I couldn’t blame him for hiding his misdeed in his telling. Why would he want to share that shame with a stranger? That said, why had the oak chosen to share that part of the story with me? I had already known about the incident… mostly. What was the point of telling me the rest?
“Have you ever struck a child since?” I asked.
Callum recoiled, horrified that I would even ask the question. “No, of course not. Never, never again.”
“Have you done anything against Devyn again?” I pursued. There had to be a reason for the vision, there had to be. Oaks had shown me things before, things that gave me insight or information that was crucial for me to know so I could understand better what was going on.
Callum’s face was closed as he turned away. He looked at the tree and then back at me as he realised where I had gained my newfound knowledge of the long-ago incident. His eyes widened.
“You’re a crannoir, a type of seer,” he breathed. “Such an unusual gift. But then, you’ve managed to reach the elements… but not with the kind of power that would have sent the hounds after you. You are a conundrum, child.”
“Fidelma said that too.” She also said I wasn’t the girl Devyn sought. Was the reason why I was unable to control the power in my blood the same reason she had failed to see the truth? “She said if I made it out of the city I should go to her.”
“She did, hey?” Callum pulled at his beard. “If Fidelma saw a use for you, there must be more than just the ability to commune with tree spirits. Let’s try again.”
Some hours and little further success later, we made our way back to his rooms where I fell into a chair, exhausted. While Callum was a little distracted, I asked the question that had been building up inside me for days since he had let slip that Devyn had been fostered in the house into which I had been born.
I couldn’t ask him directly because Devyn had warned me about showing interest in the lost lady and her child, but surely somehow I could figure it out myself?
“Magic is in the bloodlines, right? So somewhere in the past, before the Code, I must have a Briton ancestor. Is there a way to identify which family I might descend from?”
Callum didn’t look up from the books he was rifling through, muttering under his breath and cursing at whatever elusive tome he was searching for. The question hung heavily in the air – on my side at least.
“Ah, there you are.” He pulled a dark-green book off a shelf. “Yes, and I’ve only ever heard of the ability to see the past manifesting in the older bloodlines. Crannoirs are rare. Even with the increase in city latents like yourself, it shouldn’t be too difficult to figure out which line you trace back to.”
“Oh yeah?” I dragged a finger through the dust on the shelf I stood beside, trying hard not to appear over-eager. When my parents locked me up to prevent me escaping with Devyn, when they failed to turn up at my trial, thereby washing their hands of me, I had started to accept the fact that they, the only family I had ever known, were not really my family. They adopted me for profit, not for myself, and for the advantages the city bestowed on them for raising me until I was old enough to be married off to the groom of their choosing. My birth mother died trying to protect me, and I had lived my life under the false care of people who were merely doing their city a service. My family, my home, my city – everything I had ever believed in and loved – was a lie.
Devyn was all I had. And he was as hard to hold onto as water in a stream: mesmerising to watch, whether it was still and deep and simply reflecting its surroundings, or turbulent and boiling over in a storm and pulling me along in a current that I was powerless to resist. But every time I tried to hold on to him, he slipped away. I needed something I could hold on to, a new centre that would ground me. Something to give me a connection to this new life, this new world.
“It would have been generations ago, but I suppose you might be able to trace it,” he acknowledged.
“Is it possible to trace what kind of magic a particular bloodline has?”
“Yes, there are only so many families with the kind of magic you seem to have. It should be possible to figure out with which family you have the most affinity. In fact, that might be the answer to why you struggle so. If we speak to someone in the family, we could find some answers, or, better yet, solutions.”
“It’s possible? I might have a living family?” I rushed, tripping over the words. My entire being bubbled with hope and joy. I wasn’t alone out here. There was somewhere I could go. Somewhere I could call home. I had promised Devyn I wouldn’t tell anyone that I was anything other than Marcus’s betrothed, but if I could figure it out on my own… They used books out here, so it wasn’t like I would leave an electronic trail as I would have if my research had been online.
“It depends. Latents with magic tend to have a single
