Total pages in book: 125
Estimated words: 122030 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 610(@200wpm)___ 488(@250wpm)___ 407(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 122030 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 610(@200wpm)___ 488(@250wpm)___ 407(@300wpm)
But when your grandma shows up for your high school graduation and tells you… things… things you never asked to know, and then you curse her to Hell and back and banish her from your life forever because this is the moment that you figure out just how evil your people were—are…
I was eighteen. This was my justification for a while. This is how eighteen-year-old girls act. Or… overreact, as it may be.
But the things Grandma did weren’t small infractions. They were mortal sins. Sins stacked upon sins. She killed my mother just moments after I was born, but that’s not the worst part. The worst part is why. She killed her to steal her magic. Because we are evil, and made of darkness, and just… fucked up.
And that’s not even all of it, either. Killing my mother after I was born was bad enough, but she did things to my mother before I was born too.
I couldn’t deal. I was out. I had a new life, with new friends—well, one friend—and a future. The Guild paid for me to go to college. After taking care of me for a decade, they didn’t just kick me out and say, “Good luck!” They held my hand and gave me a gentle push, setting me up for success.
Grandma didn’t do that. She dropped me off and didn’t come back until graduation.
Anyway.
Another ten years have passed since then and I work for the Guild full-time now. Not as a Guardian like my best friend, Zusi, but as a librarian in their considerable vault of knowledge. I am not a true Guild member, just their token charity case. But there are worse things than being a charity case in the most comprehensive collection of secret teachings on the planet.
I am not one of them, but I am… well—not part of things, per se, and not really in the game, but I’m on the sidelines. Watching the plays. Observing the strategies. Propping up the star quarterback, keeping score, and passing out encouragement and water.
A useful member of the team in my own small way.
And maybe I’m just easy to please, but it’s satisfying. I don’t mind being benched all the time. I’m doing my part to make up for the people in my bloodline who came before me and helping an influential secret group save the world from evil at the same time.
I call that powerful.
Family means nothing to me. I have none. That’s just how it is. And I’m glad I’m the last of us. I’m glad. Because we are a stain upon the earth and this whole killing-your-daughter-to-steal-her-power is just the beginning of our evil. It goes way, way beyond that.
That’s why the Guild eradicated us. All but me and Grandma.
When I walked away from her, I put her out of my mind and moved on as someone new. I didn’t spend a single moment thinking about her. I kind of assumed she was already dead.
Of course, she couldn’t be dead. If she were dead then the magic she was using to protect me would’ve worn off. So I knew that she was still alive. But in my heart, I killed her myself. Figuratively. To put her out of my mind. To pretend that I am not what I am.
But hearing the news that she was dying and that I had not missed this moment changed something inside me. Made me take a second look at how things ended between us. And I’m sure telling me was some kind of test from the Guild—to see how committed I am to them, or to see how I respond to the news, or whatever—and I’m also sure that I’m in the middle of failing this test.
Because here I am. I couldn’t not come.
There is no right or wrong way to live my life. That’s what the Guild Commission drilled into my head in every single one of our annual meetings to renew my scholarship at the school. There are only choices to be made. And those choices all lead to consequences.
One choice might bring me closer to the Guild, others might whisk me further away.
But all choices are my own and the Guild respects my right to make them.
I couldn’t not come. And that’s the end of it. Maybe Grandma is a reminder of a bloodline I’d rather not think about, but I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I let her leave this world old, and ruined, and alone.
She is evil. But she, like me, was just born that way.
We didn’t ask to be this.
We had no say in it.
And yes, Grandma did unspeakable things in her life. But I have had ten years to really think about it now. To process it. To come up with reasons why her choices made sense. And… she is my grandma. The only kin I have ever known.