Heir of Vaashaa: The Lost Child of the Crown (The Lost Child of the Crown Series Book 2)

by Celine Simpson

  “My magic knew it was being attacked, but because the natural occurring magic had been invited into my body I could do nothing. While I tried to stop it, my magic took over and tried to eliminate the threat at all cost, it was only that I was in the middle.” The blood had drained from their faces then – indeed not at all what they had thought. I turned to my father.

  “It cannot be.” The words were a whisper out of his mouth, had I not heard them it would have been of no consequence because his face said it all to me.

  His voice was stronger this time, but his eyes remained guarded. “Black Magic has been awakened.”

  Eleven

  Silas

  It was both relieving and unnerving to know what our enemy was. Though we were yet to link the Black Magic to Cander, it was but a hop between them that stopped us from connecting the two. The days that passed when I had been unconscious did not stop our movements. We continued north, reaching the northern edge of the forest that lay in the middle of the eastern coast of Vyterra. We had halted in the speed of our journey for a day to allow the armada to commune and communicate on what had happened. It would be another week before we arrived at Move, before we then marched our forces south; sweeping the Vyterran lands with our troops and leaving Altrey spread too thin to rival the attack we would wage.

  After our morbid revelation from my recount of the attack on my magic, we combined our knowledge of Black Magic as best we could. Having been buried by our ancestors so thoroughly it was mentioned only in definition and name, we were at a crossroads. Fools, I thought. Scared fools to have destroyed all we knew of it. My father knew the most, having had stories passed down to him by his father and his grandfather before him. Fables was what they were, and still are, considered to be. Dismissed as stories to scare the children into line. It was only for appearances because they certainly held truth – perhaps a hidden way to keep the knowledge alive. At least someone had the know-how to not leave those who were to follow them without anything to go off.

  Before the Great War of our kingdoms, our borders were open, not only to one another as they were at present, but to those who thrived past our land, through what we only know now as The Undiscovered Sea. This was why it was considered myth, to our present-day knowledge, no one and nothing had even come or gone through that sea. Being deemed too dangerous, it was named so because it was true; it was unknown to us.

  This was a time when those of royal blood were not the only ones who were known to have power. Not of the elements as we had, not bound and confined as we were, but open, and free to work with whatever they pleased. Witches and Warlocks.

  Not only to work with the elements, but to summon anew. Power to create and heal and forge. Power that trifled our own, but they had no qualms with us or us with them. They spent their life as not being the rulers of their world but just as a people in their own land, free to mix and mingle. Happy to simply be and wanting nothing more than a simple life. They flourished in every trade, as you would imagine due to their skills and the support it provided. Between those who lived through The Undiscovered Sea – the name of their people long forgotten, not bothered to be included in a story that was surely just a fable – and the people of Vaashaa, it was a friendship grown on the foundations of the understanding that should we need help it was there, but if not, they lived in harmony. Alone, together.

  For every handful of seeds that sprouted a flower, there will always be a weed amongst the bunch. To be able to use magic as they did, it caused envy in many. It was never spoken of in public but behind the closed doors of royals and common folk alike, a sickening jealousy grew.

  Witches were born with magic just as we were. Witches and Warlocks both – the latter were few and far between – or so our stories said. Like us, it was a power that had to be learned, you had to master it with training and skill. Like us, if it was left ungoverned, unchecked, it would remain untamed and grow a mind of its own. However, our magic and theirs had their differences. A witch could appear in a bloodline where there was thought to be no magic for decades and it was known to skip generations. Not only in how we were confined to the elements where they were held by only the barriers of life and death, but their magic and its lack of borders meant it could be shaped and changed with spells. Collections of notes and spells and charms that could not be found in books in your common Palace library. No, they had Grimoires. Books, sometimes centuries old, passed down from generation to generation and filled with everything from family histories to a simple remedies for the common cold to turning a fish into an ink pot and quill. It seemed impossible. It seemed, well…it seemed made up. To believe that it was anything but the truth now would make us twice the stupid fools our ancestors were. You do not fix a problem by simply removing it from the recounts of history, you fix it by talking about where it all went wrong, and how – if you could – you would have done it differently. Stupid fools.

  The trust of our two people was betrayed when a book of spells was stolen, only to produce the first to wield black magic. To use another’s spells to transform themselves into a wielder of the elements. The magic in the blood of the royal families of Vaashaa is born. It is made from within us. We do not take it from the elements around us. Yes, we can wield the naturally occurring elements, join with them and use them – manipulate them along with our own power but we did not take it with us. Our own magic was regenerated and whatever we had taken was given back.

  Those who wield Black Magic stole the power from the elements they wished to manipulate. Some wished to trifle the powers of the naturally gifted and wanted to have more than one element to use, but the world grew sick like a plague had spread. Drawing the power of the world and claiming it as their own left Vaashaa sick. Withering away. It was the earth that suffered most, for without the earth, there simply was no other. It was the mightiest of all the elemental gifts, it was from which every other natural element drew its ability to exist. It is the mother of all elements.

