Daughter of Discord (Star Mage Saga Book 1)

by J. J. Green

  Dealing with Castiel would have to wait a moment. Carina returned to the pilot’s cabin to find the ship’s autorepair had kicked in. The controls were slowly flickering back to life, but they were still running on auxiliary power.

  Whatever Darius had done appeared to have worked. The Sherrerr flagship had ceased firing and wasn’t on their tail. Its scanners couldn’t locate them, though she didn’t know how long the situation would last. Either her tactic of escaping into the debris cloud had worked or Darius had hidden the shuttle with his mysterious Cast. If the latter were the case, she hoped they would be far away and undetectable when it wore off.

  Auxiliary fuel tanks wouldn’t take them a great distance. They had to land somewhere before the fuel ran out. Carina located the nearest planetary systems. Only one was within range, and then only just. She selected the destination, and the shuttle maneuvered to the new heading. Then she turned down life support systems to the minimum for survival. Even so, they would barely have enough power for the rest of the trip.

  She hadn’t heard of their destination, which was good. An insignificant, quiet, backwater system was exactly what they needed.

  Now she had to face the unpleasant task of speaking to Castiel. Carina didn’t relish the prospect as she was barely holding it together as it was. She didn’t think she had the strength to deal with the evil little worm right then. She wished she’d gone against her mother’s wishes and left him on the Sherrerr flagship. Perhaps she could have taken Nahla away from him, but she doubted the little girl would have allowed herself to be separated from her brother. She was already heavily under his influence.

  As he gazed up at Carina, Castiel looked more than ever like his father. His eyes were deep but they were soulless. There was nothing inside.

  “Release me,” he spat. “I demand that you untie me at once. I am a Sherrerr.”

  “You certainly are from the sound of it. Why were you trying to take the elixir?”

  “Because I’m a mage too. I can Cast. I insist on my right to Cast like the rest of you.”

  “No, you’re wrong,” Carina said. “If you could Cast, you would have been able to do it from a young age. Mother would have taught you like she taught the others.”

  “She didn’t teach me because she didn’t want me to be a mage. She hated me.”

  “No, Castiel. She loved you.” Too much.

  The adolescent boy struggled against his bonds. “I can Cast. I know I can. I could feel it in me when I watched the lessons. I can write those characters in my mind. The only reason they don’t work is because I don’t drink the elixir.”

  Carina watched Castiel as he grew red-faced from futilely fighting his restraints. Could what he was saying be true? She didn’t think so, but he seemed so certain. She didn’t think it was possible to develop the ability to Cast later on childhood, but her main source of knowledge about magehood had been Nai Nai. Her mother might have known about the phenomenon, but now she had also passed on.

  Castiel rested from his struggles and looked up at Carina from beneath hooded eyes. The color of the boy’s hair was a mixture of her mother’s black and his father’s light brown. Faint, fine hairs grew on his upper lip. Had his mage powers been triggered late, as he entered puberty?

  The thought that Castiel might be a mage horrified Carina. All his father’s cruelty and malice plus the ability to Cast would make for a truly terrible human being. She hoped he was wrong. On the other hand, if he was right, it was probably a good thing that she had taken him away from the Sherrerrs. What might they do with a mage of Castiel’s personality working for them? Though perhaps he would find his way back to them soon enough.

  One thing was certain—she would have to watch Castiel and his little sidekick very carefully.

  “Carina.”

  Parthenia was behind her. Carina hadn’t had a chance to speak to her sister since she had helped her escape the briefing room on Nightfall. The girl looked exhausted.

  Carina took her sister’s arm and moved her away from Castiel before enveloping her in a hug. “Thank you so much for helping. We wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for everything you did.”

  Parthenia’s eyes were dazed and her lips trembled. “I gave Mother the elixir. I didn’t know what she was going to do. I helped her kill Father. I helped my mother kill my father.” Her voice had an edge of hysteria to it.

