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I should be thankful. It could always be worse. There are nights I go to bed with a full mind but an empty belly. And in the morning, I wake up with sand in my eyes and between my toes, like I’m the Sandman’s favorite damned person, and the whole nightmare starts over again.

I hate poverty. I hate feeling like we’re only entitled to the worst this realm has to offer simplybecause. But more than anything, I hate having to make hard choices. Books or food? To learn or to eat?

“This wouldn’t even be an issue if you would just let me use a bit of magic,” I say.

I can feel my power burning under my skin and beneath my fingertips, waiting for me to call it forth.

“No magic.”

“Mom, everyone thinks we’re weak.” The strongest fairies wield the most magic, the weakest, the least. Everyone who’s met me believes I’m one of those poor, rare souls born without it entirely.

A fatherless,powerlessfairy. Aside from slaves, this might be the worst fate for a person living within these realms.

The rub of it all is that I have plenty of magic, and now, so close to puberty, I can feel it like a storm beneath my veins. It’s taking increasing effort just toleashit.

“No magic,” she repeats, setting her satchel next to our rickety table before taking over the stirring from me.

“So I’m to have powers but never use them?” I say heatedly. This is an old, scarred battle of ours. “And I’m to read but never speak of my knowledge?”

She reaches for my hand and runs her thumb over my knuckles. “And you are to have strength without abusing it,” she adds. “Yes, my son. Be humble. Speak, but listen more. Rein in your magic and your mind.”

Which only leaves me my muscle. Even that she’d have me hide away from the world.

“They call me a bastard,” I blurt out. “Did you know that?”

Her eyes widen almost imperceptibly.

“They call me a bastard and you a whore. That’s why my knuckles are always bloody. I’m fighting for your honor.” My anger is beginning to get the better of me, which is problematic. And under my mother’s roof, I had to live by two hard and fast rules: one, I must never use my magic, and two, I must control my temper. I’m decent at the former and shit at the latter.

She turns to our sad pot of beets. “You are not a bastard,” she says, so softly I barely hear it over the bubbling cauldron.

But I do hear it.

My heart nearly stops.

Not … a bastard? Not a misbegotten? The entire axis of my universe shifts in an instant.

“I’m not a bastard?”

Slowly, her eyes move from the pot back to me. I swear I see a flash of regret. She hadn’t meant to tell me.

“No,” she finally says, her expression turning resolute.

My heartbeat begins to pick up speed at an alarming rate, and I have the oddest urge not to believe her. This is the kind of talk you sit your son down for; you don’t just casually slip it into the conversation.

I stare at her, waiting for more.

She says nothing.

“Truly?” I press.

She takes a shaky breath. “Yes, Desmond.”

Something that feels an awful lot like hope surges through me. Bastards live tragedies. Sons live sagas. All my mother’s books are very clear on that point.

I am some man’s son.Hisson. Masculine pride rushes through me, though it’s quickly doused by reality. I am still the boy raised by a single mother, and I have lived a fatherless existence. Perhaps I’m no bastard, but the world still sees me as one, and knowing my mom’s love of secrets, the world will continue to see me as one even after today.

“Did he die?”