by Rain Oxford
“I wouldn’t do that!”
“You could not,” Set said. “I would never be overthrown by a half mortal.” The Painter stayed silent. “I obviously made a mistake in choosing you over your brother. He is the better son. You will leave my home and never return.”
“You’re going to leave him alive?” Roana asked with disbelief.
He narrowed his eyes at his son. “I owe your mother, so I will spare you for her sake because I do not like being in a mortal’s debt. If you ever challenge me, I will kill you and your brother. Is that understood?”
“Yes, Father.”
“I am no longer your father. You are no better than a mortal.”
In the span of four years, the Painter’s life had taken so many twists and turns that he felt lost, not sure who he was or what he was supposed to be. The sixteen-year-old returned to Duran, this time with his own magic. He changed his appearance to look old enough that no one asked him where his parents were. Many years had passed in the mortal realm while he was in his father’s palace, but time meant nothing to him.
He built his own ship and traveled his home world before settling on a cabin on Shomodii near the homes of Dylan and Kiro. He didn’t want to bother them, he just liked the presence of wizards and thought he could someday be helpful. Instead of practicing magic like the wizards of Duran, however, he spent a lot of time working on his art and the magic he could do with it. His powers grew faster than ever.
He thought about finding his brother every day, but he couldn’t handle being rejected by anyone else.
Chapter 19
The Painter was nineteen when he went to the nearby village. He could conjure his own supplies, but he preferred to conjure the money to buy them instead. Handmade paper, brushes, and paint were special to him. Furthermore, he hadn’t seen another person in six months, so he missed that interaction.
While he was picking out some brushes from the woman he trusted to make good quality supplies, he noticed a young woman tending to four goats in a pen. She was around his age with long, braided honey-blond hair. Her dress was pale pink and half covered with mud, but her sunny smile indicated that it didn’t bother her. She was talking to the goats as if they were her friends.
Although other people might have thought she was weird, most people thought Painter was weird. He remembered the days he tended to animals like that and wondered if she was as awkward around people as he was. He decided that couldn’t be the case because she was so pretty. “Who is that?” he asked the older woman.
“That is Autrey. She’s become the village flower. She and her father moved here two months ago and I’d never seen a girl so sweet work so hard. She’s a natural caregiver.”
In Duran society, people had titles, and they were introduced in the order of their family name, title, and given name. However, children had to earn their family name, so until they did, people called them by their first name. Since a person wasn’t considered an adult on Duran until they were twenty-two, that didn’t mean much to Painter.
After paying for his supplies, Painter found himself reluctant to leave without talking to the girl. Shyness wasn’t in his nature. He reached the pen and watched her feed the goats until she noticed him.
“Good morning,” she said.
“Good morning.”
“I haven’t seen you here before.”
“I don’t live here.” He followed her out of the gate and into the chicken pen, where she started gathering eggs. “Can I help you?”
She blushed. “I would appreciate it.”
They talked all morning. Painter had never lost his talent for working and Autrey was impressed. They talked about her previous village, which had been destroyed by a wizard duel, and the garden she had created. It had been full of fruits and flowers.
“I’m sorry you lost something so beautiful,” Painter said. He admitted that he was raised on a farm, but not that he was abused. He didn’t tell her about Syndrial or his father, either. When he described his cabin in the woods, she seemed sad.
“That sounds very lonely.”
“It’s not. I like the quiet.” He then told her about his art and decided to use some of his new supplies to paint her portrait. He didn’t use any magic in it, and instead drew her with a background of wildflowers he thought would suit her.
She was so stunned by the beauty and skill of the painting that she couldn’t speak.
They went to a nearby creek, sat with their feet in the water, and talked the rest of the day. When the sun was setting and the wind grew cold, he asked her to stay with him. Her smile faded. “I can’t,” she said. “My father engaged me to a man who offered him a lot of money. Neenan-tai isn’t kind like you and he doesn’t know anything about me, but my father needs the money.”
“You’re going to marry someone you don’t love?”
“I don’t have a choice; I’m twenty.”
Painter opened his mouth to tell her he was only nineteen, but thought better of it. Socially inept as he was, he knew the problem wasn’t her heart but money. “When do you have to marry him?” he asked.
“In two months.”
Painter walked her home after that and the next day, he returned to the village. Over the next month, they spent every day together. Sometimes, they would just work together in silence or Painter would paint her in different environments. Autrey loved this and said she wished she could travel the world.
Autrey was always happy to see him. One day, however, he arrived to find her fiancé cornering her in the goat pen, berating her for smelling of animals. Neenan-tai Katz did everything short of hitting her in public. He even called her dumb.
Painter wanted to defend her, but he didn’t want to ruin her chance of being with Katz if that was what she wanted.
Instead, he was there to comfort her and even started teaching her to read. Finally, when Painter couldn’t stand the thought of being without her, he asked her if she wanted to marry him instead.
“I wish that were possible. I want to marry you more than anything else in the world.”
