Feral (The Irisbourn Chronicles Book 1)

by Victoria Thorne

  Arisella forced a small smile. “Exactly.”

  Arisella flipped the knife in her fingers and fluidly drove it into the dirt, making me flinch. She clasped her free hands under her chin and looked up at the sky, like she were trying to transport herself to an earlier time of her life.

  “Like most marriages between highborn Divinbloods, the marriage between my mother and my father was arranged. My father had quite a reputation for his skill with weapons, and my mother was well known for her beauty. The Bloodbourn determine the worth of a woman by her appearance,” Arisella reminded me.

  “Yes, I believe Adrian mentioned that…” I remembered.

  “The Bloodbourn have always been incredibly intolerant toward women; they often say that the gods created women as a source of weakness to men, but, of course, we both know that’s absolute madness,” Arisella said bitterly, and shot me a knowing look. “By Bloodbourn standards, my parents seemed like the perfect match, and so my father and mother were united under the Blackwing family name.”

  I plucked a long blade of grass and thoughtfully wove it between my fingers. “What were their names? Their first names, I mean.” It had always been hard for me to visualize nameless faces.

  “Edric and Marcella,” Arisella said softly, then continued. “The marriage was not a happy one, I’m afraid. My father was extremely chauvinistic and treated my mother no better than a mere house servant he had purchased to bear his children. He stripped her of what few freedoms she had been born with, and my mother became her husband’s prisoner.

  “After the wedding, she was forbidden from seeing her parents and sisters, and she was never to leave the house except if she were at her husband’s side. My father wanted to control every aspect of her life, even her thoughts. He tried to poison her mind with his family’s obsessive hatred of the Irisbourn, but, even for a Bloodbourn, my mother was a woman of reason, and his words fell on deaf ears.”

  I grimaced. With every word that left her lips, Arisella fed the growing disgust I felt toward Bloodbourn men. The feeling swelled within me, and finally spilled over when I broke in, “No offense, but your dad seems like an insufferable tyrant.”

  Arisella did not look offended at all. If anything, she looked indifferent. “That’s because he was.

  “My mother was strong, but also very sad. She once told me that if it hadn’t been for Adrian, she might have taken her own life. Thankfully, six months after the wedding, my mother found herself pregnant, and, for the first time in a long time, she had something to be happy about. When she first told my father, she thought he might explode with pride. My father wasted no time deciding that, if his child should be a boy, he would transform his son into the most merciless fighter the world had ever seen.

  “The pregnancy sent my father into a frenzy. He began to truly care for my mother in ways he had never cared before. He sat with her, he fed her, he stopped cursing her. He even demanded that the best Strongbourn nurse be brought from across the land to deliver his child.

  “Sure enough, the Strongbourn nurse arrived at the Blackwing estate, but she did not come alone. She had been accompanied by her twin brother. The nurse insisted they were a dynamic duo, that she could not work without her sibling, and so my father reluctantly granted him permission to assist in the delivery. Before the birth, it was decided that the nurse would serve as my mother’s midwife, while the nurse’s brother would be the doula.

  “As much as my father hated the idea of my mother closely interacting with people other than him, my mother became very close to the twins during the final months of her pregnancy. She was so fond of them that she begged my father to let them continue to stay in her company after the baby was born, and my father grudgingly agreed. My mother was pleased. For once, she was the center of her husband’s attention, and she felt loved.

  “Then the baby came, and everything changed. As soon as the birthing was done, my father snatched the infant from my mother’s arms, named it Adrian, and handed it off to the Blackwing wet nurse. A week passed before my mother saw Adrian again, and by then, the house servants knew Adrian better than his own mother did.

  “My mother was distraught. All affections her husband had once shown her immediately ceased. He treated her worse than he ever had before, and he severely limited her access to their child. She was neglected, left to drown in her misery with the man who had served as her doula, while the Strongbourn nurse cared for her child.”

  “Did she ever see Adrian?” I asked. The idea of forcefully separating a mother and her child seemed unthinkable to me, and my heart went out to Arisella’s mother.

