Hereditary

by Jane Washington

  My head snapped up, and I felt my voice sticking in my throat, along with another emotion, one that—strangely—I hadn’t yet attributed to Nareon after our first meeting. Fear.

  “Nobody.” I answered quickly, maybe a little too quickly.

  “A friend?” Pressed Cale.

  “No, not a friend.” I wasn’t sure what the quake in my own voice meant.

  Was I scared of Nareon, or was I scared that other people would find out about him? People were only mildly tolerant of me as it was, how would they feel if they found out that a real synfee had decided to attach himself to me for some barely-explained reason. I glanced up from my textbook to find Cale watching me, and Hazen watching Cale, with that now-familiar, frighteningly blank expression.

  “Was he a fae? I’m usually pretty good at sensing these sorts of things, but he was gone before I could get a good grip on him.”

  “A fae?” I asked, momentarily confused, until I remembered the fae shimmer that Nareon had shaped-changed onto himself, “Oh. Right. Yeah, he’s a fae.”

  “Shouldn’t we start working or something?” I asked, needing to steer the conversation away from Nareon.

  “Yes,” Hazen spoke for the first time, “let’s start by explaining our specialisations, and then we can sort out what to cover over the three days a week that we have.”

  Cale and I both agreed, and I found myself looking to Cale, expecting him to start us off. I could have laughed when I noticed Hazen do the same thing, and I almost did when Cale let out an exasperated sigh.

  “I specialised in bender abilities,” he said, “as well as fire and wind elemental.”

  I blinked, surprised at that answer.

  “And I just specialised in bender abilities,” offered Hazen, “though I also have a few fae tricks up my sleeve.”

  They both turned to look at me expectantly then, and it took me a moment longer to realise that they were waiting for me than it should have, as I was preoccupied with both Cale and Hazen’s answers. Professor Carren had said that he was splitting us up depending on our specialisations, which made sense for Cale, but Hazen had only specialised in bender abilities.

  “Bea?” Prompted Hazen.

  “Oh right. I specialised in Bender abilities, fire, water, and wind.”

  It was uncomfortably quiet for a little while and then Hazen spoke up again.

  “Now should we say what we left out the first time?”

  Cale laughed, but I could only blink at them both stupidly.

  “I also have a special kind of sight, or sense… I’m not sure how to describe it exactly.” Cale offered, “The general census is that it comes under the Brown Caste, because the rangers are all about their senses. I can tell a lot about a person, just from the aura that surrounds them, and sometimes, I can even change things about that aura. Like…” he looked embarrassed for a moment, “peeking through a glamor.”

  I wanted to be angry, but I was mostly just glad that it hadn’t been me who had hurt him after all, not that Hazen was going to give me a chance to be mad, as he picked up quickly where Cale had left off, as if to avoid any conflict.

  “And my bender power stretches to the mind.”

  I jumped up then, feeling real anger. I certainly had a right to be, after what I had just pieced together… though perhaps not to the extent that I was now feeling it. As though I wanted to rip Hazen’s head from his shoulders and—wait… what?

  I realised that I had slipped right into myself, into a violent whirlwind of reactive thoughts, thoughts about hurting people, while my eyes slid closed and my power began to leak out. I heard myself cursing and flinched as I pulled the wall down over my power a little too hard, opening my eyes to a once again darkened world. Hazen and Cale had both jumped to their feet, and I could see Hazen’s arm outstretched in a ‘back off’ gesture, which drew my attention to the two guards who were staring at me in alarm.

  He turned and snapped something at them and they melted away.

  “You read my mind.” I accused.

  “I didn’t read anything. I could sense the darkness vying to escape, and I slipped into your mind to help you tame it, that’s all Bea. Trust me.”

  I could hear the sense of his words, but I was suddenly cold in my green summer dress, and I could feel the material whipping about my legs

  “Why are you both being nice to me?” I whispered, feeling my anger melt into something else, something that resembled fear, though it only seemed to intensify the darkness around me.