  “Oh Parthenia, you didn’t know. You couldn’t know. It wasn’t your fault. Ma had many reasons… ” But Carina didn’t go on. The life of rape and torture her mother had endured at the hands of her father would be something Parthenia would struggle with for the rest of her days. “None of it was your fault. You mustn’t ever think that. And you did nothing wrong. Please don’t blame yourself.”

  “And I never had a chance to say sorry,” Parthenia choked. “I didn’t have time to explain that I was always on her side. As I got older and I understood what Father was doing to her, I wanted to help her. I wanted Father to turn his focus onto me and leave her alone. I thought maybe then she would have some peace and freedom. I even protected her from him one time in the garden. She’d made some elixir, but I saw that her maid was looking for her and she was about to find her. I ran out and got rid of the elixir before her maid saw it. I didn’t want her to be beaten again, Carina. I wanted to tell her I’d been trying to protect her, but there wasn’t enough time. You can’t imagine what he would do to her.”

  Carina could imagine, too well. She hugged her sister, not knowing what to say. What could she say? There were no words that would take away her pain. She hoped that with time and the love of her brothers and sisters—with at least one notable exception—Parthenia might come to terms with the events of the last few hours and in fact her entire childhood.

  Bryce appeared. “I wrapped your mother in emergency blankets. It was all I could find.”

  “Thank you,” said Carina. “Can you help me with some other things?”

  “Of course. What do you need?”

  Carina was about to answer when a little hand tugged at hers. She looked down at Darius. His face was blanched and grimy streaks ran from his eyes to his jawline. When he spoke, it was so quietly Carina couldn’t hear his words. She squatted down to his level. “What did you say?”

  “I said, I did it, didn’t I?”

  “You… ” Carina had almost forgotten his offer to Cast something called Cloak. “You did, I think. Did you Cast to hide the ship?”

  The little boy gave two brief nods, tremulous confidence hovering in his eyes.

  “I’ve never heard of that Cast,” Carina said. “Is it hard?”

  “No. It’s my own Cast. I made it up.”

  Carina had never heard of Casts being invented. They either existed or they didn’t. Nai Nai had tried to teach her them all before she died, but maybe she’d run out of time or forgotten one or two. Ma must have taught Cloak to Darius and he’d forgotten that he learned it.

  “It was really hard to think it up, though,” Darius went on.

  “To think it up? Darius, are you sure you don’t mean it was hard to remember?”

  “No. I had to imagine it, and that’s really hard. I only tried Cloak once or twice before, when I was wishing I could hide better when we played hide-and-go-seek. We were trying to get away, weren’t we? And I thought it would be best if we could hide. I tried it, and it worked, right? I hid us.”

  Carina could hardly believe it, but it seemed that what her little brother was saying was true. If it was, he was truly a special mage. “I think you might be right, Darius. You hid us. You saved us.”

  He smiled shyly, but then his mouth turned down. “I wish Mother hadn’t died.”

  “Me too, Darius. Me too.”

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Ma’s funeral was short and simple and bittersweet. Though Carina ached with the loss of the mother she had barely gotten to know as an adult, she couldn’t help but feel relief at the knowledge that she was finally, utterly, free.

/>   She had asked Parthenia if she wanted to help her wash their mother’s body. She wasn’t prepared to send Ma out to the stars besmirched with the blood of the man who had tormented her most of her adult life. When her sister agreed, Carina was glad. She would have felt lonely performing the task by herself, and she thought it might help Parthenia overcome her sense of guilt if she gave her mother this final demonstration of her love and care.

  When Ma was clean, they poured elixir into her mouth. Traditionally, four of the five Elements would be placed with the body of a mage before it was consumed by the fifth, Fire, but Carina hadn’t been able to find all four aboard the shuttle. She’d expected that wood to be difficult to find, until Oriana remembered that her brooch was carved from a hard, black wood called ebony. There was plenty of Water and Metal aboard, but in the end it was Earth that stumped them. Where could they expect to find soil aboard a space vessel?

