The Heir: A YA Fantasy Romance (The Heir Series: Book 1)

by Kayla Eshbaugh

  “soul-bonded?” I asked.

  “It is the same as marriage to us Terrians.”

  “You are the daughter of Prince Lamont?” Shad asked again, a look of shock in his eyes.

  “Mary said I was,” I nodded to her.

  “I cannot believe it. It all connects,” he exclaimed with a laugh.

  “What connects?”

  “You see, years later, Ryker made his way into the dungeons to search for your father. He ended up getting trapped in there for a time. I traveled to the first kingdom on an errand from my father, and the king. Your uncle Tarick had me thrown into the dungeon—because, I kind of tried to dethrone him, and then I met Ryker. Then we found ourselves here—on Earth.”

  “So that is how you met?”

  “I had seen him throughout my life, during my visits to the second kingdom.”

  “What happened to make him hate you?”

  “You would have to ask him that. After we came out of the cave, Ryker must have searched and searched for your father’s melody, and obviously, he found him, and Ryker, being a guardian knight, would not leave him. Guardian knights are a sworn people. It is in their very blood and soul to protect the rightful heirs of Terra, and they will do all in their power to protect and guard and fight to keep them safe. Before he left me, he acted like a guardian to me for a time. I think that without someone to guard, they feel a little useless.”

  “So you and him were friends?”

  Shad shrugged.

  “So, let me get this straight—you both used to be friends; he left you, and you went your separate ways?”

  He nodded. “That pretty much sums us up.”

  “But why does he want you to stay away from me?”

  “Because there is something between us, and it scares him. He will always need an Ancient to protect, and you are his Ancient to protect.”

  We were silent for a time after Shad’s explanation. I had so much new information to digest that I didn’t even know what to ponder first. There was the fact that my parents had this secret life and a whole other world that they had never shared with me, literally. Mary said that they didn’t want me to long for Terra like they did, but I did long for it in a way. I felt like knowing about it would have made me more complete. There was always this hole in me that needed to be filled. I looked up at the stars when I was with my father and when I was alone, and I felt peace—as if all was right every time I looked at them. I understood then why that was—why I had felt such peace while gazing up at the night sky full of stars. It was because home was in the galaxy of the stars’ light; it was always gleaming—and calling to me, telling me, that it was my home.

  Mary insisted that we make stops at random places along the coastline. For some reason, when we were near a large body of water, like the ocean, it made it more difficult to track melodies. Mary, Shad, and Keil were all shielding their melodies, but in case there were any cracks or lapses, they thought that being close to the coast was the best plan. I didn’t need to shield my melody because I had the crystal from Shad. I was very grateful for it then, laying against my chest; its warmth felt like an anchor, keeping me in place and safe.

  We drove four hours and finally arrived at some coastal town and checked in at a very old hotel, named Seagull Creek. I thought: that is just about the worst name for a beach side property that has ever been created. I mean, first of all, who likes seagulls? They poop on you and steal your food and don’t even get me started about the spreading of diseases. Then there is the obvious creek—like, really people? This is the ocean? You couldn’t be more incorrect. I stared at the sign for a while, and Shad nudged my shoulder.

  “It is just a hotel. Does the name really matter?” he smiled.

  “Shad, this is a ridiculous name, I mean, Creek, really?” I pulled my bag from the trunk and followed Mary and Keil down the outside of the building. They found our rooms, and Mary stuck the key card in, holding the door open for me.

  Maybe there is a creek nearby, Shad floated that to me.

  Maybe pigs can fly, I floated, through my melody, back to him.

  They fly on Terra.

  What? I sent him quickly.

  Just kidding—

  I shook my head as a picture of a pig flying over a babbling creek popped into my head.

  “SHAD!” Then I heard laughter in my soul, and I could not help but send it back at him. I needed that. I needed to laugh.

  That next morning, I woke up to the fog on the coast. I stretched my aching limbs from the car ride and walked to the large window of our hotel room. It overlooked the ocean, but I could not see the water because of all of the fog that blocked the view. I slipped on a sweatshirt and my shoes and made my way down into the lobby. Someone was getting coffee at a tiny little counter, and I looked around her and then noticed that they had other drinks, too. Soon, I had a cup of steaming hot chocolate, and I was headed for the deck that wrapped around one side of the hotel. I watched as the sun peeked through the fog on the deck. I listened to the crashing waves on the rocks below, still not yet visible to me. I sat in a chair and closed my eyes for a moment. The calm of the constant crashing of waves soothed my weary mind, and I focused on it. So much had happened in such a short amount of time. Ryker had known my parents were murdered, and he was looking for them and had been right in doing so. I could not help but wonder what the outcome would have been if he had chosen to be open with me—if he had told me who he was—who I was, and what exactly was going on. Maybe he knew Mary was trying to find the right time to let me know that I was an alien, but Ryker could have been more open. What I could not figure out was how I had memories of a six or seven-year old Ryker, but he was supposedly a superior human that didn’t age like me, so how was that even possible? Maybe he isn’t an alien after all, I thought as I continued to listen to the crashing of the waves. I had never heard his melody before, had I? I could remember times when I would play a song in my head, a song just for him, which reminded me of him. I stopped sipping my hot chocolate. That was it, that was his melody, I knew it, I knew the sound, and I could hum it right now.

