by Quil Carter
“You haven’t even met your sengil, Elish?” Garrett’s voice weevilled its way into my inner thoughts. “I’ve been seeing Tyler every weekend. He’s such a sweetheart! The biggest brown eyes too, those puppy dog eyes that just melt your heart.”
“I don’t think Silas will want you dating your sengils,” Ellis said in a singy voice.
“We can’t fucking date anyone,” Nero said, his expression soured. I remembered the fight I’d heard between him and Silas. “I can still fuck the sengils though at least. Keela has the perkiest ass. They’re all virgins too, Elish, so have fun with yours.”
Of course they were. Silas collected virginity like fucking stamps it seemed. I wouldn’t be surprised if he took the sengils for himself first. It seemed to mean so much to him.
No, today was a happy day. Forget Silas even exists.
What a beautiful world.
“I’ll go and visit mine today,” I said, forcing a smile onto my face. Meeting someone who was going to be my servant for many years was an exciting thing. I hoped he didn’t give me any trouble, but they were trained rather young.
“He’s so cute!” Garrett gushed. The giddy expression looked so out of place on his face. I hope he grew out of that god damn gothic phase soon. It just didn’t suit him or his attitude. No matter how much he tried to be brooding and deep, he was too easily excitable to do it properly. Ellis could, she had her witch friends that she was still thick as thieves with… but not Garrett. “He has the most–”
I held up my hand. “Don’t tell me, I wish to be surprised,” I said. I had seen the sengils before, during our childcare training, but I’d never been sure which one was mine. “Where are these sengils going to be staying?”
Nero swallowed down his mouthful of food. He’d been hit many times for talking with his mouth full, and if you watched him closely, you could see him flinch whenever someone asked a question while chewing. It seemed to be muscle memory. “Silas has workers coming soon to put in another set of stairs to the level underneath ours. The babies will have the top floor with Silas, we’ll have the second floor, and the sengils will have the third. We’re all getting cribs in our walk-in closets too since we’re going to be up to our eyes in babies in a few days.” My brother adopted a look of contentment on his face. “And I get to go to Cardinalhall without any of you assholes cramping my style, or this little dipshit.” He poked Ceph’s nose. “So good luck with that. I don’t envy any of you.” He rose, empty plate in hand, and walked off.
Garrett was still buzzing in his seat. “We have so many things to look forward to!” he said. “I just can’t wait. And the research on making us immortal is really taking off as well. Silas has me doing three days there and three days here now. While I’m here, I’ll still be shadowing for Salazar. Silas actually said he was proud of me the other day; can you believe it?”
I sighed. “Can we just not talk about him?” I said bitterly. He was a dark cloud that continually tried to ruin my good mood. I looked to Ellis instead. “You’re not getting a sengil? I suppose they don’t train straight ones, do they?”
Ellis snorted. She wasn’t that lady-like, being raised with boys and being the twin of Nero there was never any question why she wasn’t. “I don’t want a sengil. I can take care of myself just fine,” she said. She rose as well. “My older brothers are helpless, weak little creatures who need servants to wait on their every whim. I’m an independent woman who can do it myself.”
“That and Silas said no,” Garrett said airily. He ouched a moment later when Ellis grabbed one of his hair spikes and yanked it. “Don’t take your aggression out on me, you old wit– Ow! Bugger off!” He turned around after Ellis had pulled one of the fine hairs on the back of his neck and swatted at her. Ellis laughed and walked away with her empty plate, a look of satisfaction on her face.
The day was spent indoors which was just fine with me. My brothers and sister came and went doing their own things: Ellis with her military training at the base, Garrett shadowing for the president of Dek’ko Salazar Sanchez, and Nero had the baby today so he was carting him around the military base to show him off to his friends. I remained upstairs, happy to be free of Silas, and since, oddly, Silas had left his remote phone behind, I answered his calls, made him several appointments, and filled in as king as much as I could.
My mind was always with Julian though, and several times throughout the day I caught myself looking out the window with a dreamy look on my face, reliving those kisses we shared over and over again.
It wasn’t until after dinner that I decided to head over to the mansion where the sengils were being raised. It was an astonishingly large house in Skyland, on an estate surrounded by a tall fence of concrete and iron. Half of the building was designed like a boarding school, the sengils took classes every weekday both for education and for training, and their off-time was spent in the other half of the mansion which had their bedrooms, recreational areas, and everything else that a growing sengil might need.
I’d only been there with Silas when he had a meeting with the headmaster, a man named Peter Harris, or Headmaster Harris as he was called. And never had I had the chance to explore the facilities or even meet the sengils in the middle of their training.
The training of a sengil was a long and rigorous process. Cristo, Caleb, and Dylan had been the third generation of sengils to be given to Silas and the most Silas had had at once. Now though, there were lots of sengils running around the mansion, not only our four, but kitchen sengils as well (those were the ones who turned out to be straight. Silas would never force a straight sengil to be ours since it wouldn’t be fair at all to them). And in several years there would be even more brought in, future sengils to Ceph, Apollo, and Artemis, plus the Chimera D’s Silas was planning.
