Foxglove grinned as a foggy substance took solid form inside her mind. Leaura’s birth had made the master’s wife barren. In his desperation for an heir, he had taken on a concubine. She was barely old enough to bear children and the child she was carrying, who would be sister to the master’s daughters, would be drowned for the magic it carried when they took it to be registered.

The savage child she had detested for coming into her hands had given her a way to save her unborn sister. It would be easy enough to convince the girl to trade in her baby for the boy. She had more to lose from a daughter with magic than from a boy that looked like a savage. Everyone knew she had some slave in her but they didn’t know she carried that fickle sort of magic that would take as easily to a girl as it would to a boy.

Foxglove had what they called savage magic, an unrealiable sort of thing that was neither dangerous or useful so they stamped her birth certificate without a second thought.

“Oh, if they could see me now”