These Bitter Blooms

These Bitter Blooms EMMA HAMM Copyright © 2022 by Emma Hamm Cover art by Natalie Bernard Interior art by Rachel Bostick Edited by This Bitch Reads All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. For you. Just you. Because without you, none of this would exist. Contents Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Chapter 31 Chapter 32 Chapter 33 Chapter 34 Chapter 35 Chapter 36 Chapter 37 Chapter 38 Chapter 39 Chapter 40 Chapter 41 Chapter 42 Chapter 43 Chapter 44 Chapter 45 Chapter 46 Epilogue Acknowledgments About the Author Chapter One Today, she became a witch. A real witch, like her sisters and mother. True, it had taken Thea a little longer than the rest of her family. Her sisters had bled early, but Thea’s body wasn’t normal. And every time she felt horrible about making everyone wait, her mother would remind her that everything happened for a reason. Hekate looked after the daughters of the moon. If she wanted Thea to endure until she was sixteen for her first blood, then there was a good reason for that. She’d wanted to bleed for so long, and now everything felt strange. Like someone else was inside her body, or maybe that wasn’t right. She was hyper aware of the area between her legs and the blood that dripped down her thighs. When she’d come into the kitchen, her mother had been so pleased that she’d squawked like the crows that lived around their home. Her sisters had laughed at the expression Thea had made, and both of them had shouted, “Finally!” And though she should celebrate with them, Thea just felt uncomfortable. She was sixteen. She shouldn’t feel surprised when her moon blood came. But… Well… Maybe it could have waited for a day other than her birthday. Her mother had sent her to the stream to wash. Almost as though Máthair had known how much this made her youngest daughter feel strange. Thea didn’t want people to know that she was bleeding. She didn’t want anyone to see her, touch her, or even talk to her. Sighing, she stooped and scooped handfuls of water. Her long, woolen skirts swung around her legs and got in the way of cleaning, though. Tears of frustration pricked her eyes, and then she couldn’t prevent them from running down her cheeks. “Stop it, Thea,” she whispered, angrily dashing away the drops. “You’re being a baby.” The words could have worked if a sudden cramp hadn't burned through her stomach. Hissing out a long breath, she sat down on the edge of the stream and pressed her hands to her belly. “If the bleeding came without pain, I might not hate it so much,” she muttered. Or fear it. How was she supposed to find peace in knowing that every month she would have a wound between her legs that refused to heal? Why couldn’t it have just never come? She laid on her back and flopped an arm over her eyes. The sun was too merry and the feelings inside her were too dark for blue skies. Thea wanted to hide and then maybe everything else would disappear. An hour passed by the river while she listened to the quiet sounds of nature. The burbling of the brook never changed, and of course it didn’t. There was a deep natural spring that fed the stream near their home. Her family drank clean, fresh water rather than having to boil the seawater on the other side of the ridge. Something nudged her hand, hard. When Thea sat up, she made eye contact with a bright green snake. She froze, entranced by the yellow eyes and flicking tongue that tasted her scent. The snake nudged her hand one more time, gave her a disappointed look, and then slithered toward the stream. “Brighid,” she breathed. The goddess came to those in need. Brighid was the goddess of healing, sometimes, other times of poetry or smithcraft. A woman with many talents and no interest in staying put when others told her to. Thea’s mother adored her. But she was also the goddess of fertility, and Thea could tell the snake came with a message. Get up. Go home. Stop moping that you’ve become a woman. You knew it would happen, eventually. “All right,” she muttered, pushing herself upright and dusting her hands off on her skirts. “I’ll stop.” The snake seemed to nod before it disappeared into the waters and never came back up. Goddesses and their messages, she mused. They were never very clear, but sometimes they were forceful in their opinions. She wandered toward the small home where her mother and two sisters waited for her. They were all witches, though much more powerful than Thea. Her mother’s ability to manipulate the weather made her a dangerous woman to cross. Her sister, Marigold, conjured plants that grew from nothing. Even barren soil could not deny her magic. Belladonna could heal rotten food with a single touch. They kept the village well fed, adequately stocked, and healthy with their powers. And Thea? She sighed and blew at a lock of dark hair that fell in front of her face. She ate plants. Perhaps that was oversimplifying a power that might become helpful, but she had yet to find a use for it. On her way to the house, she snapped off a sprig of lavender from her mother’s prized garden and popped it into her