The Girl Who Would Be King(126)

So, here’s what you should know. You can fly. If you haven’t tried it already then do it right now because it is the single greatest gift we’re given…although perhaps that’s just my personal opinion, since I was never much for all the fighting.

We’re incredibly strong and fast, and can heal just about any wound. When you’re getting really good at being you, you can heal at will and speed your healing, and even make yourself invulnerable in a variety of ways. We cannot be killed. I drowned once when I was seventeen, and woke up safely on the beach four days later – it was the most amazing thing – though avoid it if you can, it was a particularly unpleasant experience. We’ve also got great internal radar. Trust it, as it can put you where you need to be when you need to be there.

And the symbol. There’s a powerful stone that can increase your powers, certainly enough to give you an edge, it makes it possible to locate your Other, or anyone connected to us by blood, no matter where they are. There’s a small broken piece of the symbol in the trunk. The LeFevers do not know we have it, haven’t known for centuries. The other piece was lost by Delia in our last battle together in Los Angeles, when we nearly brought down a mountain and afterward agreed to make peace. Because of our agreement we both allowed the stone to remain lost. This was a bit disingenuous of me since I still had a small piece of the stone, but I had no intentions of using it unless Delia broke our arrangement. If you need it – if things are desperate and you can find the other piece, making the stone whole again will make it more powerful than ever. The stone will also allow you to read your Other’s mind when you’re in close proximity. It’s how I knew that ultimately Delia didn’t want to fight anymore. But here’s something the LeFevers have never figured out about the symbol, and you will not find it written anywhere, in fact, I take a great chance writing it here, and you should destroy this letter once you’ve read it…but I believe in this case the risk is necessary. The power is not in the actual stone, but in the symbol. Do you understand?

And this brings us to the last thing – how we die. First you should know that when we’re pregnant with our daughters, the next Braverman, we’re at our strongest, even more powerful and impossible to kill than usual; nature’s way I guess of protecting the next in the line, but once she’s born, the power mostly leaves us. It’s not like it goes away entirely…our instincts are still sharp and we are always faster and stronger than anyone else. But there’s no more lifting cars and jumping buildings, or flying. And we become vulnerable in a way we have never been before - vulnerable to things like bullets, car crashes, and long falls.

And when we die, the full measure of the power passes to our daughter.

And here’s the most important thing for you to know. The dying has nothing to do with you. You can’t do anything to stop it. And it happens whether or not you do everything wrong or everything right.

So you have to forgive yourself for becoming something amazing once I died. It’s not your fault; it never was and never will be; it was nothing you did; it is just your very existence, which is both necessary and beautiful, so you can’t be feeling regret about that.

Let the guilt go and be the amazing woman I’ve always known you would become.

I love you.

Mom



I wipe tears off of the letter, afraid I’ll smear her words, almost all I have of her. A wave of relief passes over me that is almost as powerful as the sadness, relief that she has left words that unburden me finally of that day on the road, when they died and I lived. I don’t think I knew until just now how heavy those burdens had been to carry. I feel like a new woman – the woman my mother believed I would become.

I close my eyes and set the book aside. The stack of letters are addressed to my mother, from Delia LeFever. I pull one at random from the stack and read it.



Scarlett

You’re right about why I agreed to this shit plan of yours – it’s for Lola. By the time I was born my mother Aveline was crazy as a shithouse rat. Maybe she was always like that, but I doubt it. You know as well as I do what this life does to us. Maybe part of me needs to believe that she didn’t start out like that. Her battles with your mother Jean couldn’t have helped. She was a terrible mother to me, and I hated her. But waiting for Lola to be born, I have to say, I hate Aveline less. I understand her and her pain a lot more than I ever thought I would. I already love Lola, but I also catch myself resenting her, maybe hating her a little too. Does this happen to you with Bonnie? Probably not, you and all your goddamn “goodness”, it probably never even occurs to you. But really, you’re telling me the first time you wanted to fly away from everything and found you couldn’t…you didn’t resent Bonnie just a little bit? For holding all your power in her tiny, useless hands? Again, you and yours and all your goodness probably prevents it from even occurring to you...bitches.