Hereditary

by Jane Washington

  He began to concentrate on that tendril that we grasped, and I could feel him drawing on more of my power, though it was considerably more substantial than anything I had ever channeled before. The darkness suddenly flooded me, blinking behind my screwed-shut eyelids and tightening in my clenched fists, teetering on the very edge of my mind, seconds away from tumbling down that tendril of power.

  “Nareon…” I hissed, unable to say much more, as it was taking all of my concentration to stop that darkness from tumbling loose. “Get out.”

  The effect was instant. Not only did the darkness vanish, but so did Nareon. I let out a shaky breath and fell back into Fenrel’s abandoned chair, before remembering my somewhat precarious situation, and shooting back to my feet.

  “This can’t be hell.” Hazen’s low, husky voice had my mouth falling open and my eyes flying to his face.

  His dark eyes were upon, and fixed unflinchingly on my face, though he still looked upon the verge of death.

  “Oh my god, it worked.” I breathed, grasping for his hand again. “And of course you’re not in hell. I’m not letting you die anytime soon.”

  His fingers twitched in my grasp, but the movement was weak.

  “I know what I felt, Bea. Nareon was controlling you, and then you banished him. I thought, I’ve died and gone to hell, there is no other explanation.”

  “You haven’t.” I repeated, deliberately choosing not to dwell on the reality of what he said, but rather on instilling my words with a shaky, forced confidence.

  “Of course I’m not.” He paused, as if he needed to catch his breath, and his fingers tightened around mine for the briefest of moments, “You were still here, it couldn’t have been hell.”

  A note on Hereditary and sequels:

  Hereditary was an origin story for me. Beatrice Harrow’s land is only comparatively small and uncivilised in the wider scope of the world that she lives in. It’s called The Noveland by surrounding continents, and is seen as a benighted island with quaint, pocket kingdoms. Beatrice Harrow needed to grow as a person, and so she was given more than one book. While I will continue to write within the scope of this fictional world, I won’t be continuing on with Beatrice Harrow after The Soulstoy Inheritance, and the other books—while related—won’t be sequels.

  Harbringer burst into the room just as I bent to check the King’s pulse.

  “It’s not what it looks like.” I blurted, as his eyes went wide, flying from Hazen—who was now barely managing to retain consciousness on the bed—to the unconscious King, and then back to me.

  I was still crouched over his large, crumpled form.

  “It looks like someone knocked out the ruler of the Read Empire beside his son’s sick bed.” Harbringer strode forward, brushing my hands aside to check Fenrel’s pulse himself.

  “Well when you put it like that, I guess it is what it looks like.” I scooted back, giving him some room.

  Fenrel groaned then, and Harbringer shot to his feet, grasping my arm and drawing me toward the door.

  “We need to get out of here fast.”

  I glanced back to Hazen, but his eyes had already fallen closed again, and the last thing I wanted was to be in the room when Fenrel woke up. I let Harbringer pull me through the doorway and out into the hall, where two guards walked toward us from the top of the staircase. He slowed immediately, and I crashed into his back. After I recovered, we continued toward the men at a more civilized pace, and both of them nodded to Harbringer, eyes sliding over me only briefly. Once we were clear of them, Harbringer fell into a run again, pulling me behind him until we neared the ground floor. He took me down a back staircase through what appeared to be the servants’ quarters, forcing many whispering and distraught men and women to jump hastily from our path.

  “This is not good.” He muttered, just as we tumbled from the kitchens, out through a service entry in the side of the building.

  “I’m not going to apologise.” I panted, clutching a stitch in my side as he dragged me to a small maintenance gate at the end of a worn path from the kitchen exit.

