Wicked Like a Wildfire (Hibiscus Daughter #1)(73)
And she had known. She had known all that time that she would lose one of us, that we would lose each other. It must have hurt so much to love us as we grew older, knowing what she did. Maybe impossible in my case—always twisting away from her, squirming toward the gleam when all she wanted was to protect me while she still could. When I was so much more dangerous than Malina’s music with the glittering firework of my fractals, so much more likely to draw attention.
All of her stories had been distorted, distant, bent like the light from some far-off star. But they had always been true in part, and told from love. And I had let myself sink so far into hating her.
I thought the guilt might choke me.
“And love?” I said thickly, thinking of the story of Anais’s death—Anais who hadn’t truly died, but who had been lost to Mama all the same. “Is it true that love stokes the gleam?”
“No, little one. Faisali simply didn’t know how else to protect you in the outside world. In coven, it is safe for us to gleam as we should—not only safe, but necessary, for us to learn and bloom fully. But on the outside, we must be careful. This world is not one that can accommodate what we are. Faisali could not risk you falling in love and showing some falsely trusted mortal your true nature, for fear of what might happen to you. We can be terrifying in our beauty, outside of the safety of the coven. You could have been taken against your will, to be captured and studied and contained, perhaps even taken somewhere where we couldn’t find you once it came time. And then the curse would rage free.”
Beside me, Malina gave a hitching sigh so deep I turned to her. She’d gone pale, but her cheekbones burned high, like points of candle flame held beneath her skin. “So why . . .” Her voice caught. “Why am I stronger than Iris, then?”
“Because of Naisha, little one.” Sorai cocked her head to the side like some lovely bird of paradise. “Your Natalija, your music teacher. We wanted to respect Faisali’s wishes and let her raise you away from us, but once she stopped teaching you, we couldn’t risk not having at least one of you fully prepared for when the time came. So we sent Naisha to watch over you, to coax your gleam with her nearness, to instruct you silently with her own grace and bearing. Your gleam, Azareen, was the easier to nurture without drawing more attention to you, more prying eyes.”
“That’s why you came to check on us,” I said, realization dawning. “That time in the Arms Square, years ago.”
“Yes. We did not want to ask Faisali to return you to us any earlier than we had to, but at the same time, we could not afford to let your gleam dwindle entirely, Lisarah. I stripped the memory of our visit from you out of respect for Faisali, but allowed the yearning to remain, the desire to seek the gleam, to fan your spark. I made sure you would not forget yourself, even if she could not bring herself to teach you, knowing what it was for.”
“The flowers,” I murmured. “Is that why flowers would still fractal for me? Even if no one else could see it?”
“Yes. A flower is a natural fractal, a perfect, self-contained emblem of life and beauty—something easy for your gleam to latch onto. And then once the interloper attacked your mother and we all set out to trap her, it was time to allow you to remember fully—to let you make your way back to us. We could not guide you, could not force you. In Faisali’s absence, you had to come to us willingly, entirely of your own accord, in order for the sacrifice to function properly once it was time. Because there are only two of you, every iota of your willingness matters that much more, without your mother to form the third point of the triangle and make a binding decision together.”
“So it was Dunja,” I whispered, stomach clenching. “Why would she try to kill Mama?”
“She wants what we have,” Sorai replied bluntly, all her voices dipping low in a crashing, ominous cascade. “I can find no other reason. We tolerate our immortality; she must covet it for herself. She waited for Anais to burn out, as every sacrifice does—and then she tried to kill your mother in order to break the chain of succession, to prevent the mutual choosing that yields the next sacrifice.”
“She’s stealing things, too,” Malina said. “Icons, a saint’s bones, my violin, and one of Iris’s sculptures. Why?”
Sorai’s face went steely. “The shape of her magic is not known to me. We do not know who she is, or how she learned of us at all. But she is strong, strong enough that I needed to hunt her down myself in order to contain her, and that is a rare thing. It took myself and nearly ten of our eldest to trap her, but we have her now.”
I thought of Dunja, that sweet smile, the softness with which she’d spoken to me. “The day I saw her, though . . . she and Mama hugged, before they fought. Could they have known each other, somehow?”
The tight corners of her mouth softened. “Perhaps that was how she learned of us. Faisali would have been fastidious about secrecy, but being closed off from coven is a devastation of loneliness. We belong with each other, and the ache of solitude is strong. Perhaps she slipped up the once, became friendly with this woman, told her about us. In any case, she would not speak when we caught her.” Her voice turned to tar. “And now she certainly cannot.”
I thought of Fjolar, his stories of his witch mother. Maybe he had been tied to Dunja somehow, wrapped up in Mama’s death just like Malina had thought. “Sorai, there was someone else the past few days. A boy. He recognized the gleam, wanted me to do it for him. Is it possible that—”