  So in the end Carina had chosen to sacrifice some of the precious elixir, which contained all the Elements, in the hope that the stories were true and that Ma’s spirit really would live on and find her first husband somewhere out there in the universe.

  As she was about to wrap her mother in fresh blankets, the sight of the disease-ravaged, scarred body seemed to remind Carina of something. It was something to do with mages and scars. When she remembered, her hand flew to her mouth.

  “What’s wrong?” Parthenia asked.

  “Tracers,” Carina replied. “Have you all been fitted with tracers?”

  Her eyes widening in alarm, Parthenia nodded.

  When Darius had been kidnapped by the Dirksens, his captors had misled the rescuers by cutting his tracer chip out of his body and using it as bait. Stefan Sherrerr hadn’t had the opportunity to fit Carina with a tracer, but it looked like all the other children had them. As long as they carried the chips, the Sherrerrs would eventually hunt them down and recapture them.

  “I’ll have to Transport it out of you,” Carina told her sister.

  “Are you sure you can do that?”

  “I think so. I haven’t tried anything like it before, but I don’t think it should be too hard if I know where the chip is.” The Cast wasn’t the problem. Carina was worried about using up more of the elixir. Until they landed on a planet, they wouldn’t be able to make any more. They had to save it for essential Casts, but removing the tracer chips was vital.

  Parthenia didn’t know where her chip was. She only knew that one had been inserted into her when she was very young. Carina was forced to ask Darius about the chip’s location. She went into the passenger cabin.

  “Darius.”

  “Yes?” Darius replied through a mouthful of food. Bryce had found the emergency rations and was handing them out.

  Carina went over to him. “I’m sorry to have to ask you this, but when the bad men took you and cut out your chip, do you remember where it was?”

  The little boy put down his cookie, his contented expression turning glum. “It was here.” He pointed to the top of his buttock.

  “Thank you,” said Carina. “Just one more question. Did someone put another one in the same place after you returned home?”

  “Uhuh.” Darius took a bite of his cookie.

  “Right. I’m going to take it out again.” Carina’s little brother looked alarmed. She added, “I’m going to Transport the chip out. It won’t hurt. I promise.”

  “Okay.”

  Carina removed the chips from all the children including Castiel and Nahla, though the older boy objected and warned Carina to not come near him or she would regret it. She placed them with Ma’s body.

  After each of the children had an opportunity to say goodbye to their mother for the final time—Castiel laughed when Carina offered him the chance, and Nahla echoed her brother’s scorn—they placed Ma’s body in the airlock.

  Carina watched the still, wrapped figure for a long time through the airlock window. She tried to put from her mind the dreadful torture her mother had suffered and to remember the sweet, loving woman of her youth. Somewhere within her mother, that woman had still existed, and she had borne her love for Carina through the long years of pain. It gave Carina some comfort to know that, and in the end it also comforted her to know that they had been reunited for a short time, no matter how hard and painful that time had been.

  Finally, when she was ready, Carina opened the outer airlock door and watched the small, slim bundle lift and float out into space. She went into the passenger cabin, where the atmosphere was quiet and pensive. The shuttle was growing colder by the minute on the bare life support the vessel was running.

  “Are you going to Cast Fire now?” Darius asked.

  “No,” Carina replied. “Fire won’t work by itself in space, and we don’t have any fuel to spare. But don’t worry, I’m going to send Ma off in the right way.”

  She went into the pilot’s cabin. The scanners told her where Ma’s body was floating, a short distance away. Carina adjusted the shuttle’s course to the necessary position. As it came around, the flare from the engines caught her mother’s body, instantly disintegrating it. Carina then returned the shuttle’s course to its previous setting.

