KeLani pov
I woke up to Mama watching me, her face all serious with worry lines between her eyebrows. That's her thinking face, the one she gets when something important is happening.
"Lani," she said, her voice extra gentle like when she has to tell me something big. "I need to talk to you about something."
She was sitting up against the pillows, and I was still curled against her chest where I always sleep. She moved me carefully onto her lap so she could see my face better.
"Treasure, I've noticed something about you," she said, brushing my curls away from my eyes. "Something special."
I waited, my heart beating faster. Did she find out? How could she know?
"You have powers, Lani. Like me."
My eyes widened. She knows! My secret practices when she was sleeping or in the shower, the poison smoke I'd been making—she found out somehow! I had to act surprised though, like a normal little kid who didn't already know.
"Cool! Powers like Mama?" I asked, trying to sound excited and confused at the same time. "I can make darkness too?"
Mama nodded, but she still looked worried. "Yes, a little like mine, but different. Yours has a smell to it—sweet but sharp. It's poison darkness, and it could hurt others or even yourself if you don't learn to control it."
I bounced a little on her lap, partly because that's what an excited kid would do, and partly because I was relieved I didn't have to hide it anymore. "That means I can protect Mama from the bad guys!"
Her face changed then—surprise and something else, something sad that made her eyes look shiny with almost-tears. She pulled me closer, wrapping her arms around me tight.
"You don't need to protect Mama," she said softly against my hair. "I can protect you and me both. That's my job, not yours."
But that's not true. I remembered the book, how Mama always dies in S City. I remembered my past life. It is my job to protect her this time, to change the ending of the story. But I couldn't tell her that.
"Now listen, Lani," she continued, pulling back to look me in the eyes again. "You're still too young, and these powers might hurt you if you don't know how to control them. So Mama is going to teach you, okay? We'll practice together."
"Okay," I nodded seriously, though I already knew more than she thought. Still, learning from Mama would be better than trying to figure it all out on my own.
"And this is very important," she said, her voice getting extra serious. "You can't let anyone but Mama know about your powers, okay? Not the people downstairs, not anyone else we might meet. It'll be our little secret. Promise Mama, Lani."
"I promise," I said, crossing my heart like she taught me. "Secret powers. Only Mama knows."
She looked relieved, like a big worry had been lifted off her shoulders. "Good girl. We'll start training today, okay? I'll show you how to keep the poison inside when you're sleeping or feeling strong emotions."
"Like when I'm mad or scared?" I asked, thinking of how the poison smoke leaked out of me most when I had nightmares about the bad people hurting Mama.
"Exactly," she said, looking a little surprised at my understanding. "Especially then. Our powers are connected to our feelings—the stronger the feeling, the stronger the power. That's why control is so important."
Later that day, Mama took me into her darkness dimension. It was different from going inside the darkness wolves—warmer, safer, with swirling patterns of shadow that responded to Mama's thoughts. She created a big open space for us, like a room but with no walls or ceiling, just endless darkness all around.
"Here we can practice without worrying about hurting anything," she explained, sitting cross-legged on the floor of darkness and patting the space in front of her for me to sit too.
I copied her position, trying to look like I was seeing all this for the first time. But really, I'd been in Mama's darkness lots of times before, whenever we needed to hide or travel secretly.
"First, I want you to close your eyes and find the place inside you where the power lives," she said.
I closed my eyes, pretending to search, but I already knew exactly where it was—a warm, buzzing feeling right in the center of my chest, like a tiny sun made of poisonous light. When I practiced alone, I would imagine pulling threads from this sun out through my hands.
"I think I feel it," I said after a minute, not wanting to find it too quickly.
"Good," Mama smiled. "Now, I want you to picture it like a ball of light. Can you see it?"
I nodded.
"When you want to keep your power inside, imagine putting that ball in a special box that only you can open. The box keeps your power safe until you decide to use it."
This was new. I'd never thought about containing my power that way before. Usually, I just focused on getting it to come out, not keeping it in.
"What kind of box?" I asked.
"Any kind you like," Mama said. "It should be something special to you, something you can picture clearly."
I thought about it, then smiled. "A treasure chest."
"Perfect," Mama laughed, and it was her real laugh, not the worried one. "A treasure chest for my treasure."
We practiced for what felt like hours. Mama showed me how to imagine putting my power in the treasure chest when I didn't need it, and how to take just a little bit out at a time instead of letting it all rush out at once. She taught me breathing tricks to stay calm when I felt scared or angry, so the poison wouldn't leak out without me wanting it to.
The hardest part was when she had me try to make just a tiny bit of poison smoke appear on purpose. Before, when I practiced alone, I would just concentrate really hard until the smoke came out, but I never tried to control how much.
"Just a little," Mama encouraged. "Like a tiny thread, not a whole cloud."
I scrunched up my face, trying to pull just a tiny bit from my chest. At first, too much came rushing out—a big puff of pink-purple smoke that made Mama's darkness sizzle where they touched. But then I remembered the treasure chest, imagining opening it just a tiny crack.
This time, only a thin wisp of smoke curled from my fingertip.
"That's it!" Mama clapped, looking prouder than I'd seen her in a long time. "You're a natural, Lani!"
I beamed at her praise, but inside I felt a little guilty for pretending this was all new to me. But maybe it was better this way—Mama was happy thinking she was teaching me, and I was learning things I hadn't figured out on my own.
"Can I ask something?" I said as we took a break, lying on our backs in the darkness space, making shadow animals with our hands.
"Of course, treasure."
"Where did my powers come from? You have darkness, but mine is poison darkness."
Mama went very still beside me. I knew it was a risky question, but I wanted to know why mine were a little different from Mama's. I figured it was probably from the experiments they did on her at the hospital—the bad people who hurt her probably changed something in her that made my powers different.
"I don't know, Lani," she said finally, her voice quiet.
She rolled onto her side to look at me, her face serious again. I nodded, understanding that this was one of those questions that made Mama sad to think about.
As we practiced more with my powers, I realized something important: Mama was teaching me to control my poison, to keep it inside, to use it carefully. But she never once told me to use it to protect her. She kept saying it was her job to protect me, not the other way around.
But the book said Mama always dies in S City.
So I decided right then that I would learn everything Mama taught me about control. I would be the best student ever. But I would also keep practicing the things she didn't teach me—how to make the poison into shapes that could hurt bad people, how to make it stronger, how to use it to protect her when the time came.
Because no matter what Mama said, I wasn't going to let her die again. Not this time.
"What are you thinking about?" Mama asked, noticing my serious face.
I smiled my most innocent smile. "Just about how I'm going to be super good at controlling my powers, just like you taught me."
She smiled back, relief and pride in her eyes. "That's my girl."
Yes, I thought. I am your girl. And I will save you, Mama, whether you want me to or not.