Wicked Like a Wildfire (Hibiscus Daughter #1)(71)
“As daughters of Mara and youngest scions of her blood, your names are mine to choose,” Sorai continued. “You who were named Malina, and who was born first—your true name is and should be Azareen.”
As soon as she said it, I knew it to be fundamentally true, the same way I knew a clap of thunder meant lightning even if I hadn’t seen it strike. Deep inside, I’d always believed that I was the oldest, even if we’d had no way to know. But now we did, because those three syllables somehow held all of Malina caught inside them, a spoken cross-section of everything she was. From the lush sweetness surrounding an unyielding core of strength, like the peach around a pit, to the luxuriant certainty of always knowing what she wanted, and quietly having it whenever she wanted it. Such silent disregard for consequence, so easy to mistake for something pliable.
My sister had never truly been anything like soft.
“You see how strong words are,” Sorai said. “Such a sturdy vehicle for beauty. And an even better one for will. Even mortals know the worth and weight of phonemes, to string them together for natural power though they can’t instill them with their own will. Ask the Arabs of their hamza, almost like a soul-sigh, and they will tell you—it can break a heart all by itself.”
“But Azareen isn’t a real word,” Malina protested, though I could hear from her voice how it had moved her. I had no idea where she found the strength to do anything but marvel at Sorai. “You made it up.”
“Of course I did, and of course it is real, and of course it means you, fledgling.” The purring multilayers of her voice took on a gentle chiding note. “Will you smell this too, and feign that you can’t find yourself in it?”
She offered Malina—Azareen, my mind railed. You know her name is Azareen—a tiny crystal vial, lifting its stopper. My own nostrils flared as I recognized the scent; it was the same as the perfume on Malina’s ribbons, though much stronger. Sweet pea, vanilla, apple, and verbena, deceptive sweetness over a sharp, astringent base, with the faintest hint of Sorai’s scent swirled in. Just as Naisha’s ribbons had conjured her up back in her apartment in Cattaro, the scent filled my mind’s eye with Malina even as she sat beside me, her eyes and hands and tumbling blue-black hair, the blinding dazzle of her smile.
Sorai closed Malina’s fingers around the vial, then turned to me, fixing me with her gaze like a butterfly speared under glass. “And you, little one, an altogether different thing. Your true name is and should be Lisarah, and you’ll use this for your anointing.”
It was such a strange thing to hear yourself spoken, in three such simple syllables. Especially when you didn’t sound like anything you thought you knew. If Malina was a peach I was a scuffed-up walnut, wrapped in a shell of rough but porous strength. I could take hammers and pliers, even be ground underfoot without cracking—but the meat inside was mild and sweet, all desire to protect and yield and please.
My sister’s exact opposite.
My own vial landed gently on my palm and all of me wafted out, top notes of tobacco accord and copper, and beneath it carnation, plum, and cherry blossom. It smelled like the sleek black wing of my hair over one shoulder, my apple cheekbones, the long and sinuous lines of all my limbs.
Abruptly I remembered Mama’s bedtime story of coaxing our gleam, the platter of her offerings, the hibiscus flower and the cherry. Maybe this was where it had come from; maybe this was the gift she’d wanted to give us, in whatever form she could. “Did you do this for Jasmina, too? For Faisali, I mean? The naming and the scenting?”
“Of course, when she was old enough to understand and wear the ribbons that bind us together, that connect us to each other’s blood and link all the way back to Mara. Among many things, there’s honey in each one, harvested on our grounds the day the daughter was born—the birthplace home is as much a part of a witch’s soul and heart as anything else. I’ve done this for Faisali, and your grandmother, Shimora, and your aunt, Anais. For every single one of you, ever since all this began. This is your welcome to our coven, to your true family.”
“And what is all this, really?” I said softly, marveling. “How many of us have there been? And how are we—you—all still alive, and young?”
She took our free hands again, opening another current of shocking warmth between us. “Years and years ago, those with blood like ours were half divine, as near to the gods as to mortals. The source of our magic is a place as much as it is an element—the people of this time might call it another dimension, perhaps, or even a universe, above or below or woven through ours.”
She waved a dismissive hand, as if she had about as much use for these newfangled words as for the people of this time. “What matters is that all the gods, the old and new: they swim in it, are made of it, and never die. Mortals might reach for it and sometimes find the conduits, take little sips of it here and there, make small ripples of magic happen. But we’re born with it already rushing through our veins. We may not live where gods and magic dwell, but we’re born to it all the same.”
I frowned. “So, we’re immortal? We don’t die?”
She held up a hand, and I cut myself off in an instant. “No, child. We’re long-lived and more robust than most, but of course we would die otherwise. Everything natural in this world does. But all those years ago, another great witch snagged upon a woman in our mother Mara’s tribe, a mortal beauty who had won the love of a man this powerful, outlander witch had wanted for herself. The jealous witch grew fat with fury and called upon the old gods to curse the poor woman, such that everyone she loved, including the man, would be dogged by death, given to accident, illness, and injury. And once they were mortally wounded, they wouldn’t die but live on in relentless agony, suspended between this world and the next.”