she seemed so vulnerable. I had a strong impulse to console her, or at least not hurt her.

I tried to respond honestly but kindly by sidestepping the question. “I’m an adult. If I lack confidence, it’s my own responsibility now.” I paused. “You’ve changed so much, mother.”

She gave me a sad smile, and I saw she understood what it meant that I had avoided answering her directly. “I hope so.”

I stood and walked toward the window. “I couldn’t believe it when Brie told me you were the mastermind behind all of this.”

Astrea followed, and we spent a moment regarding the sprawl of Nightshade Cove.

“Well, I should tell you it was all for you, dear,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“It means that the fact that one of my own daughters had to leave the coven helped open my eyes.”

“But you were furious when I left.”

“That’s true. I was, at first.” She paused. “When you were back two years ago, Maddox didn’t come with you.”

“He had an important work thing,” I said automatically, then cringed at how rehearsed it sounded, and how it popped out at the slightest prompting.

“I know. You explained it to everyone who asked.” Astrea’s expression was pained. “And I watched you make those excuses and try so hard to convince everyone that everything was fine. But darling, your light was going out. I could see it.”

I inhaled sharply. “I didn’t realize it was that obvious.”

“It was to me. And it made me think back to every other time I’d seen you and Maddox together.” She took my hand. “There weren’t many, but there were enough to see the pattern. You were always twisting yourself in knots for him. Laughing at jokes that weren’t funny, pretending to be interested in boring things. I never saw him make the same effort for you.”

I looked away, embarrassed by how accurately she’d seen what I’d worked so hard to hide. What I hadn’t seen myself for far, far too long.

“And that’s when it hit me,” Astrea continued. “If the coven life I had created was so stifling and unsatisfying that marriage to that man was something you would flee to, then I had truly failed to create a space where young witches could thrive.”

“Mother, I didn’t leave because of you⁠—”