  So I had heard Shad’s and Ryker’s melodies, but then I realized that I had never heard my parents, nor Mary’s. Was I broken? Shad had explained that hearing melodies is how humans on Terra connected when not using verbal language. All I could hear was Shad’s melody. Was that just because they all shielded their melodies? I also wondered how could my father be related to such an evil man—and his own brother, no less! How could his own brother kill his own father—my grandfather? How could he then sentence his own brother, my father, to an agonizing death? I really hoped I would never have to meet Tarick, the man who caused my family so much pain.

  Another thought came to me: what were the odds that Shad just happened to move in right across the street from me? Maybe he had a lot more to do with everything. I wondered about his family and what they might have been thinking about what happened to him—for all of this time. I wondered if they lost hope of ever seeing him again. My own uncle sentenced him to the same dungeons as my father, and like my father, he arrived here. Why? Why did they all come here? There had to be something more to all of this—I was certain. I opened my eyes and saw the sun had been chasing away more fog, and as I sat up, I could see the dark blue green of the water. I could make out the black and brown jagged rocks and watched as the waves crashed into them, spraying up white foam and causing small, little trickles of salty water to fall down the insides, water trying to drain back into the ocean before other waves crashed into the rocks again. But the cycle repeated, and the rocks’ trickling never stopped, and the waves never stopped.

  “Good morning,” Mary sat down beside me with a drink in her hand.

  “Good morning,” I replied.

  “Are you doing alright with all of this, Emma? I know it is a lot.” I thought about that question: was I okay? Although all of the new, to me, information was strange and life altering and sudden, I was handling it well. Sure,
I had like a million questions, but I was learning to accept my new life.

  “Yes, I am,” I answered, sipping some of my hot chocolate, which was now just warm chocolate. How long have I been out here? I thought.

  “You are an incredible woman, Emma.” She shook her head. “I am not sure if I could handle all of this as well as you.”

  “I do have questions.”

  “Like—?”

  “If Ryker is an alien, how do I have all these memories throughout my entire life of growing up with him, and yet, you say you all don’t age the same as Earthlings?” Mary set her cup down and looked out to the water.

  “He is a guardian knight; there is much that we do not know about them; however, it is thought that they can change and become whoever or whatever they need to be for the person or family they are protecting. I never saw him as a little boy; he was always the same Ryker. But you, you could see him the way you needed to see him until the time is right.”

  “What about school? Everyone around us thought he was our age, too.”

  “He can adapt minds, I believe, Emma, to make people see him how he needs to be seen. It is an ancient gift, only the guardian knight-line possesses. He is not able to use it for anything other than for helping to guard and protect one of the Ancient’s heirs. The Ancients set in place limits to each power they gifted to us.”

  “So he wasn’t ever a little boy, playing with me; he was always older.”

  She nodded.

  That was something strange to wrap my head around. I leaned against the back of the chair and watched the waves for a time. “I really wish that Ryker would have told me.”

  “He wanted to, but he was worried about telling you and making you worry for nothing.”

  “I was always worried. How could he think that I would not discover that something was going on? I was his best friend. Maybe most of it is made up, but for me, it was real, and I knew and loved him, and he should have told me a long time ago; you all should have.” I tried to not scream my words out near the end. I calmed my breathing and closed my eyes, letting the rhythm of the ocean calm me down for a moment.

  “I understand, Emma; I didn’t think it was right to keep you from it, but your parents did what they thought was best. Ryker could not have told you even if he had wanted to because he is sworn to do whatever your parents said.” She reached out and took my hand.

  “I am worried about him. No matter how irritated and confused I am about all the details, the truth is that I am scared, Mary. What if we never find him, or what if we do, and it is too late.” A tear dripped down my cheek, and I let it fall.

  “All we can do is hope. It’s only been a full day since he checked in with me. Maybe there is nothing wrong and we all are overreacting.”

  “Mary? Shad said he received word through his family’s company that Ryker was captured, captured by people who do not believe in the Ancients—people who want to find me and murder me just like they did my parents—because they hate us.” Another tear fell.

  “Okay, honey, I am sorry; I was trying—”

  “I just want the honest truth from now on; I think I have earned that.”

  She nodded. “Emma, we will find him.”

  I wasn’t so sure of that, and it hurt to think about it.

  “Do you know that the last conversation we had was a fight? An argument about my parents’ deaths. He blames himself; he knew it was a murder, and he blames himself. Even if he is some knight—guard-thing, he still has his limits.”

  “Ryker blames himself solely for their deaths, as any guardian knight would, I assure you. I have tried to tell him that there was nothing he could have done to prevent their deaths, but he never got over it.”

  “But he knew they were murdered, and I didn’t want him looking for the murderer. I yelled at him. He was hurting, and he was only trying to protect me and find the person responsible—for my parents’ deaths.”

