All the godspawn had magical gifts, though some of their abilities deserved the term gift more than others. There was no predicting what they would be, and each manifested in its own time, in its own way. Some, like Feral’s and Ruby’s, made themselves known spontaneously—and vividly—while they were still babies. Storms and fires in the nursery. Snowdrifts and lightning strikes, or bedclothes burned away, leaving nothing but an angry, naked baby steaming in a mesarthium bassinet. Other abilities took longer to discover, and depended on environment and circumstance—like Sparrow’s, which needed a garden, or at the very least a seed, in order to show itself. She’d still been crawling when it had. Great Ellen loved to tell the story: how small Sparrow had beelined across the gallery on chubby hands and knees to the orchids that hadn’t bloomed since the Carnage. They’d looked like potted sticks, and Great Ellen hadn’t stopped the little girl from grabbing at them. There was little enough to play with in the citadel, and the orchids were past hope. She’d been distracted—probably by Ruby—and when next she looked, it wasn’t potted sticks she saw, but Sparrow’s small, upturned face transfixed by the sight of a bloom unfurling from the dead wood she clutched in her tiny hands.
Orchid Witch. Cloud Thief. Bonfire. Their gifts had manifested effortlessly, naturally. The same could not be said for Sarai’s.
While Feral, Ruby, and Sparrow couldn’t remember the time before their magic, she could. She remembered wondering what her gift would turn out to be, and hoping for a good one. The others hoped, too. Well, the girls were very small, but Feral and Minya were highly aware: Sarai’s gift was their last unknown. They were trapped in the citadel to scrape up a life for themselves however they could and for as long as they could, and there were gifts that might make that easier. As for Sarai, she didn’t just want to make it easier. That wasn’t enough. She wanted to save them.
There was one gift, above all, that might have done that. It was Skathis’s gift, and though most likely to be inherited by his children, godspawn powers were unpredictable, and there was a chance that it could manifest in others. Sarai knew she didn’t have it, though. She’d been tested for it as a baby. They all were. Korako, goddess of secrets, had been the one to see to it, and to administer other tests to determine the more elusive godspawn abilities. Korako was dead now, along with Skathis and Isagol, Letha, Vanth, and Ikirok—the Mesarthim, all murdered by the Godslayer, Eril-Fane.
The gift Sarai had most wished for wasn’t Skathis’s gift, anyway, but flight. There had been godspawn who could fly, according to Great Ellen, and she had imagined that one day she might just begin to rise, and rise, and rise to freedom. In her fantasies, she carried the others away with her, but they never reached a destination because she couldn’t imagine what place there could be in the world for the likes of them. There were good gifts to wish for, and there were bad ones to fear, and the more time passed, the more she worried that hers would be one of those. She was five years old, and nothing had happened. Six, and still nothing.
And then… not nothing. Not something, either. Not yet, not quite. Just a feeling, growing inside her, and not a good one.
At first, it had felt a little like holding in cruel words instead of speaking them—how they sit burning on the back of your tongue like a secret poison, ready to spew into the world. She held it in. She didn’t tell anyone. It grew stronger, heavier. She resisted it. From the very beginning, it felt wrong, and it only got worse. There was restlessness in her, an urgency to scream, and all this wrongness, this urgency… it only happened at night. By the light of day she was fine, and that seemed a further clue that it was a dark, bad thing inside her. Welling up, building up, rising, filling her—something in her that should not have been there, and every night that passed it was harder to resist its compulsions.
Her throat wanted to scream. Her soul wanted it, too. She fought against it as though there were demons in her trying to claw their way out and ravage the world.
Let them, Minya would have said. The world deserves ravaging.
It was Minya who finally dragged it out of her—dragged them out, her hundred smithereens of darkness. “I see what you’re doing,” she’d accused Sarai one night, cornering her in the garden. That was the year they were the same age. Sarai had caught up to her, and would soon grow past her, while Minya stayed forever the same. “You think I can’t tell?” the little girl had demanded. “You’re hiding your gift. Well, it’s not yours to hide. Whatever it is, it belongs to all of us.”
Sarai didn’t dispute that. They were in this together, and she’d had such hopes that her gift might set them free. But those hopes were all gone. “What if it’s bad?” she’d whispered, fearful.
“Bad would be good,” Minya had said, fervent. “We need bad, Sarai. For vengeance.”
She knew how to say the word, gritted teeth and spittle flying, all her hate bound up in it. Her own gift was what it was. She could punish the humans, but only once they were dead, and that did not satisfy. Sarai might have dreamed of flying and escape, but not Minya. She’d hoped Sarai’s magic would prove a weapon against their enemy. And the two little girls might have looked like equals that night in the garden—like playmates—but they weren’t. Minya was the fearsome elder sister who had saved all their lives, and they would do anything for her, even hate for her. That part was easy, really. Natural. They’d known nothing else. Ghosts, the citadel, and hating the humans who hated them.
So Sarai gave in to the scream that night, and the dark things within her took wing. They came boiling out between her lips, and they weren’t demons after all, but moths.