  Relief washed over her. She lay back in her seat. Though her gaze was on the starscape through the shuttle’s window, Carina didn’t really see it. Her focus was turned inward. Her mother was free, and providing she could get her brothers and sisters to the backwater planetary system, they would be free too, though she still had no idea what to do about Castiel and Nahla. She would have to put them somewhere they wouldn’t be in danger and then separate the rest of the family from them. Castiel would probably try to return to the Sherrerrs, but there wasn’t a lot she could do about that.

  Life would be hard for the children now. They’d been brought up in luxury and had no concept of how to survive day to day when you were nobody and had nothing. But Carina could teach them. That was certainly a life she was familiar with.

  “Everything okay?” Bryce was looking into the cabin.

  Carina had almost forgotten about him. “Yeah. We don’t have anything to do now but wait. We should be at the place we’re heading for in about eight days.”

  “What’s the planet called?”

  “Err… ” Carina couldn’t remember. She checked. “Ostillon, in the Floria system.”

  “Never heard of it.”

  “Me neither. But it’s inhabited, so that’s where we’re going. It’s more than we could have hoped for. In a crippled shuttle, we’re lucky to be within reach of anywhere that supports human life.”

  “Are we still in Sherrerr territory?”

  “I don’t think so. I think this is a disputed district. One of the areas they want to take over when they beat the Dirksens into submission.”

  “Hmm. Okay. I guess we’ll have to settle in for the wait.” He paused. “Do you remember when I told you I wanted to leave Ithiya and travel the stars?”

  “I do.”

  “This wasn’t exactly what I had in mind.”

  Carina laughed, and it felt like it was for the first time in a long time. The mirth helped to ease her anxiety and grief. Then she remembered what Bryce had left behind in order to try to rescue her. “I’m so sorry, Bryce. Your parents and your brothers and sisters must be worried about you. Did you get a chance to tell them where you were going before you signed up aboard Nightfall?”

  “I sent them a quick message. It’s all right. They know I took the treatment for Ithiyan Plague and I’m not going to die. That must be a big weight off their minds. As soon as I have the opportunity, I’ll let them know I’m safe.”

  When her friend turned to leave, Carina said, “I wanted to say something.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I wanted to apologize for mistrusting you. Without you helping us, we could never have escaped. I’m glad I accepted your help in the end.”

  He smiled. “No problem.”

  “And it wasn’t just you, was it? Did Mandevil
le help you steal the elixir?”

  “He did.”

  “When we were running to the shuttle bay, the guards who came after us were firing over our heads.”

  “It’s like I told you, Carina. There were plenty of people on that ship who didn’t agree with what the Sherrerrs were doing to you and your family. It’s one thing to pick a side and sign up to fight for them, but it’s another to be forced into service, especially using the methods that bastard used. I’m glad he died, and I couldn’t think of a better way for him to go.”

  Bryce’s expression had turned uncharacteristically angry. Carina decided she wouldn’t like to be on the wrong side of him in a fight.

  “I’m glad he’s gone too,” she said, though she didn’t think she could ever use Split to kill someone unless she had no choice.

  The cabin had grown so cold, her teeth were beginning to chatter. “Are there any more of those emergency blankets?” she asked. “It’s going to get colder than this.”

  “I handed most of them out to the kids, but there are a few left.”

  Carina returned to the passenger cabin with Bryce. The shuttle would take them to their destination with no more help from her. In the cabin, Castiel and Nahla were asleep. Bryce had put blankets over them. The twins were also nodding off, wrapped in each other’s arms under their blanket. Parthenia had Darius on her lap and she was whispering in his ear. No doubt she was telling him a story to help calm his fears.

  Bryce handed Carina a blanket. “You know, two bodies are warmer than one.”

  She lifted a corner of her lip, but he was right. She searched for and found the weapons. She wanted to keep them close in case Castiel managed to escape his bonds. Carina and Bryce sat together and tucked the blankets around themselves. The cold was biting deeply. Carina’s head was so cold, she laid it on Bryce’s shoulder and lifted the blanket right over herself. After another adjustment of the blankets, they were both ensconced in darkness, the warmth of their bodies contained in the space.