I got out of the black car and instructed my driver to pick me up at seven, an hour and a half away. He’d dropped me off in front of the mansion, a roundabout driveway with a large working fountain in the middle behind me, and a long row of granite steps in front that led to the entrance of the impressive building.
The Victorian-style mansion, called Autumnhome, was grey brick with black trim around the many windows and two wood and iron doors that would lead me inside. There were brick pillars of a darker grey in front of the entrance which were holding up the overhanging eaves of the roof, and that overhang wrapped around the building creating a shaded veranda for lounging or getting out of the sun. The building itself had many small details about it that made it unique, the balconies had ironworking for railings, as did the veranda, and there were ornate windows throughout and towers with pointed roofs and shining black shingles.
I envied this place. It was beautiful. I wished to live in a mansion like this, but yet I loved being high up in the sky. Perhaps when I was older I would build a mansion in the sky, and have no one be able to reach me unless they were invited.
As I walked up a set of stone steps, cleaned to such a level it was as if it had been done with a toothbrush, I saw the Headmaster waiting at the top of the steps for me. The older man, with a white beard and a balding head, was smiling kindly with his hands behind his back.
“Prince Elish,” Harris said in a pleased tone. He bowed as I stepped onto the polished stone that made up the front entrance. “Such an honour to have you here. Young Finn has been asking when you were going to visit him. He’s quite jealous about Prince Garrett and Prince Nero’s frequent visits.”
Finn was his name then? It could be worse. Knowing Silas’s pettiness, I wouldn’t put it past him to name him Melvin or Bernie. That being said, he’ll also be living with the sengil, at least until I can escape and move out on my own, so he wouldn’t want to hear such names anyway.
“I’m here now,” I said apathetically. Harris nodded and said some random, unimportant quip, and we went through the double doors and inside of the mansion.
The inside was modest and well taken care of. In front of me was an open room with burgundy and brick wai
nscoting and wooden crown moulding that looked to have been carved by hand. There were chesterfields centered around a coffee table and various plants, then in the south, north, and east walls were doors that were labelled ‘school wing’ ‘private quarters’ and right in front of me ‘dining hall’. All of these wooden walls were adorned with old pre-Fallocaust paintings, ones suited for the Victorian theme such as frescos, and the occasional golden plaque with what appeared to be motivational sayings carved into them.
There was buzzing and murmuring coming from the school wing. I looked through the door and saw a long hallway bright from the windows that covered the entire left wall, and once my ears adjusted realized I was hearing a class being taught.
“I’ll call for him Prince Elish,” the headmaster said. “He knows of your arrival and is in his quarters.”
“No need,” I said to Harris. “I’d like to observe him in his natural environment.” There was no better way to gauge who someone really was. I was curious to meet this new sengil, since we were going to be spending a lot of time together. This would be the first one that was truly my own. A servant who had been trained since six to cater to their master’s every whim, whose life was devoted to them and revolved around them. If he was going to be put into my world, I first wished to see how he acted in his own. I may never get that chance again.
Harris smiled at this, the same plastic response I got from every person I met outside of my apartment, and was pointed in the right direction. This boy, although he was my age, lived in dorm C. I wondered if C stood for chimera since apparently his room was shared with the other three sengils we would be getting, Tyler, Keela, and Silas’s new sengil Kirrel.
I glanced in the other dorm rooms as I passed them, modest setups with two beds on each side of the room and a dresser to the left of that bed and a night table to the right. There was a nook in the corner above a stain glass window which had a table and chairs and bookshelves full of books and small personal items.
My head turned as I heard a raised voice, one that sounded taunting. This made my eyes narrow and I approached the door it was coming from carefully. I tuned my hearing to catch what this voice was saying, and noticed curiously that its source was dorm C.
“You – you made me bleed. He’s going to be here any moment!”
“All you have to do is admit you took it, and it’ll all go away,” the raised voice said threateningly. “Fucking admit it.”
“He’s pinning it on me, asshole. If you want it back fucking talk to Tyler. He stole it, not–” I heard another smack and a cry from the submissive one.
Then tears.
“And now he’s going to get to see what a snively lil bitch you are. Could’a avoided it if you–” A scuffle broke out and I heard heavy breathing mixed in with cries from the submissive one. I decided then to make my presence known, and walked through the half-ajar door of dorm C.
The scene I walked in on was one that reminded me of my childhood with Nero and Garrett. A black-haired young man with a swimmer’s build muscle physique was pinning a willowy, quite boyish boy with corkscrew blond curls that all but added to his juvenile look. He had the boy by the neck, so high up that his feet were dangling several inches off of the ground. There was blood dripping down his nose as well, smudged and smeared from quick attempts to wipe it away, and red patches on a face noticeably turning a deeper shade of crimson.
I’d been rather calm up until this point, but seeing this bullying pricked the areas of my mind that had been bruised from my own bullying, both by Nero, Silas, and even Tiberius before he reformed himself. I had no patience for the stronger picking on the defenseless, especially since that blond-haired boy was my future sengil.
“What is the meaning of this?” I said, my voice booming and echoing throughout the room.
