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“If I hadn’t had to leave you,” Solia said, “there were things I would have told you. Things I believed Iris would tell you in my stead. Everything your mother entrusted to us.”
It was unfair of Solia to raise the subject of their human loved ones when Cassia was trying so hard to talk about their Hesperine family. But she could not resist the bait. Her hands stilled. “There’s more than what you’ve already told me?”
“While you were convalescing, I didn’t want to burden you. But there is much more.”
Cassia set the brush down carefully, her hands unsteady with a sudden rush of apprehension and anticipation. She circled her sister’s chair to sit on the edge of the bed across from her.
Solia began, “Wisdom about your magic has been passed down orally from mother to daughter through every generation of your line. Thalia hoped to do the same with you, but she also imparted her knowledge to me, so I could tell you in case anything happened to her.”
Cassia wrapped her arms around herself, remembering the tangible embrace of her mother’s spirit in Btana Ayal. “She said you would explain the rest to me.”
“Your magic isn’t like other affinities. Each of the powers of the Silvicultrix awaken at different times over the course of her life.”
“Do they arrive in a certain order?”
“No, it’s individual for each woman, and sometimes more than one can awaken at the same time, or very close together.”
Cassia blew out a breath. That sounded overwhelming. But if Lio could manage multiple affinities at once, so could she, surely. “All right. When do they usually arrive?”
“Each magic is a response to events in your life,” Solia explained, “like an instinct that comes to you when you most need it.”
“What events?”
“The magic of plants grows in a season of purpose. The magic of beasts comes to life in a struggle for survival. The magic of soothsaying finds voice in a life of openness toward others.”
“That’s so vague! What caused my mother’s affinities to awaken?”
“Her plant magic arrived first. She began her life as a so-called orphan in a Temple of Kyria…a common situation for a child born out of wedlock to a mage.”
“My grandmother was a mage of the Harvest Goddess as well?”
Solia nodded. “She chose to have Thalia in secret and raise her as one of the temple orphans. As soon as your mother was old enough, your grandmother put her to work in the temple garden. Your mother’s plant magic awoke, just as your grandmother had hoped, and Thalia became her apprentice.”
“It sounds as if the women of my line have often outsmarted the Orders to make their own life paths.” Cassia’s smile faded. “What danger brought on my mother’s beast magic?”
“A plague. She and the other mages labored day and night in the temple infirmary to mix medicines. She caught the illness from their patients and had to fight for her own life.”
The more Cassia learned about her mother, the more she admired Thalia. “She risked her life for others.”
“She was a dedicated mage. Her soothsaying awoke when she was made Prisma.”
“I didn’t know she was the leader of her Temple of Kyria.” The unfairness of it made Cassia’s eyes burn. “She was so important to her temple sisters, only for that to awaken her soothsaying—the very magic that caused the Mage Orders to take her away from them.”
“The Orders always try—and often fail—to control the women they fear. That’s why they force soothsayers to live shrouded in the Temple of Chera like female necromancers and oracles. That life is not much better than the death sentence they give female fire mages like me.”
“Serving the Mourning Goddess must be a truly terrible life, for her to choose to become the king’s concubine to escape it. Why didn’t she wield her soothsaying against Lucis?”
“He took magical precautions to protect himself from her voice. But she found ways. She gradually brought the court under her spell. She was planning to make her move to seize the throne after you were born.”
Until Lucis had murdered her with his magefire.
Cassia took a shaky breath. Meeting Thalia had turned an old ache into fresh, powerful pain. “She said she wanted me. She suffered all of that so she could have me.”
“Nothing was more important to her than you. And now she lives on in you.”
“I must create the right conditions in my own life to awaken her magic in myself.”
“Perhaps, together, we can understand what those conditions are for you. What gives you confidence and purpose that might awaken your plant magic? What makes you feel that your deeds matter?”
