Page 149 of The Blade in the Ashes
My lower lip trembled, confusion stealing my voice.
“I haven’t used my powers since...” I swallowed, struggling to admit it to the woman I had hurt so deeply. “Since everything. It’s been getting worse the longer I suppress it.”
Thea chuckled, giving me a sad smile I couldn’t quite make sense of.
“Camilla,” her voice was soft, cajoling, like she was talking to a temperamental child. “Do you know what happens to a God’s magic when they die?”
Something inside me, maybe that force in my gut, roared with her words. Somewhere deep inside of me, something in her words registered even as I couldn’t quite follow her implication.
“A new God must rise to take their place,” she explained, again giving me that sympathetic smile.
She reached to take my hand in hers, and I realized exactly what she was implying.
No.
I scrambled back away from her, reaching for the hateful part of my soul that I’d always relied on to protect myself when the world got too harsh to bear.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about!” I sneered at her, rushing to my feet. “And I don’t want your help!”
If she were bothered by my outburst, it didn’t show. She simply rose after me, dusting herself off from where she had sat on the floor. “Pasnia had an animus that she could use to see visions of other people and places. Hers was a butterfly, but in the woods I saw a cat. I saw that same cat several times at the castle.”
A cat.
My cousin Erilea had a cat once—a fluffy, white beast which she had doted on endlessly. I’d hallucinated Erilea killing the creature when Pasnia had poisoned my mind with her magic.
No, Thea was wrong. She had to be mistaken. It wasn’t possible.
I didn’twantit to be possible.
Shaking my head violently, I brushed away the tears that trailed down my cheeks and dripped onto the floor. “I want you to leave.”
Thea crossed her arms over her chest. “Pasnia had no direct Descendants to serve as an heir. No bloodline for her magic to choose a successor from.”
I couldn’t accept this.
“You’re wrong!” I screeched, backing away and stumbling over an upturned chair. I fell heavily onto the floor, and she reached to help me.
“Get out, Thea!” I screamed at her, viciousness pouring out of me. “You think you know everything because you’re a Goddess, but you don’t. So just leave me alone!”
“It only makes sense that her magic would seek someone who it had touched extensively before. Out of everyone in this realm, you were the most familiar. The magic recognized you. It chose you.”
I felt it then, building in me like an electric storm. It tingled down my spine, shooting into my arms and legs. It was as if it had a mind of its own and it washappyto finally be acknowledged for what it was.
It wasn't witchcraft inherited from the God I had descended from.
It wasn't my magic.
It was hers.
Divine magic.
My shoulders slumped, and I looked to Thea with a plea in my eyes, silently begging her to change her mind and say she was wrong.
“I don’t want it,” I whispered to her.
She looked at me for a long while before she sighed and nodded. “I know you don’t Camilla.”
I would happily go to a cell. I would happily accept any form of torture or punishment over this. This was a fate worse than any I might have imagined for myself and I did. not. want it.
