Page 114 of Silver in the Bone

“My auntie basically thought ... I don’t know what she thought,” Neve continued. “That if I ignored it, the power would disappear? But even after I put the pendant back, it called to me. It felt like it was supposed to be mine. I swear I could hear it whispering to me through the walls.”

I said nothing, waiting for her to continue when she was ready.

“I didn’t want to upset Auntie in any way, and I resisted it for a year, telling myself I didn’t need it or want it. But one day, when Auntie went to work, I couldn’t lie to myself anymore. I went back up into the attic to get it. And I didn’t just find it again. I also found some of my mother’s old books and her wand.”

She didn’t have to say it for me to know. It was the wand Caitriona had taken that first night we were here.

“And I realized Auntie had lied to me,” Neve said, her voice growing smaller. “Not only did she know who my mother was, they were friends. I found letters she had sent, including one explaining my father had died, but she hadn’t signed them with a name, only the letter C. It was the last in the pile that made me sure they had come from her.”

My eyebrows rose. “What did it say?”

“Her name is Neve. Don’t let them take her. ‘Them’ could have been anyone—my father’s family, whoever they are, the Sistren, the State of South Carolina ... All I knew was that Auntie had kept all of it from me, and it was mine,” Neve said. “So when she left for work, I would work, too. I went through my mother’s books, trying to learn more about her, trying the spells she’d known. The pendant made it all so much easier.”

“Do you think it might have played a role in the protective spell you cast when we first got here?”

“Olwen thinks it helped amplify it,” Neve said. “But also ... I’ve read countless times that magic is something that has to be tightly controlled, and carefully directed into a spell. Magic is so untamed and endless that the practice of memorizing an established set of sigils has always felt restrictive to me. It never made sense until Olwen explained that the priestesses’ way of calling magic is more intuitive and personal to each caster.”

I frowned. “Personal in what way?”

“You call the magic in whatever way feels good, or natural to you. The magic responds to your will, and how you picture it,” Neve said. “The spells don’t always come out exactly as you imagined, though. I think that’s why the sorceresses developed their language—so everything would be more specific. And predictable.”

“Makes sense,” I said. Personally, I’d take the certainty of the sorceresses’ method any day.

“Olwen uses humming to call it, others use song,” Neve continued. “Mari prays directly to the Goddess, and Lowri—the sister who works in the forge—she uses hand signals.”

“You screamed,” I said, remembering.

“Yeah, exactly,” Neve said. “I knew the kind of spell we needed and the scream just came out of me—there was no thought to it, just instinct. I created the spell.”

“That’s ...” I almost didn’t have a word for it. “That makes it even more impressive. But knowing there’s another way to practice magic—a way you seem pretty good at—why do you need the Council of Sistren?”

Neve’s whole body heaved with her sigh. “It’s so stupid, I know it is. I shouldn’t want their acceptance, but I do.”

She closed her eyes, as if needing to see the memory play out again.

“A few weeks ago, Auntie came home early from work. And we fought. Fought like we never had before ... ever,” Neve said. “I love her more than anyone in the world, and I said horrible things to her—that she was trying to hold me back, that she wanted me to be as weak as her ... She claimed all of the lies and half-truths had been to protect me, but wouldn’t say from what. She begged me not to go to the Council of Sistren. To just let it all go.”

“But you couldn’t.”

Neve shook her head and opened her eyes. “I left that day to take the admission test to their school of sorcery. I told you the truth before. They wouldn’t even let me try—they barely let me speak. What I didn’t tell you, though, was that it wasn’t just my lack of apprenticeship.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

A quiet anger flickered in her expression; it was the kind of fire that turned iron to steel. “It was because I had no known lineage. I had no documentation of my maternal line. I couldn’t even tell them my mother’s name. I can still see them at that table, laughing ...”

My jaw was clenched so tightly, I couldn’t speak. I felt it then, as if I’d been standing there beside her. The humiliation. The desperation of being wholly alone in your story, with no way to piece together a past. The need for approval.

There was so much about Neve’s life I would never truly understand, but that ... that I understood.

“They can rot in the infernal abyss,” I told her fiercely. “You don’t need them—you’re too good for them in every way.”

“I do need them, though,” Neve said. “It’s not just about acceptance, or even trying to master my power more fully. I think ... Something Auntie said before I left makes me think the Council of Sistren may have my mother’s Immortality in their archive.”

And the answers about who I am inside it.

She didn’t need to say it. I had lost my past, but she had a chance. Neve could still find the answers to the questions burning in her, and she’d been willing to do anything, including venture into an Other-land, to get them.

I understood that, too.

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