Both of their faces turned to me and collectively adopted expressions of shock. The black-haired bigger one, who had narrow eyes and pointed chin, dropped the boy and put his hands behind his back.
The boy fell and stumbled back but remained standing. He stammered an apology, his hand desperately wiping the blood from his nose, thus making it smear more.
There was a terrorized look to this one, his robin’s egg blue eyes wide and staring. But it wasn’t the black-haired one he was afraid of, the timid glances from below his brow told me it was me the boy was truly afraid of.
I looked to the black-haired one, still apologizing next to the blond boy. “I asked you a question, boy, and I expect an answer. Why were you aggressing my sengil?”
The boy looked nervously at the ground. “He stole my dessert off of my dinner tray.”
“So that allows you to physically assault him? Causing him to bleed all over himself when he told you himself his master was on his way to meet him?” I asked coolly. Adrenaline was riding up and down my body, it was an invigorating feeling having these boys so submissive in front of me. I enjoyed this feeling of power, it was intoxicating to someone who’d been on the receiving end his entire life.
“I’m sorry, Master Elish,” the black-haired boy said to me. He got down on his knees and bowed to me, something I was surprised at. I wasn’t going to tell him not to however, I enjoyed seeing him cower. I felt a thousand feet tall.
“What’s your name?”
“Keela, Master.” I figured as much. No doubt Nero would get the one with a bullying problem. My brother will either foster that, being one himself, or beat it out of him. I’d have to make sure it was the latter. “I’m… really sorry this is your first impression of me. I’ll do everything I can to change your opinion.”
“You can apologize to him as well,” I said in the same cold tone. “And for the next week you will give him whatever he wants off of your plate, even if it causes your starvation.” I motioned to the door with my chin. “Now get out of my sight.”
The boy Keela, with the nervousness emanating off of him and a rapid heartbeat that was shared between the two, turned to the blond-haired one. “Sorry,” he said. Then he lowered his head and walked by me so fast it was as if he was expecting me to take a stick to his backside once his back was to me.
The door closed and it was just me and my future sengil. The boy was still cowering on the spot, his hands behind his back and his eyes stricken and made to look all the more nervous over a tightened brow.
But oddly, before I could say something, his head turned up and he looked right at me. I watched him in silence, since it appeared he was about to do something, and observed the sengil take in a deep breath, straighten himself out, and square his feet.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Master Elish,” the boy said, in an automatic tone that suggested he’d been practising this moment for quite a while. “My name is Finneus but if it pleases you, you may call me Finn. I’m honoured and unworthy to be the sengil to such an amazing, admirable prince, and am counting down the days until I graduate from Autumnhome.”
Even though the words were automatic, I saw excitement mixed in with that timorous countenance this boy had. From my observation, I believe this boy truly was excited to become my sengil, but it was also apparent that he was terrified of me and nervous about leaving what had been his home since he was a small child.
This was interesting, but what was all the more interesting were the feelings I was experiencing inside of me. I was feeling a protectiveness towards this boy, which was strange for someone like me to be experiencing. I think it was the genuine attitude I was seeing from him, the pure feelings that weren’t muddled with pride or hidden deep down inside never to be accessed by anyone, sometimes not even by their own self. I’d only known him for several minutes, but the open-book body language I was seeing and the tones and flow of his words told me that this was a genuine creature. What a rarity.
And if he was planning on spending the rest of his days inside of this mansion he could remain that way, unfortunately this white fluffy kitten was about to be thrown in a mud pit with a pack of dogs on invisible leashes. He wou
ld wilt underneath the hands of my family, and get twisted and warped until he became someone he no longer recognized… someone he was ashamed of.
Like what had happened to me.
“It’s nice to meet you, Finn,” I said to the boy. He gave me a bright smile and seemed to swell under those simple words. “How often does Keela bother you?” I reached into my jacket, a long white coat belted in the middle, and handed him a kerchief.
Finn gazed at it like I’d just offered him a bag of gold. He took it gently, staring at it in awe, then he looked up at me. “You’re so kind… t-thank you, Master Elish.”
My family was going to eat this boy alive. “You’re the sengil of the Prince of Skyfall and Silas’s heir,” I said to him, my voice stern. “You need to act your station and get yourself a backbone. Keela isn’t the only sengil who picks on you, is he?”
Finn lowered the kerchief from his face. “No, he isn’t,” Finn admitted quietly. “I wish not to trouble you with such petty–”
“I wish for my sengil to not question what I choose to enquire about,” I said back.
Finn shrunk down at this and stammered another quick apology. “I prefer to be quiet and to stick to myself, Master Elish. The other sengils are close with each other, although they’re also competitive. Since I don’t wish to get involved, I am therefor not able to defend myself, and as such, I’m picked on and accused of things. As you have noticed, Master, I don’t really defend myself… I’m smaller than them and my looks… well, you can see it yourself.”
“You’re only fifteen,” I said back. When he was cleaned up, I motioned for him to follow me. Garrett had told me before I left that he often walked around the grounds with Tyler, I decided to do the same with mine. “Some men mature faster than others. You’ll fill out in time, it’s just your genetics.”