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Goodness.

There was no signature at the end.

The letter confused me. How did you send a letter to someone when you had no idea where they physically were? Could magic be used for something like that? I didn’t know, but the more I thought about it, the more I was sure you could use magic that way. I would ask one of the guys about it in the morning.

I was done with that letter, so I moved it to the side and picked up another one.

Vivian,

If you do not give her to me, I will kill you. She’s mine and she needs me.

I’m tired of playing this little game with you, Vivian. Enough is enough. Give me my daughter or else.

Who was this crazy person who had been sending my mother letters? If what I was reading was true, then Vivian Kimber hadn’t really been my mother at all.

I didn’t even know how to feel about this. The writer of the letters had called my mother by the term ‘sister’. But, were they male or female? I didn’t know how to determine the sex of a person based on their handwriting. It wasn’t in my skill set.

I picked up another letter.

Vivian,

I’m sure you’re wondering how I found you. You can rest assured, sweet sister, I have not found you and my daughter. Though, I have been diligently looking. In searching for you, I’ve also been searching for a magical means to find you. I came across something interesting. A spell that would transport my letter to you without actually knowing your physical location. Actually, I think it allows me to send the letters to wherever Ariel is. Blood magic is a wonderful thing, don’t you think, my darling sister? This way, you can hide from me all you want, but you’ll never really be able to escape me.

Poetic justice, if you ask me.

Not that you’ve asked me for my opinion on many things. If you had, then you wouldn’t have stolen my daughter from me.

I finished reading this letter and set it aside, on top of the other one I had read.

My hands were shaking.

This was crazy.

I snatched up another letter and almost tore the paper when I opened it.

My dearest Vivian,

Yesterday, our father died. He had a heart attack and it killed him.

Do you even care? I imagine you don’t. You were always such a greedy, spoiled little child. Father doted on you, always giving you everything that you wanted. Do you remember, Vivian? He’d go on and on about how precious little girls with magic were. The joke was on him, though, right Viv? His precious little girl who didn’t actually have magic at all. What started as his greatest achievement ended up being his biggest failure.

Is that why you took her? Because you were jealous that she had magic when you don’t? Do you remember the day she was born? The entire coven came for it, to witness the birth of a baby girl, one with two parents having magic. She was a miracle baby. She was my baby.

You took more than my baby from me. My beautiful Maude, she never recovered. My brothers, they never recovered. I was kicked out of my coven when they found out the lengths I was willing to go to in order to find you and get back my daughter.

All I had left was father.

And, now he’s gone, too.

I wish it were you who’d been put into the ground instead of him.

I put the letter down on top of the read pile and wiped away at the wetness leaking out of my eyes.

My chest hurt, and I struggled to breathe past the lump in my throat.

This was unbelievable. If what these letters said was true, I had had a family that loved me, wanted me, and my mother had stolen me from them. Then, she’d spent my entire life up until this point treating me like a lesser being because she was jealous of me because I was born with magic and she wasn’t. I could have grown up with people who would have treated me like I was precious. I could have grown up around magic and had people to teach me my craft. I could have met my grandfather before he died and maybe I would have loved him, and he would have loved me back. I could have had a mother who loved me and a father who was willing to do whatever it took to get me back, even get kicked out of his coven for it. And, from the sound of things, he never gave up and years later was still looking for me.

My heart broke for this man, whether we were related or not, my heart broke for him. He sounded like he’d lived half of his life in misery because of my mother. Something we had in common.