Page 3 of Birthright

“I was to protect her! How could I do that if I wasn’t near?” His protest came out slightly slurred and hissing in his cat form.

He made his way into my lap and stretched his neck, nuzzling my own with his head, the way he had comforted me for years. “I didn’t mean to intrude on your privacy. I only wanted to protect you and act as any cat would. It was natural for me to be so close to you. It still is.” Softly, he spoke into my ear, “What we are telling you is true. I wish we could have done it a better way, but circumstances have changed. You are a Witch.”

I pushed him back to the bed, trying not to think of anything else horrifying that he might have witnessed. Everything! He’d been there for everything.

“Your true given name is Keena,” Doran said softly as she sat on the end of the bed. She was trying to be non-threatening, but it wasn’t working. Supremacy rolled off the woman like an expensive perfume. My stomach burned in response to her closeness. “Haven’t you always felt like you were different, someone not quite like the others? Stronger than the other children, longing for something in relationships with humans that wasn’t there?”

She paused, watching my face. I looked away from the three of them, gazed across the room to watch the flame on one of the fat, dripping candles. I thought back over all the times in my life when I’d felt as she’d described. She was right. I didn’t fit in anywhere, even in my own home. I loved my parents, but it was true. I was never really at ease with them. But it was still hard to believe they weren’t my real parents. This couldn’t be real.

I had been a good athlete in school, but too embarrassed to surpass everyone so easily. Everything else about academic life had bored me. Everyone else seemed to be in on something I wasn’t. Or had it been the other way around all along? I blinked a couple of times, my brain feeling overloaded.

Doran’s strong voice brought me out of my thoughts. “You have longed for your own people, Keena. Without magic, you’ve not been complete. You couldn’t be.” Her pleasant face looked sympathetic. “We feared it would never come to you, until last month when Manus started to feel your magic.”

“Magic? I don’t have any magic.” I was confused and getting angry, but at least I no longer felt threatened. I looked at Clyde-Manus, curled against my hip. “Could you change back? I’m a little freaked by you right now.” He shrugged his kitty shoulders, something I’d never seen him do as a cat, and moved to the edge of the bed and changed back.

I preferred him in his cat form actually. It was comforting, but I really wanted to see the change again to reinforce my sanity. And he did it, changed with a smooth stretching of bones and flesh before nonchalantly picking up his clothes and redressing. “Either this is the result of really good drugs or…”

I couldn’t think of another or.

Bevin cackled a little and finished for me. “Or the things that go bump in the night are real. Believe me, dear. They are. We’re real. You’re real. You will find out you have true magic. Witches use far more of their brains than humans do, you know. Everything about you will grow stronger soon.” She smiled, which made her dark eyes twinkle in the candlelight. “Have you had a burning in your lower abdomen?”

I know my eyes were bulging in disbelief. “Yes. How did you know that?” My stomach had been burning off and on for weeks. I’d chalked it up to work, but… “I thought it was stress.”

Bevin came closer and put her hand over my lower abdomen. The burning turned to a surge of warmth. “That is your power, child. It comes from your womb. You will learn to channel it…use it. It will grow stronger, as will your sense of being and your confidence. Once you are brought into your full powers, you will be a great Witch.”

Her lovely voice seemed to echo through my head. Witch. I couldn’t get the image of the Wicked Witch of the West out of my head. Yet these women were graceful and beautiful, and I could feel something in the air around them. I let my hand cover the charm around my neck. It seemed charged with the same force I felt in my abdomen.

“Did you say something about a twin? What about my mother? Is she a Witch?” The questions were coming faster than I could get them out. “I look just like her. How would she not have known this? Did she know? Why did those things attack me?”

Bevin turned a sideways smile to Doran before turning back to me. “You were given to…your human mother when her biological child died at birth, we think. She knew no different. Your real mother—your Witch mother—spelled you to take on the human characteristics of your adoptive mother.” She looked out into space with an expression resembling awe. “Quite an impressive spell, actually. No one has been able to replicate it since. It was more like Fairy glamour than a spell.”

Manus leaned back against the headboard next to me, his hand falling on my thigh. Even in his human form, it felt natural having him close, touching me. Thank God he pulled on his pants. “You noticed that your pants were getting shorter and looser?”

I answered with a small nod.

“We think the spell started to break as your powers started to emerge. Your hair is getting darker, even more so since you have been here with us.”

“You are starting to look more like my sister, Trevina, your birth mother. Your real mother,” Doran said.

“Where is she, my real mother?” When no one answered, I looked to Manus.

“She died after finding a safe place for you and Feldema, your sister,” he said, his eyes cast down to the floor. There was more to that story, to be sure.

Doran spoke loudly and with authority. “You need your rest, Keena, and some food.” She raised her hand, and the iron latch clicked undone, the door falling inward.

I shrieked and raised the covers to my chin as a little creature stumbled abruptly into the room. The eavesdropping little thing was perhaps waist high and bluish gray. His eyes were black, but I could see a tiny ring of bright blue around the irises. His head held a tuft of blue-green hair that stood in a little mohawk. Iridescent, feathery scales covered his blue skin.

Once he recovered from his stumble, he presented the room with a formal bow. He looked at me with a big, toothy smile. “I am Hogan, of the Valley Kell. I am at your service, my lady.” I blinked hard at the little thing and looked at Manus.

He gave a small laugh. “Gnome. He is your sworn servant. He will care for you and your chambers.”

“Gnomes, Witches…what else do I need to know about?”

Hogan scrambled to the edge of the bed, being careful not to bump Doran. “Weres, Vamps, Gremlins, Slaugh—” I must have looked as horrified as I felt because Doran put her hand on his shoulder. The Gnome fell to his knees and shut his mouth.

“Hogan, please get Keena something to eat and run her a bath.” As she spoke, calm emanated from the powerful woman. The feeling wrapped around me like a warm towel.

“Yes, my lady.” He bowed again to me and then scurried out of the room, his little legs moving him faster than I would have thought possible.