Back in a Spell (The Witches of Thistle Grove, #3)(70)
Suddenly deprived of that torrent of power, as if I’d been forcibly unplugged from it, I sagged over the counter, propping my arms against its edge to bolster myself as I drew ragged breaths. I could still feel the bright little ember lodged inside me, the glowing seed of power the goddess had left buried in the deepest soil of my own core—but touching her stone had been like touching the source of the power itself. The original foundry.
I wanted it back, worse and more than I’d ever wanted anything.
“Nina!” Gareth burst out, coming up behind me to wrap firm hands around both my upper arms, steady me against him as I hyperventilated. “You okay? What the entire fucking hell was that?”
“A little miracle, is what,” Delilah breathed, laser-focused on me again now that her precious books were safe from harm. “So, not just goddess-touched by Belisama, then. Much more than that.”
“Wh-what?” I gasped, swinging my heavy head up in an effort to meet her gaze. “And, who?”
“Belisama,” she repeated, her face bright with the satisfaction of having uncovered the answer, delved down to the mystery’s tangled root. “Gaulish theonym, most likely meaning ‘the Very Bright.’ A goddess of fire and light, as well as lakes and rivers, but fairly obscure. We know very little about her, at least definitively. But I’d bet you know more than most of us do, don’t you, Nina? Considering she’s made you into a demigoddess in her own image. Turned you semidivine.”
I gaped at her, reeling, trying to force the words into some semblance of sense. Belisama. The name rang in my head like a struck bell, resonant with truth. And when I remembered how the goddess had glowed beneath the water, her statue carved of that pale, radiant stone, calling her the Very Bright seemed almost insufficient, the wannest representation of her luminous truth.
But the notion that she hadn’t just chosen me and lent me her favor, but elevated me to a mythical status, to something none of us thought still existed in this world . . . My brain wouldn’t wrap around it, accept it as even remotely possible.
Things like this just didn’t happen, not even in Thistle Grove.
Yet there was no denying what I’d looked like just now, like a human star trapped under a flood of utterly miraculous water. And the spells I’d cast most spectacularly since all this had begun had tended almost exclusively toward light and flame. I remembered my own ravenous hunger, too, the way I’d been eating much more than it took to sustain myself—my normal human self.
And then it occurred to me in a flash that maybe this was also why portaling had felt so different, when I’d transported Morty and myself up to the Camelot ramparts. Because that typically terrifying midspace, the essential fabric through which portals burrowed when they opened, belonged to the gods—and if I really was a little bit of one myself now, that might be why they’d looked upon me more kindly than on Morty, accepted my presence in their realm.
As if I had permission to be there. As if I were one of them, at least in part. Even Morty himself had told me that I felt like one of them to him, through the bond.
“Goddess,” I mumbled to myself on a shaky exhale. “Fuck. Me.”
“It’s true, isn’t it? Oh, I knew you were full of shit!” Delilah announced, pounding a triumphant little fist against the counter. “So, what else can you do? Because you were lying, weren’t you, about the favor not having changed you. Even without holding one of her artifacts, your spells must be galvanic right now. The kind of power the rest of us can’t even . . .”
She trailed off, her rosy lips parted as her eyes flicked rapidly back and forth, thoughts chasing each other across her face like storm clouds.
“It’s you,” she said slowly, face clearing as some internal puzzle clicked into place for her. “You’re the one causing the distortion!”
“What distortion?” Gareth snapped, slinging a protective arm around my shoulders. “The hell are you talking about?”
Delilah glanced over at him with vague annoyance, as if she’d halfway forgotten he was even here and would have preferred to keep him well out of mind.
“Spells are malfunctioning all over town,” she said, with a sweeping gesture. “Little ones, big ones; the scale doesn’t seem to matter. They’re just . . . sputtering out, even when cast by seasoned practitioners. As if the caster can’t quite draw enough magic from the lake to see them through.”
I tilted my head back to look up at Gareth, exchanging baffled looks. That was the opposite of what had happened at both Camelot and the Cell, when my temper had gotten the best of me.
“Then why haven’t we heard anything about this?” Gareth demanded. “As scion, I should have been notified. Not to mention my mother.”
“You weren’t notified because the Blackmoores are the only family that haven’t reported any such weakening among their ranks,” Delilah cut in, eyes narrowing. “Rather suspect, no? And of course you haven’t—because you have her. Your very own demigoddess, channeling extra fuel for you. She must be something like a lightning rod right now; the magic of the lake focused on her, drawn to her. Which means there’s less for the rest of us.”
And we wouldn’t even have heard of it by way of rumor, I thought hopelessly, because so few of the others talked to our family if they could help it.