  “Emma, you were healing from everything. You just lost your mother and your father, and were in a horrific crash. I do believe he understands your hesitation. You believed that you were from Earth, so he cannot fault you, Emma; he cannot.

  I spent a few more hours on that deck talking with Mary. The sun rose eventually, high in the sky, and it started to get warm out. We had already finished our drinks, but we sat there talking, and sometimes we just stared into the ocean’s waves together. We eventually walked back toward our room.

  “What do you think about you and Shad?” Mary asked me as we stood up to take a short walk before we went back to our room.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, it isn’t normal for us to be able to communicate in that way, Emma. It was something only the Ancients could do.”

  “Am I not a descendent of the ancients?”

  “It isn’t something you should take lightly. There is great power in it.”

  “What do you mean?” I looked at her as she focused on the path ahead of us.

  “There are a lot of people on Terra that I hope anyways, still believe in the ancients. The seekers are another people that the ancients blessed with a gift. They have the gift of prophecy. Many of the seekers have passed away over the years, and some do not teach the next generation what is in their blood. It is something your mom was trying to fix. We came from a small village in the first kingdom. Our village was known for giving birth to the seekers, and we trained them. We revered them and protected them. We believed that if the seekers were lost, then we would never know the way back to the ancients and light would be gone forever.”

  “What are seekers?”

  “They have the gift to seek; they seek information from the future and give prophecy. Those prophecies are recorded in a vault in our village, and when a prophecy comes to pass, a huge celebration is held to honor that seeker for receiving knowledge from the Ancients.”

  “This is all just so unreal.”

  “I know Emma, and I am so sorry. With time, you will learn how it all works.” While I highly doubted that time would help me, because it had proven to me over and over again how much of a jerk it could be, I didn’t say anything about it.

  “How come I never heard mother’s or father’s melodies?”

  “They knew how to shield them. Even though it is frowned upon, we all know how to shield our melodies.”

  “Except me,” I added, looking down at my feet.

  “Emma, you didn’t grow up on Terra. You were not trained as we were. Your melody has been suppressed for nearly sixteen years. Having a melody is new for you, sweetheart. How can you expect to shield a huge part of yourself?”

  “Yes, I guess, but still, if I am the reason Ryker is in trouble—”

  “Stop that. What is done is done. We cannot dwell on what we could have done or might have done or didn’t do. We live in the now, Emma, and right now, we are going to save Ryker.”

  I nodded as we reached our door.

  “Thank you, Mary, for talking with me. I do not know what I would do without you. I am so grateful for you.” I gave her a hug and buried my face in her shoulder.

  “I will always be here for you, Emma.”

  Search

  I SHOWERED, DRESSED, and packed my bags. For the next part of our journey, we had to drive inland for a few hours in order to reach the trail leading to the cave where Keil believed Ryker was being held. I put my bag in the trunk of the car and waited with Mary out front for Shad and Keil. They had been checking us out of the hotel and grabbing a few supplies at a local sporting goods store—because Mary and I did not have any real hiking gear. They came back with two large hiking backpacks and some light meals to carry with us.

  The road away from the coast was long. As we drove further and further away, I remembered that Mary, Keil, and Shad had to shield their souls even more because we were leaving the ocean. I watched Shad as he and Keil searched a map. They were pointing to some trails and marking things with a red pen. Mary was driving for the first stretch, and then Ke
il would switch with her.

  “But if we take this one, it will cut one hour from our hike,” Keil said with a smile.

  “Yes, Keil, but it is also a one foot wide trail, up the side of a cliff. I won’t risk that.”

  Keil nodded as if he understood that it was not a realistic route for our group.

  I was grateful for not having to scale the side of a cliff.

  “You ready?” Shad asked, holding my hand. Our melodies played back and forth together, and I found so much comfort in it.

  “As ready as I will ever be,” I replied with a fake smile.

  “All will be well, Emma; all will be well. We will find Ryker, and we will leave, and everything will be okay.”

  I nodded. I knew that Shad believed it, but I did not. I knew that it would be dangerous, and I was in no way prepared for what we were about to face.

  Hours later, the car stopped suddenly, making my head fall into Shad’s lap from off of his shoulder where I had fallen asleep. I looked up at him, and he smiled.

  “Good dreams, Sleeping Beauty?” He asked, touching my face and brushing a hair from off my cheek. His fingers lingered, caressing his electric touch into my skin. A fire was spreading within me—it was so wonderful, too wonderful—I want to kiss his mouth, his perfect mouth, his lips that lift so effortlessly into that smile—his smile. I pushed my thoughts away hoping he had not heard.

  Emma—his melody called to mine, and I could hear the longing in his melody. So, I couldn’t help but wonder why he had not kissed me yet? He seemed to want to.

  “I didn’t mean to fall asleep on you,” I said, moving from off his lap.

  “If you think I mind one bit that you fell asleep on me, then you need to get to know me a little bit better,” he winked. “We are here,” Shad continued, looking serious. I realized then that we had arrived at our destination. Mary and Keil were already out of the car, unloading our supplies.

  “I need to load up your backpack with necessities before we can begin the hike,” Shad said as we walked around to the trunk of Keil’s car.