Still, she couldn’t help but think it.
“You know Malik was destined for greatness,” Amja said. “He was supposed to be our Liege, but there was a darkness inside of him.”
“A darkness,” Saxony repeated. “He was just a baby.”
“And we couldn’t wait to see the man he would grow into,” Amja said. “But then an Intuitcrafter saw in a vision that he would bring about war and death if he was raised by magic.”
Saxony didn’t think laughing was the appropriate reaction, but how else was she supposed to handle the sincerity with which her amja spoke? A vision, one in thousands, had scared her that much?
“It can’t be worse than the war and death we’re facing now,” Saxony said. “It was just one Crafter’s vision.”
“I thought the same, until another saw it,” Amja said. “Both of them saw that future and only that future. It wasn’t just one in a hundred scenarios, Saxony. It was the only future they saw, in a hundred different ways. And so we made a choice.”
Saxony shot up.
She wasn’t prepared to hear this.
She wasn’t ready to know what they had done.
And yet—
“Did you kill him?” she asked.
“Many Gods, no,” Bastian said. “He was a child, Saxony.”
“But we knew we had to do something,” Amja said. “And so we decided to hide his powers and send him far away. We swore the two Intuitcrafters to secrecy and they carried it to their graves.”
Saxony’s breath didn’t just catch, but disappeared altogether.
“You used death magic to hide him,” she said in a whisper. “A blood spell.”
The darkest of all Crafter magic was the kind that required a sacrifice.
It was outlawed among every Kin in the four realms. It could hide a Crafter’s magic from everyone, including themselves, but performing something so ungodly came with a price: a curse over the entire Kin that would never end.
Saxony’s mother hadn’t just died in a fire. She had sacrificed her life to hide Malik from the world. Saxony thought back to that black flame, burning through the tree house. How her mother didn’t try to run and she didn’t scream; she just let it take her. Saxony always thought she’d remembered that part wrong, but she hadn’t.
She thought about how that same black fire that had destroyed her family had poured from Wesley’s fingers when they were attacked.
How the trees in this beloved forest had sung when Wesley appeared and rustled their leaves in joy whenever he made a joke, like they were laughing alongside him.
How his staves were such a bright silver against his dark skin, just like hers. Just like the rest of her Kin.
“Many Gods,” Saxony said.
It couldn’t be true. It just couldn’t.
“Wesley?” she asked.
Amja and her father didn’t need to nod for Saxony to know she was right.
That was how he was able to perform a spell at the consort’s headquarters all those months ago in Creije. How he was able to take on Arjun, a Crafter who had trained his whole life, without breaking a sweat. How he’d nearly killed Ashwood.
Malik was a magical prodigy after all.
“I would have tried to find another way if I knew what Vea was planning,” Bastian said. “But I think she knew it was the only choice.”
“I don’t understand,” Saxony said. “You sent Malik—”
She paused.
She couldn’t say Wesley’s name.
“You sent him to Creije?”
“It wasn’t a magical mecca then,” Amja said. “It was just a dreamer’s paradise, and the Intuitcrafters said that of all the futures they saw, the ones that had Malik in Creije felt the most hopeful. They said being there would grow his heart. We had allies there who we knew and trusted. The Liege of the Creijen Kin took him in.”
The Liege.
The Creijen Kin was small, that’s what Theodora had said when Saxony and Asees summoned her. Their old Liege and his entire family were killed by buskers twelve years ago.
Twelve years ago, when Wesley had become a busker.
The floor felt unstable beneath Saxony’s feet, like it was made from wet soil instead of wood and Saxony was preparing to sink into it.
“They promised to keep Malik safe from all magic to stop that future from coming true. They stopped practicing to protect him.”
“And he became an underboss,” Saxony said bitterly. “He grew up as an orphan on the streets, until Ashwood groomed him to be a killer. That’s the future that gave him the most hope? Zekia and I could have had a brother! Being with us could have saved him because we would have loved him.