  “Sometimes, if my father was merciful, and my mother pled enough.” Arisella’s glassy eyes looked right through me. She was somewhere else, trapped in her mother’s memories. “Other times, her doula would help her sneak into the nursery.

  “The doula went out of his way to show my mother true kindness, something that had become foreign to her. For that, my mother adored him. The doula was compassionate, intelligent, and generous. But most importantly, like her, he was young and careless.

  “My mother exchanged the story of her life for a secret the doula made her promise to take to her grave.” Arisella paused. “Of course, she ended up breaking that oath.”

  “Obviously,” I acknowledged. “What was the secret?”

  “The doula revealed to my mother that he was not Strongbourn, but Beastbourn. Unlike his Strongbourn sister, who took after his mother, the doula had inherited the feral ability from his father. When the doula entered the Blood Kingdom, he had disguised himself as a Strongbourn so that he could assist his sister with my mother’s delivery. The doula knew that if he had revealed himself as a Beastbourn, my father would have turned him away at the gates. It is the Strongbourn, not the Beastbourn, with an affinity for healing.

  “Yet it was not hard for the doula to convince others he was Strongbourn; after all, a doula does not need a Strongbourn affinity to be a good doula.

  “Still, my mother did not care. She was love drunk, and she did not hesitate to break the oaths that bound her to her husband. But they loved in secret, for the Bloodbourn penalty for adultery is unforgiving, specifically for women.”

  “And that penalty is?” I interrupted.

  Arisella eyed me dubiously, like I should already know. “Death.”

  I swallowed back the bile that rose to my throat.

  “It did not take long for my mother to become pregnant again,” Arisella continued. “Even she did not know if the child was her husband’s or the doula’s. My father suspected little, though, and he repeated his ritual of pampering his pregnant wife. However, this time, my mother knew that my father only cared for her because she was the vessel that carried his precious unborn child.

  “As much as the doula claimed to love my mother, he was terrified of my father’s wrath should he ever find out about their affair. The cowardly doula took his sister and abandoned my mother before she gave birth. I was born one year after Adrian. After my birth, my father slipped into one of his rages, and lashed out at my mother for not giving him another son. Regardless, I was blood of his blood, and, with time, he learned to treat me as such.

  “For the majority of our lives, Adrian and I were isolated from our mother. We were raised coldly by our father and his hand-chosen servants. We learned to throw knives, to kill, to inflict death while evading it. My father was the brother of the Blood King and the head of the Bloodbourn Battalion, and as his daughter I was granted privileges other girls weren’t.”

  My jaw dropped. “Wait, wait, wait. Back up. Brother of the Blood King?” I stammered, breaking Arisella’s concentration.

  Arisella blinked, came back to reality, and nodded slowly. “Why are you so surprised? I thought Adrian already told you about the Blood King last night.”

  “He didn’t tell me you were related to him!” I choked. “What, did you spend holidays at his place too, and exchange Christmas cards?”

  “Of course no
t,” she snapped. Arisella opened her mouth, but her voice caught in her throat, like she wanted to say something but couldn’t. She shook her head, as if to dismiss the idea before moving onto another. “Maybe he didn’t tell you because he didn’t want you to know.”

  I uttered a small “oh.” It sort of made sense. It would have been hard for me to trust the niece and nephew of the evil king who wanted me dead. “Well, the cat’s out of the bag now.”

  Arisella looked at me strangely.

  “Jesus, it’s an idiom. Never mind.” I shifted my weight in frustration. “As the niece of this almighty Blood King, what type of special privileges were you granted?”

  “Although Bloodbourn society undervalues women, girls are still trained to be warriors, just not as rigorously as boys are. Thanks to outdated tradition, all Bloodbourn are expected to develop certain skills in combat, even though for many, those skills never prove useful. As you already know, I was no common girl. For much of my life, I was trained exactly like my brother. My father employed the most talented instructors to teach us how to hunt and ride, and at daybreak we would sometimes hunt the countless grimalkin that plagued our forests.