  “Dammit Harrow.” He slammed the gate behind us and then spun suddenly, pinning me back against it, his eyes fierce. “If you ever take off like that again without me, I won’t be responsible…”

  I gripped the wrought-iron bars behind me, my breath catching on a choking gasp, the speed of his ranger-like movements more of a fright than his warning, though that look in his eye would have been enough to send me running on a good day. He seemed to realise how badly he had scared me, and backed off the tiniest bit, but his hands rose to press against the bars on either side of my head, deliberately trapping me in.

  “Did you save him?”

  “Yes.”

  The corner of his mouth turned up briefly, “And I take it Nareon distracted the King?”

  “I… yes.” I hung my head, ashamed because Nareon was my burden now. A burden I needed to learn to control.

  A wailing sound filled the air, trembling through the ground and causing my teeth to chatter. It was a horn of some kind, and it reverberated from one of the higher towers at my back, still enclosed within the castle walls.

  Harbringer groaned, “Fenrel woke up. Let’s get you out of here before he has you hung.”

  He grabbed my wrist again and turned, barely waiting for me to gather my momentum before he broke unto a run again. People on the paths beside the dirt road mostly ignored us, and I realised it was because the alarm had sent most of the Market District into a flurry of panicked activity. It was possible that this was the first alarm to go off, even though the castle had been attacked earlier. That thought struck me as strange, but I had no time to dwell on it as we came to a breathless stop outside of my father’s house.

  We barreled through the door, and Harbringer slammed it shut, running his hands through his hair in an agitated fashion, the expression on his face strained, as if he were grasping for some thought that alluded him. I wondered if he were as confused about the alarm as I was.

  “We shouldn’t stay here.” He said, walking into the sitting room and flicking the curtains closed to block off the small stretch of yard that led to the road. “I need a chance to talk to Fenrel. The whole place is in a panic, and you’re on tender footing as it is.”

  “He saw me.”

  “Of course he saw you. Did he also see Nareon?”

  “No, just me.”

  “And then he wakes up, with a nasty bruise on his head and no way of telling that his son has been helped at all.”

  “Hazen woke up.” I hurried after Harbringer as he moved into the other room, probably to block out those windows too.

  “He looked pretty unconscious to—“

  Harbringer’s reply died off, and just before I stepped into the room, he turned and grasped my arms, trying to turn me away.

  “Harrow, no…”

  But it was too late.

  “Dad!” I screamed, pushing past Harbringer, and falling to the carpeted floor, my hands flying to my father’s white face, and then to his chest, skirting the knife embedded between the second and third button on his vest.

  He was still almost warm, the death mark on his forearm looking faded and dull as it lay beside my knee. I shook him, the tears blinding my vision as I tore the knife from his chest in one sickening movement and set it aside.

  “Dad!” My voice tore with a pain that seemed to spread down my throat and into my chest, ending on a strangled inhalation as my head swam and black spots flashed across my vision, “Dad! Fuck!”

  I could hear Harbringer swearing, could feel him behind me, pulling me away. When his hand covered my mouth, I finally stopped struggling, and the sounds from outside permeated my despair. There were soldiers on the lawn, already. They were shouting at us to come out.

  “I was wrong.” Harbringer whispered in my ear, “The King didn’t wake up and raise the alarm. He didn’t wake up at all.”

  I felt my whole body slacken, and if Harbringer weren�
��t holding me up, I would have dropped straight to the ground.

  “Nareon killed him?” My voice sounded flat, emotionless.

  What did I care? My father was dead.

  “No, he was fine before we left. Someone killed him after we left the room.”

  “Who?”

  He released me, and I fell to my father’s side again, but this time silently.

  “I have no idea.” He paced to the window, where the soldiers were barely visible, flashes of gold and red peeking through the gaps in the curtains.

  I grasped my father’s wrist, trying to fool myself into thinking that he might still be alright, but his skin was considerably colder than the last time I had touched him, and the stiffness of death was already beginning to set in.

  “Joseph! Bring the synfee out and we won’t harm her!” Someone shouted, banging on the front door.

  “We make no promises for you though.” Someone else muttered, sounding far too close.

