Free The Legend by Melissa Delport Page B

her. They had turned five and six respectively last month, while I was still unconscious.
    I hasten down the stands and cross the track to stand beside Michael.
    â€œCan you explain it?” he asks, wide-eyed.
    â€œNo,” I shake my head, still watching.
    â€œBut she has the Power of Three?” he prompts.
    â€œNot yet. But two out of three is a pretty big indication that she will.”
    Alex’s abilities manifested in the order: strength, speed and, finally, healing. Brooke’s healing was already integrated when we found her on the street – it was how she had survived the coyote attack – and speed is obviously her second. Random orders, I muse, wondering if there is any logic in it. I am also fairly certain that if Brooke’s abilities are manifesting she must have inherited them from one of her parents. My father was right all along.
    When she finally comes to a stop, she has barely broken a sweat and looks incredibly pleased with herself.
    â€œWanna race, Alex?” she grins, her green eyes alight with mischief.
    Before I can stop them, they speed off in the opposite direction, the sound of their laughter carried back to me on the wind. In that instant, my heart constricts with the agony of what will never be, and for a fleeting second the walls that I have so carefully built are stripped away. As Michael races after the two giggling children, my eyes well with tears. I trail my fingertips over my concave stomach and my jaw trembles as I push back the agony of her loss. It crept up on me during my time in the prison when losing her became a real fear, and when it dawned on me that I might never get to know her. And I knew, somehow, that the child I carried would have been a girl. A little girl with startling green eyes, just like her daddy’s.
    Oh my God!
    â€œMichael!” I yell across the space between us and his blond head whips around. Seeing the panic on his handsome young face, I try to calm my voice. “I have to do something, it’s urgent. Could you take these two back to Aidan’s for me?” He nods immediately and I hurry back towards the main building.
    I search the dining hall and his office to no avail but finally I track my father down in the library. He is sitting in a comfortable looking armchair reading a book called The Great Gatsby .
    â€œDad!” As I rush over he gets to his feet, dropping the book onto the chair behind him.
    â€œWhat is it, Bex? What’s wrong?”
    â€œIt’s Brooke,” I quickly correct his assumption that there is something the matter with me. “She’s fast – her speed has just manifested.” My father’s eyes open even wider.
    â€œThe Power of Three?” he shakes his head. “Then she must have . . .”
    â€œ. . . inherited her abilities,” I finish. “Just like Alex.”
    â€œI knew it!” His excitement is mounting. “It makes sense. That’s why she doesn’t remember.”
    â€œI feel bad for believing her mother to be a monster who would allow her child to undergo a life-threatening procedure.” In my head I take back every horrible thought I had ever had of Brooke’s mother, who had died of dehydration a few hours before we found her daughter.
    â€œOuch,” my dad remarks wryly and I smile despite myself.
    â€œI volunteered, remember?”
    It doesn’t take long for my father’s natural scientific curiosity to emerge.
    â€œI wonder if it came from her father or her mother,” he muses. “You said her mother died?” His brow wrinkles as he considers this. “It couldn’t have been from her then – if she was as exceptionally Gifted as you are, she would never have been overcome by something as simple as dehydration.”
    â€œIt was her father,” I say softly.
    â€œYes, I believe you’re right, it’s the only logical explanation. I wonder if he was perhaps one of