  “My mother soon forgot about her affair, and, the rare times my father permitted her to visit us, she would shower us with adorations. Our father always warned us not to become too attached to her. He told us that Mother’s mind had been polluted with abhorrent filth that only the weak believed, and that as much as he wished to help her, she was beyond saving. He tried to convince us that the Irisbourn were the ultimate enemy and that we were destined to slay them. But our mother tempered his hatred with wisdom. She made us search for love in the world, not blood.

  “As Adrian and I matured, we realized our father’s madness. We despised the way he devoted himself to his brother’s obsession with Irisbourn genocide. We couldn’t stand how he treated our mother. But we could never speak against him, so we took it in silence, the same way our mother had.

  “And then, at the age of ten, Adrian had his Awakening.”

  “Awakening?” I echoed, confused.

  Arisella groaned. “Adrian really hasn’t gone over this already? An Awakening is something all Divinbloods naturally go through when they reach the age at which they can invoke their abilities. Adrian’s was early. It’s different for everyone, but it usually happens around twelve. If we had Bloodbourn babies shooting knives out of their wrists, the Bloodbourn race would have died out a long time ago.”

  “That makes sense.” I bit my lip and reflected on what she said. “So, two nights ago when I was in the woods, did that happen to me? Did I have my Awakening?”

  “No.” Arisella waggled her finger in my face. “First off, you’re seventeen. That’s way too late for an Awakening. Secondly, you were human. When humans change into Divinbloods, that’s definitely not an Awakening.”

  “Oh,” I said, trying to hide my disappointment. “What happened after Adrian’s Awakening?”

  Arisella straightened. “Our father and mother were incredibly proud of him, and he moved onto higher training. Naturally, I longed for my Awakening as well, but that would not come for three more years.

  “I was fighting with Adrian when it happened. He loved flaunting his new abilities, just to irritate me. I remember becoming absolutely livid when he launched a blade into the only ornament that Mother had ever given me, shattering it. Then came the burning, bone-crushing pain – oh, but of course, I need not describe that to you. I changed into a grimalkin right in front of my brother in our bedroom. I had no idea what had happened until after it was over.”

  “Sounds a lot like what happened to me,” I pointed out.

  Arisella’s expression softened. “At least I had some idea what I was going through. You... you knew nothing. My Awakening was one of the most frightening experiences of my life. I honestly don’t know how you did it, how you survived your first change.” Arisella’s voice was infused with a touch of compassion she had never shown before. Did she actually feel sorry for me?

  “In full disclosure, I did truly believe I was going insane.”

  Arisella laughed. “I don’t blame you. After my Awakening, I thought that something was horribly, horribly wrong with me. How could the daughter of two Bloodbourn have the abilities of a Beastbourn? I was terrified by how my father might react when he realized that I was a failure to the pure Blackwing line.

  “That night, Adrian snuck me into my mother’s chambers. She was the only person we trusted enough to ask for help. That’s when she told us all of this, and I realized that I was not my father’s daughter, but the doula’s.

  “We swore to keep her affair and my Beastbourn ability a secret, not just for her safety, but for mine as well. But my father grew impatient as months passed and I still had not had my Awakening. He tried to force it out of me, just as I had done to you. When he trained with me, it took everything in my power not to change into a grimalkin at his feet.

  “My mother tried to teach me how to control my ability. She told me to study the wild grimalkin in the Black Forest, and I spent many days amongst the beasts. Sometimes I felt like I belonged with the grimalkin more than I did with the Bloodbourn.

  “As a grimalkin, I always had to be wary of Bloodbourn hunters. Usually I could escape them, as I was faster and smarter than any of the other grimalkin. But one afternoon, while I was hunting, I crossed the path of two Bloodbourn riders. They were extremely fast and aggressive, and within seconds they had surrounded me.

  “Prepared to meet the eyes of my hunter, I lifted my head to the first rider. To my shock, I discovered the face of my father. His rigid arm pointed toward me, ready to project a blade into my head. Beside him was Adrian. I knew immediately from his terror-filled eyes that he recognized me.