  “What does everyone want with me all of a sudden?” I looked between them, feeling my wall slipping, inch my inch.

  Hazen was moving toward me again, and I knew that he was going to reach out and touch me, slip into my mind and wipe away my dark feeling.

  But it was my mind, and my dark feeling.

  I took a shaky step back, and for the first time, I saw real alarm flash in those dark eyes.

  “We have no ulterior motives Bea, none at all.”

  “I need to go,” I stammered, suddenly realising what it was that I had to do, “I need to go right now.”

  “Dammit, you’re out of control, you might hurt someone.” Hazen flung at me as I turned, causing me to pause.

  I heard Cale hiss at him, and felt the anger rising swiftly to the surface again, though I managed to push it away just in time. Perhaps I would hurt someone if I had to run all the way back to the forest, and there was no real need, not when I was already standing in the middle of a garden.

  “It was unfair of me to let you both finish the experiment without offering my own little piece as well. I am connected to everything around me, and it’s not what you think. I. Don’t. Hurt. Things.” I moved back to Hazen, punctuating each word with a step, until we were standing toe-to-toe, and then I let go of my barrier.

  The garden’s presence flooded me the minute I closed my eyes and released my wall, though it was difficult to keep my dark feelings from flooding the bond that my power travelled through. It was a struggle for the first few moments, until the buzzing connection began to calm me, and then it wasn’t so hard to hold the dark feelings at bay, because they were disappearing all on their own. I felt the sigh slip from my lips as the sudden relief poured over me, and I sank slowly to my knees, threading my fingers in the short glass below me. Everything in the garden was fairly healthy already, but I sought out the weak spots out of habit, only pushing my power through the bond when some struggling plant needed it, else I would have been forcing perfectly healthy apple trees to lose their fruit and re-bloom again in a matter of minutes. It had been hard at first, to maintain only enough power to open and feed the connection, but now it was just second nature, and I quickly sank into the meditation of it. I would have to return to reality, Hazen and Cale eventually, but for now, I needed this connection. I needed to escape whatever darkness was beginning to take over me; I needed to be healed by my own healing force.

  When I finally blinked my eyes open again, Hazen and Cale hadn’t moved an inch, though I was now looking up at them from my position on the ground, and I was sure that more than a few minutes had passed. All of the previous darkness had disappeared, though an orange, dusky kind of glow was beginning to spread across the otherwise clear sky. I felt a light mist on my face, that wasn’t quite rain, but was pleasant all the same, and the air was a comforting caress against my bare arms and upturned face. The others were looking around at the garden, marvelling over what I had marvelled over so many times in my childhood. The colours that were so bright, they looked like a new colour altogether, the petals no longer drooped and the apples shone and swayed tantalisingly in the slight breeze. I didn’t often open the connection when the sun was setting, but it had always been my favourite change. To see the sunset in those same, intensely clear colours, it was almost magical.

  “I don’t hurt,” I whispered, drawing their eyes back to me, “I help.”

  Hazen blinked, “your darkness is gone.”

  “The connection hel
ps me, too.”

  “So why not keep it open?”

  I looked down in explanation, not at all surprised at the vines and spindly tree-roots that had sprouted from the ground to wind about my legs, as if hoping to draw me back into the ground with them. One had even reached my waist, and circled with a lazy caress that branched off to cling to my left arm, and all around me, sprouted tiny white flowers, which also seemed to dot the vines at sporadic intervals.

  “Wow.” Said Cale, moving to kneel beside me and flick one of the flowers, “now your badass image really is ruined. Little synfee the gardener.”

  I laughed, feeling much lighter with the connection open, and Hazen even seemed to roll his eyes a little.

  “I’m sorry,” I offered, a little lamely, “that… that whole darkness thing, it only started happening recently.”

  I aimed the apology at Hazen, but flicked my eyes to Cale to include him too.