So the Painter told her everything about him, including that he was half god. To prove it, he painted her with gold and emerald jewelry. When the jewelry appeared on her, she said she needed time to think. Before he could leave, however, she promised that she still wanted to marry him.
That day, he went to her father and offered him twice the gold Katz was willing to pay. Her father eagerly accepted, not bothering to ask Autrey what she wanted.
Two days later, they were married. Although they were both inexperienced in bed, Painter could not have been happier. As far as he was concerned, she was the family he always wanted, and he planned on having a number of children with her.
Unfortunately, Autrey had never spent time away from people and soon grew depressed. He offered to build pens and buy animals for her, but she said that wasn’t what she missed. Instead, he created the most beautiful garden imaginable for her. That worked for a while.
She started asking to visit her friends in the village, so he conjured money for her to buy things she wanted while there. That also worked for a while.
He conjured her jewelry, which she loved, as well as decorative boxes to put them in and extravagant clothes to wear with them. Eventually, the cabin just wasn’t large enough to hold her clothes. He thought she deserved to live in a castle, anyway– something much more beautiful than his father’s palace.
It took time, as conjuring took a lot of energy. Nevertheless, when he was so exhausted of energy that he would pass out on the floor, it made him stronger. Autrey loved everything he did, even though she started asking for more. The more rooms and furniture and gold he gave her, the more she asked for. She never wanted to talk about anything except the castle.
When Autrey became pregnant, Painter was thrilled. She was not. “Our children should have all the things we never did,” she insisted. “We need servants to work for us in the castle.”
“I can create an
ything we need. Hiring servants just invites betrayal.”
“Then don’t ‘hire’ servants; buy them,” Autrey insisted.
“We don’t need anyone else.”
Autrey didn’t argue about it anymore, so Painter thought the subject was closed. Instead, Autrey went behind her husband’s back and bought young people from their parents to work in the castle. Although Painter was upset by her actions, he wanted her and their unborn baby to be happy.
He built a nursery next to the room that would be theirs, despite Autrey’s determination that it be on the other side of the castle. Thus, when Autrey said she wanted a separate room as far away from the baby as possible, he gave her what she asked for.
While he was creating her room to her unbelievably high standards, she pushed him to build it faster, despite the physical stress it was causing him. When he was finally done, he couldn’t make it back to his room and collapsed in the hallway.
He woke as he was being dragged into his room. He tried to ask what was going on, yet only senseless sounds came out.
“Shut up,” a slightly familiar voice snapped. “You thought you could steal my wife and I would just let it go?”
Painter realized it was Katz and his first thought was to protect his wife and unborn child. He was terrified Katz would kill Autrey out of jealousy. Katz reached Painter’s room and shoved him in. Painter had enough time to wonder how Katz knew what room to take him to before he felt the white-hot pain of a knife sinking into his back. Painter didn’t make a sound, his mind instantly reverting to when he was a tiny child being beaten by the man he thought was his father.
Katz was sickened by the Painter’s surrender and kicked him a few times in the stomach before leaving.
Painter bled out on the floor for some time, trying desperately not to pass out. Thoughts of his wife gave him strength and he found himself crawling across the room to his paintbrush and paper. He couldn’t help Autrey, but there was someone he knew who could.
With the last of his strength and energy, he painted his room with the one person he trusted who was a powerful wizard. “Yatunus-so Dylan, please help me,” he whispered as he passed out.
* * *
He woke in the grass outside with Dylan standing over him. Painter tried to stand, but Dylan pushed him back down gently. “Rest. I’ve healed the damage caused by the knife, but I can’t heal what you did to yourself. You shouldn’t overextend yourself like that.”
“My wife. She needs help.”
“Picture her in your mind.”
The Painter did, and with a flash of light, he and Dylan were in the hallway outside of his wife’s room. Painter stood with Dylan’s help. Before he could open the door, Dylan held him back and put his finger to his lips.
A second later, Painter heard Autrey yelling through the door.
“You weren’t supposed to kill him yet! I could have gotten a lot more money!”
“Until he found out that you’re carrying another man’s baby!” Katz yelled back. “Then you would have gotten nothing!”
“He wouldn’t have found out in the next few days! You’re so impatient!”
“I’m impatient because I don’t want my woman to be married to someone else for another day?!”
Dylan realized that the Painter couldn’t stand to hear another word and with a flash, they were back in the Painter’s room. Blood still pooled on the floor. Dylan made Painter sit on the bed and sat next to him. “You’ll get through this,” he said gently.
“I love her.”
“I know. It’s not what you want to hear right now, but all the best people have lost loved ones.”
“I just wanted a family.”
Dylan patted him on the shoulder. “You’re only twenty. I didn’t find my family until I was twenty-two. Trust me; when you find yours, you’ll know. You’ll know because everything else will pale in comparison. Sometimes, people have to go through a lot of misery before they can fully embrace what’s to come.”
Painter tried to listen to Dylan, but all he could hear was his wife plotting his murder. He felt a change in him, like he was closing a door to something horrible, and the pain started to fade. “I’ll survive this,” he said. “You should go. I need time to think.”