  The war of our kingdoms, those centuries ago, didn’t talk about its origins and cause being because of Black Magic. There was nowhere that said the treaty was signed with a pledge to destroy its existence and wipe away the knowledge of those who dwelled in the land through The Undiscovered Sea, it was only said that all four kingdoms went to war and when it was over, peace then reigned.

  Mulling over the information we now had and what it all meant had me pacing the deck of the ship. After insisting Jude and I partake in training, even as he then insisted it be more of a liberal set of stretching exercises, I was feeling a little more myself and the idea of returning back below deck for more rest seemed a serious misuse of my time.

  My attention snapped to the coastline before me.

  The forest that dwelled there was only a dense shadow above the cliff face. Shaking off the feeling that there was something else he had mentioned, something more I should be remembering, I heeded the advice of King Eaton’s departing words to me that I remembered with the most clarity seriously, and I resisted the urge to send out tendrils of my own power to see what was happening. No matter how strong my shields were, there was still a sickness covering our world. Regardless of not reaching out with my own magic, it was clear to see that the wind that surged through the canopy did not look…normal. It seemed, even from our distance away, that the forest was trembling. As if an earthquake shook, but the land beneath made no movement.

  My eyes were suddenly no longer my own. Again, I was running through the forest like I had imagined in the meeting room earlier, but this time I could not shake it off. I was ushered on by what I could only interpret as pleas, so many voices calling out at once, overlapping themselves pulsing up from beneath me and raining down from above. It looked like a dream, the edges of my vision blurred, but then I felt the pain and it was too horrific to be anything other than real.

  Like I was once again being ripped apart from the inside out but I was giving, there was no resistance. The earth beneath me sending up its roots and
vines to hold me steady, offering me support as I worked with it to use the magic in my body to take back what was stolen.

  I knew then that this was not me, I knew who this was. I knew. Blinded, I blinked rapidly trying to clear my vision. I fell to the deck of the ship beneath me, my knees barking in pain as I vomited in front of myself. The pain.

  I was screaming her name, rage and terror laced in every syllable. I could feel my eyes darting, trying to see.

  Terraleise Terraleise Terraleise.

  Like a slingshot propelling me back into my own mind, my sight was returned. King Eaton’s words flooded back into my mind instantaneously.

  She heads north.

  I was going to be sick again. How could I not have remembered that, I should have already remembered.

  Jude was at my side, and the other soldier, Asher, at my other holding me up. But it was my father who stood beyond the group of soldiers, stood amidst the rushing bodies taking posts in case of an attack, in case of an assault for no one knew what was happening.

  Breathless, I was panting. Spitting the vile taste of sickness from my mouth. Jude and Asher held first to support me, but then to retrain me just in case I couldn’t keep the leash on my mind. The one that kept the madness at bay. “Where is she?” It didn’t even sound like my voice.

  “WHERE IS SHE!?” I screamed again. I could feel the magic in my body stir to life, the wind around us picking up once again as it had the night I had tried to go back to Altrey, tried to get her back.

  It was my father whose eyes dawned with recognition. His gaze tugged at something in me that had my body losing its fight, my stomach turned to knots as I fell back into the restraints of my friends. He looked at me and said the words that had not been uttered for over a hundred years.

  “Silas, my boy.” His gaze moved from mine to the forest that loomed beyond, as if he could see her too. “I had wondered if I would see a pair in my lifetime. How I had wondered…” His thoughts trailing off. A look of awe mixed with sadness across his face as he once again looked at me. “Silas, you are soulbound.”

  Twelve

  My body cried out in pain. Flashes of darkness and the cold bite of stone beneath me rushed through my mind, a moan escaped my lips. The clang of dripping sliced through me with every reverberating throb of pain that remained from what had just happened.

  Carried between the five other soldiers of my unit, each step between them was like I was being rolled along shards of glass. I wanted to scream. I thought I was but there was nothing other than the pained moaning that clawed its way out of my mouth.

  Their mumbling was indistinguishable, I couldn’t tell what they were saying. I was aware enough to know that I was an escaped prisoner of the current ruler of this kingdom in a unit of soldiers that served the crown and whoever sat beneath it. Shit.

  I fought against the dull pull that sang a lullaby and offered the sweet surrender of sleep, a reprieve from the building pressure in the back of my head. I couldn’t go back. I wouldn’t go back to that place, not now that I understood what was being done, not now when I needed to tell someone, when I needed to get back to them, to tell when what I’d learned so that they may be prepared. How could we prepare for this?

  The pain, the tearing apart. I knew what Cander had been doing all those months. It was not my body he was tearing apart and putting back together, but it was my soul. Perhaps before attempting to draw from the earth, from the fire or the wind, he first drew from me. That’s what he was doing to me, the very same thing those soldiers were doing to the earth. How? How?

