“I feel like us being together is fighting the fates.”
All her amusement from before was instantly gone. “You know, Blaire, these gifts… they've been jumbled up the past few generations. Quarters and Counters have been shifted around, and just when we thought we knew the rules, they changed on us.”
I knew all that.
“Okay. What are you saying?”
“I'm saying… there wasn't another child born within twelve hours of you, and as tradition suggests, there should have been. We checked into it.”
She was referring to the rule set by the gods that Counters were always born within exactly twelve hours of their Quarter. It was how Rayner and the old Quarters attempted to hunt the current generation of Counters so they could weaken Remy, Rhyse, Lux, and Enzo by cutting off half their power source. The sick game forced families to hide their children if they ran the risk of being suspected, hence Storie's family taking her out of town at less than a week old.
It was also why Storie was the only Counter identified so far.
“So, I don't have a Counter at all, then?”
Mom squinted her eyes, contemplating her next words carefully. “Grammy and I have gone over this so many times. More so in the past few weeks, since you moved here.”
“Okay… what is it?”
She scooted closer toward me and stretched her arm across the back of the couch, as if she wanted to be closer to me as she delivered her next words. “There wasn't a child born within twelve hours of you, but there was only one child born within twelve hours of me.”
She didn't have to say who it was for me to know.
Kyle.
He was supposed to be Mom's Counter, had she inherited the gifts.
But she never did.
She nodded as my face morphed, the truth dawning on me.
“That undeniable connection you feel… it’s there for a reason. So, allow yourself to go with it.”
Mom stayed longer than I had expected her to. Long past when we heard Kyle's door open and close with his arrival back home. He must have known she was still here, though, because he didn't attempt to come up the stairs the way he suggested he would at the meeting.
I was grateful for the reprieve she provided.
I needed a chance to catch my breath after what she had told me. Time to wrap my head around the fact that this fling that me and Kyle had was so much more than we thought it was. That it was somehow decided by the gods long ago.
So, we drank wine and caught up. And when the alcohol pushed away the cloud of doubt that was hanging over my head, I actually felt like I had before any of the weight of being a Quarter was dropped on my shoulders. I felt like the carefree Blaire that no one seemed to like.
For the night, we were simply Callista and Blaire. Mother and daughter, sharing laughs and swapping anecdotal stories from the past few weeks.