  “It’s fine.” Cale answered for them both, “that’s what these sessions are for, remember?”

  “I suggest we work on one person a day, since we don’t really seem to share many similarities, other than us all being totally abnormal, of course.” Hazen said.

  I agreed, and even offered to go first, seeing as I was already covered in vines and feeling pretty bad about my recent outburst. We spent the next half an hour talking about my ‘abnormal’ power, by which I mean that I spent half an hour answering rapid-fire questions from them both, which seemed to be helping them much more than it helped me. As the last of the sun’s rays finally began straining to remain in the sky, I ordered the vines back into the ground, and closed the connection, something which they both immediately noticed, as the world seemed suddenly very dull. Dull, and dark.

  “It’s getting late, sorry,” I said, “I really need to get home.”

  Cale jumped up, “I’ll walk you.”

  For a second, I actually thought that Hazen would argue, though I wasn’t sure exactly what he would argue about, and then he got up, and offered to escort us both back to the entrance chamber. As soon as we were outside, Cale dropped his arm around my shoulder and began to whistle some unrecognisable song, as if my whole outburst hadn’t happened, yet again.

  “Why are you and Hazen being nice to me? Nobody answered me back there.”

  He raised both brows, brushing an errant curl from his face.

  “Nobody answered you because you looked like the angel of death, about to rip up the earth and us along with it.”

  At my horrified look, he quickly amended, “a very beautiful angel of death, of course. Not the sickly, pale kind.”

  “I’m serious Cale.”

  He stopped walking then, and took a step closer to me, the arm around my shoulder falling away. We were on a side path away from the main buildings of the Academy, leading toward the Black Guards’ barracks, and I looked up at him in the last filtering rays of sunlight, curious at the atypically earnest expression on his face.

  “It’s not that complicated really. I like you, and since Hazen spends most of his time in my head, I guess some of it has rubbed off on him too.”

  I took a faltering step back, which he matched with another step forward.

  “What do you mean by him spending most of his time in your head?”

  “When we were young, Hazen saved my life, kind of like how he helped you out the other day. I used too much of my power and it pushed me over the edge. He jumped into my mind when he realised what was happening, and drew most of it away. Ever since, we’ve been kind of connected.”

  “Like he can read your mind no matter where you are?”

  “That, and, he can see what I’m seeing.”

  “Isn’t that kind of creepy?” I asked, taking another subtle step backwards.

  “Mine isn’t the only power that has side-effects. It’s pretty painful living in Hazen’s head, so he escapes into mine sometimes.”

  “Do you know when he’s there?”

  “Not unless he makes himself known.”

  He closed the space again, and I could tell that the talk was distracting him from whatever intense emotion had stopped our walk a moment ago, so I kept asking questions.

  “How does he do that?”

  “By speaking to me, but he can only do that when he’s close.”

  My back had hit a wooden paling that made up the patchy fencing along the side of the path, and Cale’s arms snaked easily either side of me, boxing me in. For a moment, I wondered if I should lash out at him with my wind power and run, but it wasn’t exactly like he was attacking me, or even scaring me. He was only making me nervous.

  He didn’t look nervous himself, those russet-brown eyes were earnest again, and I could feel him drawing nearer.

  “Cale…” I warned, “you do know what I am, don’t you?”

  “Dammit synfee, I told you I have a sense for this, didn’t I? I know you’re not doing a thing to me. You couldn’t even if you wanted to, your compulsion is trapped behind a glamor.”

  “I don’t have to do anything,” I whispered, words from long ago floating to the forefront of my mind, the voice in my head my mother’s, though the voice I heard speaking was my own. “Everything I do, every time my hair catches the light of the sun, the scent of me, even just the eye-contact I make, it will pull you in because that’s how I’m designed.”

  “It’s got nothing to do with the way you look.”

