Page 156 of The Blairville Legacies

I bit my tongue.

“She’s even supposed to come to Moeniathisweekend.”

“Who’s supposed to come to us?”

I stopped abruptly on the Victorian wooden staircase. A feeling of unease spread through me, and for a moment, I forgot all my other problems.

My mother stood in the hallway, her dark brown, straight hair sticking up in the form of a ponytail in a showy way, the way I would never wear my hair.

My hair was longer, my ponytail not as high, and we both looked as different as we could. Of course, we had similar face features, and we were both very short and slender, if not petite. But I had always been different from the rest of this family. Too soft, too weak, too quiet, too sensitive, and too lacking in strength.

Margot, as I called her, because she had never felt like a mother to me, smiled at me, but I looked away, over at the ornate stained-glass window in the stairwell of our hallway, through which sunlight dimly filtered.

Moenia was my home, even if it didn’t feel like it.

And Margot was back. I had hoped that, as usual, she would get in the car with the next guy and never come back.

“There’s a new Quatura,” Grace gave enthusiastically in response.

I couldn’t repress the feeling that it was anything but normal that Bayla would suddenly be participating in an initiation ritual. Or that Margot was standing down there in the hallway on the dark marble floor. Just as dark as her blue eyes...a contrast to mine.

“Already the 3rdnew member this month,” she replied in amazement, as if she hadn’t just reappeared here.

“I wouldn’t have expected that, either”, someone commented from the dining room.

Amara had to be back from the Adams.

I started moving again and followed Grace to the dining room, where it was immediately much brighter than in the candlelit hallway and stairwell. The large windows let in the residual sunlight from our front yard, and combined with the candlesticks, created a cozy atmosphere.

“I never thought Bayla would be one of us,” Grace laughed as she sat down on one of the ten chairs of the richly set table.

“I didn’t notice her magic,” Amara sighed with a pensive expression.

Something like that could happen, and it meant that the magic was weak to nonexistent.

Knife and fork flew slowly through the kitchen passageway to the five covered places and settled next to our plates.

Margot’s powers.

“You brought in an ungifted girl, Mum?”

“Ivy!” Grace snapped.

“Grace, she’s not that age yet,” Margot said sympathetically, stroking Ivy’s dark brown hair. They looked more alike than we did.

Ivy was Grace’s little sister, only ten years old, and therefore, not yet bound by thenaming lawthat required us to address even our closest family members by their first names. I had never had a problem with that, because I wasn’t really close to anyone here, except for Ivy and Grace.

We knew, of course, that it was for protection from stranger attackers, so we couldn’t give them too much power over us, but that tradition came from the founding days. It was downright outdated.

“She doesn’t have to be ungifted just because we can’t sense her magic, Ivy. On the contrary, just the fact that other Quatura can’t perceive her abilities can make her much stronger.”

Amara sounded serious.

I honestly didn’t want to know how Bayla must be feeling right now. This day must have been pure chaos for her.

When everyone was seated, Amara raised her hands.

“Habete gloriam in donis tuis.”