  “I knew that my father would kill me without hesitation, so in an instinctive attempt to save myself, I changed back into my normal body before him. He said nothing, only stared at me while I watched him fit the pieces together in his head. I could see the disgust in his eyes. My very existence made him sick. It took him far less time to figure everything out than it had taken me.

  “My father rode away without saying a word to me, and Adrian dismounted to ensure that I was unhurt. Together we rode back to the house, so we could warn our mother that our father would be looking for her. We burst into her chambers frantically, practically tripping over each other, morbidly similar to the way we eagerly ran into her room when we were clumsy toddlers. But for the first time in our lives, we were not greeted by her smiling face.”

  Arisella’s hands began to tremble, and her words became hushed. She swallowed, struggling to fight back the emotions that threatened to spill into her voice. “In truth, at first we were not even sure that it was Mother, the face was so unrecognizable. Her cold body was twisted across the bed, her limbs jutting out at unnatural angles. The bed sheets had been stained crimson, and dripped into little red pools on the marble floor.

  “Adrian tried to push me out, but I fought against him. I had just as much a right to be there as he did. We were only children, and we tried futilely to save our mother. We thought that if we tried hard enough to put her back together, she might come back. We were trained to be warriors, not medics, and it was only later that we realized that there was nothing we could have done for her. Our father had reached her before we could warn her. It had not taken much for our father to snap, to kill the wife he had never loved.”

  A warm ribbon of wetness snaked down my cheek, and I hurried to brush it away. The abrupt movement brought Arisella back from the depths of her memory.

  “I – I’m sorry. I got carried away,” Arisella said, like she had just realized who she was talking to. “I shouldn’t have told you all that.”

  I put my hand on hers sympathetically. “No, no, don’t apologize,” I said, but my voice broke on the last word. I mentally scolded myself for letting my emotions get the best of me. Arisella didn’t look nearly as sad as I felt, and I never even k
new her mother. “I understand. I lost my parents too – not like that though.”

  “Yes, Adrian mentioned that,” Arisella said, her voice becoming far away again. “Adrian, it’s even harder with Adrian. His eyes, his hair, the way he speaks… he’s so much like Mother.” Arisella’s voice grew tight, and I noticed that her eyes were wet. She shook her head and picked up where she left off.

  “My brother had to drag me out the bedchamber to get me to leave. My father was out of control, and Adrian did not want to see what he would do to me, the illegitimate child who had sullied the Blackwing name. Hoping that we might get far enough to escape the influence of our father, Adrian and I fled into the depths of the Black Forest.

  “My father was the head of the Bloodbourn Battalion, though, and he sent his best Bloodbourn trackers after us. As soon as we saw them coming, we knew we wouldn’t stand a chance. We’d both be severely punished for attempting to flee the Blood Kingdom, but after my father found me, the legal punishment would be the least of my worries.

  “As my father’s men closed in on us, I came up with a plan in desperation. Adrian was reluctant at first, but we had no other options. Adrian left my side and waited by a nearby river for the Bloodbourn men to find him. When they did, he told them that he had drowned me in the river and let the current take my body, so that I would never be seen again. He said it like he was doing his father a favor, ridding his family of the disgraceful evidence of his mother’s affair. Meanwhile, I slipped past my father’s men as a grimalkin and became just another of the wild creatures of the Black Forest.

  “As the Blood King’s only nephew, Adrian was spared the most extreme penalties for the disturbance he created for the Bloodbourn Battalion. Instead, Adrian was sentenced to spend the rest of his life as a lowly prison guard, one of the most deprecating positions for a Bloodbourn son of noble birth. The Blood King ordered Adrian to the lightless dungeons of his palace, where Adrian walked amongst the Bloodbourn’s most dangerous captives and criminals. We lived like this for years – me, a grimalkin in the Black Forest, and Adrian, a prison guard in the Blood King’s palace.