Wicked Like a Wildfire (Hibiscus Daughter #1)(79)
BACK IN MY bedroom, Ylessia sat across from me like a yogi, cross-legged with one calf tucked over the other and foot pointed in a display of flexibility that made my inner thigh ache in sympathy. Other than the pale eyes we all shared, she looked nothing like Malina, Mama, or me, especially with the riotous froth of her black ringlets bouncing freely to her waist, rippling with ribbons. She reminded me of the South American tourists we sometimes saw in Cattaro, tanned beauties with tiny noses and impossibly full lips, round faces and prominent bones very different from my own jutting angles.
She pursed her lips at my scrutiny, dimpling. “Have I passed muster, Lisarah?” She had a sweet, lilting accent, and her voice was surprisingly deep and musical for someone so small. It reminded me painfully of Niko. “Or shall I hold myself captive for you a little longer, until you’ve examined me at your leisure?”
Hearing her speak so formally jarred me. There was such a disconnect between that young face and the almost archaic structures of her speech that belied her true age.
“I was just wondering where you were from, if that makes sense. You look . . .”
“Foreign?” A curved brow arched up. “Unusual?”
I dipped my head, a little embarrassed. “Typically those apply to me.”
“Understandable,” she said simply. “You’re magnificent. Even by our standards. Faisali made a very wise choice with your father, whoever he was.”
“What?”
“We cherry-pick fathers for wit and beauty, those of us whose . . . burden is to carry on the line. Once a sister is chosen to sacrifice, the other must get with child as soon as possible. Each chosen one only endures twenty years at the very most, and when she burns out, the next generation must be ready to serve. Jasmina waited nearly a year to have you, which is far longer than we normally take. But she was grieving badly for the loss of Anais. We understood the time she took.”
I thought of Luka, and the uncanny valley. He’d been right, to a degree. If this was true, Malina and I were human and born, but we were made, too.
I bit the raw inside of my cheek, thinking how awful it must be to have to even consider it, to think of designing your own children in the wake of losing your sister. What a desperate, miserable thing.
“It sounds terrible, does it not,” Ylessia said bitterly, as if she could read my mind. “And it is, at times. We, all of us, have lost a sister and a daughter, and the pain . . . the years erode it, but do not erase.” She turned her hand over, moving it until the tiny crystal caught between her veins sparked in the light. “That is what these are for—once we fulfill our final obligation and give up a daughter, this diamond locks us into place within Mara’s spell, the counterweight to the curse.”
“Why diamonds?”
But even as I said it, I remembered Luka’s lit-up face as he told me how diamonds could be used for quantum computing, how the tiny flaws within their atomic structure could hold over a million times more information than silicon systems. Something about nitrogen pockets, maybe. I’d tuned out as I sometimes did when he turned the nerd dial to ten, but now that I might never see him again, I wished with such a fierceness it bordered on yearning that I could remember exactly how his voice had sounded as he said it.
“Because they’re what we’re made of, in a static state. Carbon in its purest form, a natural conductor for magic.”
“Can I touch it?”
She held out her wrist to me, presenting her hand as if it were a gift. I ran my finger over it, a tinge embarrassed of my clammy hand. The hard surface lay flush against her satin skin, as warm as she was. “Did it hurt?” I asked softly, tracing its facets, peering into the tiny, yellow flickers of flaws in its depth.
“Yes.” Her voice was husky. “When the spell spears through you for the first time—it feels like I imagine dying might, which I suppose is only fair.” She cleared her throat. “Let us begin.”
The parquet between us was littered like a three-dimensional found-object collage. Trays and bowls held bolts of snakeskin gleaming with a liquid sheen, strings of rainbow beads, glittering crushed powders, piles of multicolored stones, spiderwebs glistening with dew pinned between sheets of glass, birds’ nests with eggs, even what looked like a heap of preserved butterflies with nearly transparent orange wings.
“Go on,” she said, gesturing toward it all. “Begin.”
“But I don’t know where to start trying,” I protested. “There’s so many.”
“Don’t start ‘trying’ anywhere.” Her eyes were level. “‘Trying’ won’t make you the one who wins. Do all of them, at once, with everything you have. You’re back in coven now; your gleam might not be honed and precise like your sister’s, but you should be near to full strength, as we all are when we are close to each other. It’s been paining you to gleam fully thus far, because you were not taught how to do it properly, and it stunted you. But now I’m here to guide you. Now it will be a glory, so do not be afraid of it.”
I dug my nails into my palms and began—and as soon as I did, the whole of the room kaleidoscoped between us, shattering into a behemoth fractal. And as Ylessia had said, now that I was no longer holding back or panicked, it felt like my human insides had been replaced with an endless, surging flood of light, a rushing river of pure relief.