“The only magic the Skogarans know, my darling: blood magic.”
Kestrel tried to conceal the dread from her face, but she could’ve guessed. Why else would the queen have brought her here? Beneath the weapons, Kestrel noted the hint of a deep rust color that stained the altar slab. Blood.
“Our magic is all about ritual. Intention. Sacrifice. It is a beseeching of power from the Sky-Blessed.”
That caught Kestrel’s attention. “The Sky-Blessed? As in…they’re real?”
Queen Signe cocked her head and laughed. “Of course they’re real. What in the Hollows has that man been teaching you?”
Ironically enough, Thom actuallydidbelieve in the Sky-Blessed. Kestrel would hear him praying to them every time before he left their tower, asking them to watch over the place and keep Kestrel safe. As she had grown up though, she’d become curious. Who were these Sky-Blessed, and what else could they do? As a young girl, Kestrel would test the lengths they would go to follow through on a request. Sure, their tower was always safe, but when she would ask for things like wildflowers to grow up the side of the tower, or for a new book to suddenly appear when she’d finished her last one, or for a gentle breeze on a scorching day, nothing would happen.
Soon Kestrel had drawn her own conclusions: the Sky-Blessed weren’t real. They were either a weird idiosyncrasy of Thom’s that she couldn’t quite understand and presumed was from the old ways, before the curse had ended civilization.
Or—and this is where she had landed—or, it was just a thing Thom would say to make her feel safer in his absence.
But she had given up the idea that there could’ve been any truth to their existence, let alone their power. So to hear Queen Signe suggest it now made Kestrel’s head feel full and woozy.
“Nevermind the teachings of that insolent fool,” Queen Signe said, waving the mere mention of him away like he was a cloud of pesky dust. “Yes, the Sky-Blessed are real. They are the source of your magic. You’ve felt them, right? Their presence around you?”
Kestrel’s hand floated to her chest and she flinched when it met her ring. She wasn’t sure if she was allowed to have it and suddenly found herself wishing she had left it hidden away in her bedchamber.
But if the queen was offended by it, she didn’t say anything. Instead, she smiled lovingly down at her niece. “Exactly. That’s where I feel it too. Everyone’s connection to the Sky-Blessed is different though. Like I said, your mother possessed additional abilities that other Skogarans never had. It might be the same for you. Have you encountered any part of your magic yet?”
Kestrel shook her head.
The queen looked disappointed for a breath of a moment, but then curiosity overtook her. “And yet, you clutch your heart. Why?”
Kestrel averted her gaze, feeling as though she’d been caught in a lie she hadn’t meant to give. The truth was, she had felt something awakening inside her when she was in the fortress. But it hadn’t been in her chest. It felt more like it started from her belly and then twisted around her wholebeing. But she didn’t know how to describe it. Had still only felt it a handful of times.
“Sorry, I guess I felt…something when I was in that place.”
“The Fortress of Thirst?”
“Yes.”
“What did you feel, exactly?”
Kestrel almost reached for a braid to gnaw on, but remembered her locks were still trapped in a knot at the base of her skull. She was beginning to hate not having them at her disposal. They left her feeling naked. Raw. Vulnerable to the world around her.
“I don’t know,” she answered at last. “It was just a…swirling feeling. Like something was spinning inside me and I could get swept up in it. Like a desert tornado.”
When she met her aunt’s gaze again, the woman had a knowing look about her. “It was the same way for your mother. And have you had any visions?”
“Visions?”
“Like flashes of scenes, people, and places, but they happen in your mind. Aenwyn would have them quite often, sometimes nightly, these graphic foretellings of what was to come.”
“Like dreaming?” Kestrel asked, thinking back to the previous night and the strange dream she’d had about the forest of feathers.
“Oh no,” Queen Signe said. “They are much different than mere dreams. Even Aenwyn would’ve told you that.” Kestrel deflated a little, feeling like part of her mother had just been stripped away from her. “They were…quite vivid. The way she described them, she knew every detail of something that was about to occur. And after the vision ended, they would leave her drained and imprisoned in her own body for a time. She could not move. Not so much as whimper or cry out for help.”
“That sounds awful.”
Queen Signe nodded to herself, lost again somewhere deep in a nostalgia Kestrel wished she could follow her into. The queen shrugged that memory away as well. “No matter. Your power may grow still, or manifest in new ways, for you are not just made of her.”
Lies,came Thom’s voice, crashing into Kestrel’s skull.You are all Aenwyn; all Fury. That vulture had no part in making you.
Kestrel had to resist the urge to slap her head and tell them both to stop. The way she was starting to see it, it didn’t really matter who her father was, because she currently had no way of learning for certain. Her mother was dead. One of her possible fathers was in a dungeon. The other had been turned into a monster and likely wouldn’t be able to talk about it, even if he wanted to.