  I was going to be sick.

  The thought of him using my power, taking my power. I had only enough strength to propel myself marginally out of the embrace of the soldiers holding me up, emptying the water and bile in my stomach off to the side. The women holding me fumbled, not noticing I had come to.

  The group stopped, their murmurs now too quiet to hear over the blood roaring through my ears. Dee came into view above me, I wanted to tell her no, I wanted to tell her to stop but the words were not coming out of my mouth. Sweeping a hand over my body in a fluid motion the nausea had subsided before she touched her hand again to my forehead. I did not hear her utter her command to put me under, however she had done it before. I could do nothing before I again knew nothing but darkness.

  Thirteen

  Silas

  “There has not been a couple deemed soulbound for decades, Your Majesty. Centuries.” Jude said from beside me. My sight returned minutes ago but I had no energy to move from where I sat. A soldier stood behind Jude, Asher – it seemed they had struck a friendship. I was glad for him. Jude was a good soldier, and a better man.

  One of the deck hands had come over with a bucket of water, I glanced at her apologetically as she washed the sickness form the deck over the side of the ship.

  “That is true, General. It is as uncommon as it is blessed.” His voice had taken on a different tone. “Queen Asha and I, we had been but one soul bound to different bodies. I thought we were one of the soulbound from the moment I saw her. Raven black hair, and her eyes. The most brilliant shade of frosted green.” I could hear my swallow so audibly I knew Jude had too. Her eyes; my eyes. “I couldn’t have walked away had I been daft enough to try.” The glaze of his eyes from the memory faded as he came back to the present, remembering his audience. Though those above deck busied themselves with their posts or other tasks, it was difficult not to note when your King was not himself.

  “When she passed, we knew it wasn’t so, for a soulbound cannot exist without the other.”

  A dull ache started in the back of my head. I ran a hand through my hair trying to shake it away, rubbing at the pressure that built there. “Father, Terraleise and I were born years apart.” I said, countering his theory. I wasn’t entirely sure who I was trying to convince, him or myself.

  “Mm, yes,” He said, as he turned to walk back below deck. His head turned slightly over his shoulder, casting the words back to me. “But you will die together.”

  But you will die together die together die together die…

  The Gods would have been laughing in their sky palace having dealt this card. I knew a small amount where the soulbound were concerned. I had always regarded it as a fairy tale, little more than an overly romantic notion that hadn’t been ‘witnessed’ in over two hundred and fifty years. To meet your soulbound was what stories were woven of, books written about. Songs and plays used it as a common theme in almost all their popular showings.

  I knew that the soulbound were revered, at least those of royal blood. The common folk had tales of the bounded that had come to pass among their own people, but the soulbound of royalty were different. They were rare and the two souls often haled from different affinities. There had been some cases in our history where a pairing was made between the common folk and royalty, though they were cast aside – the barbaric nature of our forefathers, of the entitlement that leaked from the pores of our ancestors never deeming to acknowledge a love that was not ‘pure’, though it had only happened a handful of times, and they were all before the war. No union between a commoner and a royal was ever acknowledged, and any offspring that was produced almost always struggled to come into their affinity. Some, half breeds as they were, if the magic of their affinity was strong they were absorbed back into their royal household. Unions were uncommon for that very reason.

  Souls usually called to like. Magic to magic or none to none. Though we knew of them and what it meant to be soulbound, no one understood why. A gift from the Gods, they said.

  What a gift it was indeed.

  To be bounded was nothing but an indication of a soul’s perfect other existing in another – not like a reflection or a twin, but like two separate pieces that when fit against one another, every curve and bend, every sharp edge or oddity, was held by the other. It begged the question of our scholars, is there a second to every first? It could be, but they were not so commonly brought together. It isn�
��t a bond made whole from a look or a word. There is no saying when it will take its hold. For the soulbound who had come to pass, it made itself known in times of joy, times of grief – in moments of utter normalcy. There has never been a grand event or ceremony. It was law unto itself, another reason why it was declared to only be a gift from the Gods. When it was earned, it was given. People say that you can spend your whole life with your bounded other, but it may never show. My father had never spoken of any such bond between himself and my mother. In fact, I could probably count all on one hand how many times he had spoken of her to me.

  Where those without magic that were soulbound lived normal lives, those who had magic were infinitely more powerful. It meant you could join the magic in your blood. Not in the way of being able to wield another element, but to grow stronger in your own. There were no such couples during the war, no such power on our side to win against the Black Magic. Not then, but perhaps now. Perhaps this was why, of all the times this could have occurred, it did so now.

  “Would she know?” I said to no one in particular, but it was Jude who answered, having stayed by my side. Lost in my own thoughts, everyone had dispersed even as many stayed on guard in their designated stations on the ship. “She would also be experiencing the signs, Your Highness. She may not know what it is though.”