  There was a thump, a groan, and then another person yelled, “Nobody will be hurt if you just come out! Don’t make this harder than it has to be!”

  Harbringer moved back to me, plucking the knife from the carpet, and turning it over in his hand, his expression dark.

  “Harrow, look.”

  “Bea,” I reminded him numbly, not even realising I corrected him, as I took the bloodied knife he offered. I was on auto-pilot.

  On the handle, a message had been carved.

  You should have killed me.

  I stared down at it in shock, and then looked back to Harbringer, who appeared just as perplexed, and then suddenly there was a new commotion outside.

  “Holy shit! They have another body in there! The synfee was carving it up! I saw the knife in her hand!”

  I spun around, my eyes meeting the gaze of a soldier through the gap in the curtain, and then Harbringer was pulling me to my feet again.

  “Is there a back door?” He asked, hauling me out of the room.

  I glanced once more at my father, a last tear spilling down my cheek as I tried to memorise his cold, pale face. I had an awful feeling it might be my last chance to say goodbye. Tying the bloodied dagger to my belt, I jogged toward the back of the house, Harbringer close behind me, and pushed through the door of the kitchen. We rushed to the door leading outside and had almost made it, when a crashing sound behind us had me pausing.

  “Miss Harrow!” Gretal gasped, falling out of a cupboard and spilling a number of pots out onto the floor. “I was so afraid! That man… he just…”

  “Gretal,” I made a move toward her, but Harbringer grabbed my hand, his eyes on the housekeeper.

  “We can’t stay, there are soldiers outside, they think Beatrice killed the King, and now her father. We have to leave now.”

  Gretal squared her shoulders, pushing the rest of the way out of her hiding place, “I will come too. I serve you now… now that…”

  I swallowed and cut across her, not wanting her to voice the words, “hurry, Gretal.”

  We burst out the back door just as three of the soldiers rounded the side of the house and Harbringer threw out his arm, causing a large slab of earth to rise with a slow, grinding effort from the ground. It rose until it was the height of my father’s house, and I didn’t check to make sure it left no gap between this house and the one beside it. Harbringer wouldn’t have made such a mistake. We raced around the back of the row of houses, our pace a little slower now that we had Gretal in tow, though I found myself strangely glad of her presence.

  When we reached the Black Barracks, Harbringer disappeared for a few minutes, and returned leading three horses, which we took through the gate into the abandoned garden. We had to skirt the wall until it connected up with one of the game trails, as the northern forest was otherwise too dense for the animal to be led through. Once we were mounted, there was no formal acknowledgement of the path that we would travel, but I turned in the direction of the one place that I knew no Read soldier would be able to follow us to. Harbringer trailed me, having come to the same conclusion, and a few hours later, as we drew near to the wastelands, I slowed my horse to come up beside Gretal. I would have to prepare her, before we crossed over.

  She looked up from the trail, meeting my eyes with a sad expression. It was possibly the first time that she had ever looked to me with something other than fear.

  “Gretal…” I hesitated.

  “You’re going to the tainted ones. I know.” She twisted her hands in the reins, her expression worried, “will we be safe?”

  “The soldier’s can’t follow us over the border. There is some kind of repulsion enchantment. If they tried, they would just turn right back, thinking that there was something really important that needed to be done in their own kingdom. The only way you can cross, is if someone takes you, someone who has gone over before.”

  “Oh.” She looks down again, and I dreaded the question that came next, “I didn’t mean the soldiers. I meant…”

  “The synfees?”

  “Them, yes.”

  “Their King is dead. He died tonight or…” I looked at the sun, beginning to peek over the edges of the trees, wondering how I wasn’t yet tired. “Last night. He left me in charge.”

  “He what?” Gretal seemed to drop her nervous demeanor then, and only stark astonishment remained.