  I knew he was going to kiss me then, and my sudden panic was enough to cause the wall in my mind to slip. I’m not sure what I would have done, and so I wasn’t sure whether to be grateful or annoyed when Nareon’s silky voice suddenly broke through the darkness.

  “Having troubles, Bea?”

  Cale didn’t look away from me for a moment, though I could feel how tense his body had just become, and then, slowly, he backed off me, his easy smile once again in place. I looked past him to where Nareon stood, a little further down the path, his fae glamor back in place.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked, managing to keep my tone neutral.

  “Your father sent me to bring you back, he’s getting worried.”

  Cale was watching me, I knew, wondering if Nareon was here to bother me just as much as Nareon had apparently been wondering the same thing. I schooled my expression carefully and turned my trademark hesitant smile on Cale, shifting my book bag where it had begun to slip down my shoulder. Under any other circumstances, I might have been tempted to insist that I already had an escort home, but I didn’t want to chance Cale trying to kiss me again, and I wasn’t at all sure just how far Nareon would go to get what he wanted. I didn’t want to put Cale in any unnecessary danger.

  “Thanks for walking me this far,” I said to Cale, “it’s a long way back to my village, so I wouldn’t want you to have to walk all the way out there and all the way back.”

  He nodded, and turned to leave after one last glance at Nareon.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow then.”

  “So what do you want now?” I asked Nareon as soon as we broke free of the forest onto the dark game trail.

  “Oh, that’s a long list.”

  “What do you want with me?”

  “Also a long list.”

  At my confused look, he rolled his eyes, the gesture absurdly prepossessing, “I only intervened because it looked like a sticky situation.”

  “Is this some kind of joke?”

  The idea of a chivalrous synfee was simply too ridiculous for me to comprehend. But perhaps I was being too hard on this one in particular; he apparently wandered freely through the kingdom, and didn’t seem to be attacking people. But then again… he was a synfee, and a very, very powerful one at that, with a hidden agenda that I couldn’t even guess at.

  “It was a little funny, so perhaps.” He said lightly.

  “I’m glad somebody enjoyed it.”

  “You certainly should have.”

  “What?”

  “It’s what we thrive off. Our powers feed on o
ther people’s desire.”

  “That’s disgusting.”

  He laughed then, and moved very quickly, whipping me back against the nearest tree, his arms coming up either side of me in just the same position that Cale had trapped me in. Except that this was Nareon… whose compulsion was now grasping at me, igniting the excitement that I was feverishly trying to push down. Those light eyes suddenly flashed and took on a distinctly golden hue, and I realised as a faint ripple spread across him, that he was dropping his glamor. He was even more magnificent without it, which was hard to admit, with him glaring down at me, so close and yet too far out of my reach.

  “Drop your glamor, and you’ll feel it.” He whispered, his hands coming around my waist, lifting me until my feet were dangling inches above the ground and my face was only a breath away from his.

  “I- I can’t.”

  “I can help you.”

  Somewhere in my mind, I knew that I should be afraid of him, but it seemed that with every time that Nareon touched me, his overall hold on me grew stronger, and I was able to resist his compulsion less and less. That golden gaze was so all-encompassing, that I found I couldn’t even answer him, and when I felt the whisper of his breath over my lips, there was no longer a nerve in my body free to fear.

  He kissed me softly, reminding me of the silky slide of his voice, as the velvet touch of his lips awakened an itching burn, spreading rapidly over my skin. It did not originate from me, however. It was his desire; emanating from his body in waves to wash over me, feeding some answering monster that stirred in the dark depths of my mind. It was strong, and heady, and I tasted it on his tongue as the kiss deepened and he made a growling sound in his throat. His whole body was alive with aching need, need that I had stirred, and it seared my skin as he dragged me closer, one hand hard around my lower back, the other buried deep in a tangle of my hair. I don’t know when the kiss transformed from the soft touch that it began as, but it now something more formidable, and even through the haze of pleasure, I was still able to feel the small tear of pain that had me crying out against his mouth.