I Fed Your Child My Blood
Language: en
The night I laid my egg, I watched through half-closed eyes as my cousin slipped into my chamber and traded it for her own. I feigned the deep, unyielding slumber of exhaustion. I did not move. I did not cry out. I let her spirit my child away into the shadows to be broken, while I drew her discarded shell to my chest. For ten years, I nourished that stolen egg with the purest essence of my heart’s blood, night after sleepless night. When it finally hatched, out came a celestial phoenix of the highest rank. Brilliant, untamed, magnificent. My husband and I showered the fledgling with an…