Dylan stood. “I hope you do think and don’t act. You need time to process this. Don’t do anything you can’t take back. You know where to find me if you want to talk.” With a flash of light, he vanished.
Painter had no intention of thinking about the matter anymore.
The people who raised him betrayed him.
His stepmother betrayed him.
His father betrayed him.
His wife betrayed him.
There was only one person who wouldn’t– couldn’t– betray him.
He was done having his heart broken. He grabbed his art supplies, went outside, and got to work. Ten minutes later, everyone in the castle was sent to the nearby village except for his wife and Katz, who appeared before him. Both of them stared in shock for a moment.
Autrey recovered first and put on her best expression of fear. “I’m so glad you’re alive!” she said, running to the Painter’s side. She pointed at Katz. “He said he killed you to get me back, but I knew you were too strong for him!”
It wasn’t lost on him how much she sounded like Roana, and wondered if there was a woman left in the universe who was honest. After a few minutes of staring at her in silence, he figured there was, just not for him.
“Stop lying to me,” he said, his voice so disengaged it sounded foreign even to him.
Her eyes widened. He had never called her on her lies before. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. He hurt me. You know he did.”
“Good. He should have killed you before I ever met you.” Painter didn’t know if he meant it or not, as he felt nothing when her eyes filled with tears.
“Don’t say that! I’m your wife, carrying your child!”
“Is it my child? Or is it Katz’s?”
“It’s yours. Of course it’s yours.”
Without emotions, the Painter could see Autrey’s lies clearly. “I’m done with you. Leave.”
She gasped. “You can’t be done with me. I’m your wife!” She was angry now.
“I don’t care.”
“You don’t care?! You think I’m just some… trash you can throw out? I didn’t put up with you all this time for nothing! You think I enjoyed living with a sappy, weak, wimp? I thought demigods were eager to rule the worlds! How did I manage to find the one half-god on Duran who only wants to sit in his cabin and paint?” She said “paint” as if it was a nasty act.
The Painter knew her words should have devastated him. They should have torn out his already broken heart. Yet he still felt nothing.
“I see she already has this handled, so I’m going to go back inside,” Katz said. Although he was trying to sound relaxed and confident, Painter recognized the tremor of fear in his voice.
“Yes, you do that,” Painter invited. He opened his paint book as Katz returned to the castle.
“What are you doing now?” Autrey asked, exasperated.
“I’m giving you what you deserve. You wanted the castle, money, and power without me. You were right that you shouldn’t have had to put up with me.”
That clearly surprised her. “Oh. Good, then. I’m glad that you’re seeing things rationally.”
“I think you’ve taught me a lot about being rational. You were right that I should use the power I was born with, too. It makes me better than everyone else, so I should use it the way I see fit, not let others use me.”
Autrey was at a loss for words, not understanding what had changed in her husband. She had listened to him when he talked about being half god, but she never understood him. Then, when the massive castle collapsed in on itself, she screamed.
The Painter felt something then, and it made him grin. As far as he was concerned, it was the first honest sound out of her mouth. He thought of Ka
tz inside, crushed by the high ceilings he had created or possibly by the glorious marble walls Autrey wanted so much.
When Autrey’s screams changed to sobs, he turned to her, taking in the horror and agony on her face. It warmed him.
Autrey saw the expression he gave her and stumbled back, falling into the soft grass. She covered her slightly distended stomach. “You can’t hurt me. You can’t hurt my baby.”
Painter loved the fear in her voice. “I could, but that would be too good for you. Instead, you’re going to return to your life of poverty and hard labor. You’ll raise your child alone, knowing that you are the reason for his father’s death and for your own poverty and loneliness. If any man touches you except to hit you, I’ll kill him, too.”
“You can’t do that,” she said, her face ashen and tear-streaked.
“Enjoy your castle, my love.”
With that, he painted himself a portal to another world and left her alone in the grass to watch her life fall apart around her.
* * *
The Painter found his brother, but decided that Nathan did not need him yet and instead focused on improving himself. He was determined to become so powerful that no one could ever reject him again. He would become a god in every way.
Instead of going to the wizards he knew, he found one he wasn’t tempted to trust. Langril was one of the most powerful wizards alive and his morality was lower than Set’s. When Painter went to him and explained his power and what he wanted to do with it, Langril couldn’t have agreed to teach him faster.
“What is it you want in exchange?” Painter asked.
Langril grinned. “Let’s just say you’ll owe me a favor someday.”
Painter didn’t like being in someone’s debt, but he couldn’t deny the demonic wizard’s power. Langril didn’t just teach him magic; he also taught Painter how to understand and manipulate people. He knew better than anyone else how to get what he wanted and took pride in teaching Painter all of his tricks.
It was two years later that Langril’s favor was repaid. Langril wanted Painter to go to a world called Dothra, where only the cruelest wizards dwelled, and rescue a human named Ascelin who had been trapped there. Although Painter’s talents made this task easy, it required quite a lot of killing, as Ascelin had information the wizards of Dothra didn’t want to let go of.