  “Their rulers are chosen differently to ours.” I tried to explain, “The old King was a complicated man. He breathed manipulation, and if you ever found out something that he was hiding, it was only because he wanted you to. This is all a part of some grand scheme that’s he’s cooked up. And I suppose none of us will really know the truth until it’s too late.”

  “But he’s dead.”

  “Yes. He’s dead.” And determined to haunt me forever, until he finds a way to manipulate himself back into the world of the living.

  “We’re almost there.” Harbringer called over his shoulder.

  I turned back to Gretal, reaching over and grasping her hand. She stiffened, but I ignored her. Gone was the little synfee girl who cringed whenever a stranger looked at her, or one of her own friends touched her. Someone harder and stronger now possessed my body.

  “You’ll be safe.” I assured her, “I’ll keep you safe.”

  I’d have to. I had killed Nareon, almost lost Hazen, and had stumbled onto my murdered father mere minutes too late to save him… all in the same night.

  We dismounted to cross the border, and I held tight to Gretal’s hand. She pulled away at first, as the enchantment worked its manipulation on her mind, and then she was clutching to me, as the usual group of soldiers ran to meet us.

  “Lady Queen!” Grenlow broke free of them, and deposited a quick bow before me, his eyes sliding only briefly to the other two. “It is good of you to return so soon. The people are restless that you have made no formal appearance.”

  “Grenlow,” I sighed, “If you don’t start calling me by my name, I’ll replace you with Harbringer.”

  He flicked a look at the man in question, who was now grinning, and then seemed to pale.

  “Anyone but the power thief.”

  “Good. Then cut out the formalities. We both know I didn’t want this. And spread the word. Any person who calls me by that title will be… ahh… in trouble.”

  Harbringer coughed, and one of the soldiers snickered.

  “They’ll be in trouble with the power thief.” I amended.

  Grenlow nodded, as if this were a better incentive, and then motioned toward the castle.

  “So you’re staying then?”

  “Yes. I’ve been framed for the murder of the King,” I stated as matter-of-factly as I possibly could, “I can’t return to the Read Empire until I can managed to prove my innocence.”

  Grenlow frowned, a look of confusion passing over his face, and I knew that he too, was mulling over the fact that both kingdoms had been attacked simultaneously. I wondered if he factored into account my proximity to each attack. />
  “I suggest we retire to the Council chambers, and talk about this in a more private setting.” He said quietly.

  All I wanted to do was run as fast and as far as I could, until I crouched in some remote part of the forest, alone. I wanted to cry until even the tears hurt, and then I wanted to curl into a ball in the dirt and sleep forever. Instead, I looked to Harbringer, who nodded, and then gently eased my fingers from Gretal’s, motioning Grenlow to lead the way. People stared more than usual as we passed through the gates, across the courtyard and into the fountain room. I looked straight ahead, and tried not to notice the way that more than a few of them hurried away when they spotted me coming. I was Nareon’s successor, so they probably only assumed that I was just like Nareon. Which of course made me wonder what exactly Nareon did to his own people that had them so afraid of me—a thought that I had to quickly push from my mind.

  It was dangerous, facing those kinds of thoughts, as I had always been on a ledge where Nareon was concerned. I feared him, and yet I found that his unwavering care for me only inspired a similar care in kind. I fought to protect him, and yet I wasn’t even sure if I liked him. I cried when he died, and yet there were times where I felt I might hate him, for the way he has manipulated me.

  But it was more than that, because Nareon was now a part of me, however permanently, however dangerously.

  The crowds thinned out the higher we climber in the castle, and yet I knew we were still a long way from the top when Grenlow paused beside a door and opened it. He waved us in and then closed the door behind us, moving to sit himself at the large, circular table that was the only source of furniture in the room. I sat beside him, and Harbringer moved to the window, looking down at what section of the grounds were visible below him, and out to the closest town, which was not too far from the north-western section of the castle wall. Gretal hovered by the door, still looking uncertain.