Feral (The Irisbourn Chronicles Book 1)

by Victoria Thorne

  “The Strongbourn were blessed with the ability to heal. They were assigned the responsibility of maintaining the health of the people.”

  “Are you a Strongbourn?” I was intrigued by the idea of Adrian healing anything. He looked far too strong and dangerous to be a healer, but perhaps all Divinbloods were supposed to look that way.

  “No, I’m Bloodbourn.”

  “Oh, well, I guess I just figured, since you asked if I was hurt that time I fell off my gate, and today you bandaged my hand,” I explained sheepishly.

  Adrian looked disturbed. “If I were Strongbourn, you wouldn’t have needed a bandage.”

  “Oh.”

  “May I continue?”

  I nodded in acquiescence.

  “The Beastbourn were the shapeshifters, capable of changing into the feral animals that had ravaged their people. They were created as a form of defense, so that Fallyrian animals would never again become a danger to men.”

  “Arisella is a Beastbourn?” I tested.

  “Yeah, and a nasty one too.” Adrian glanced at the door, as if he were hoping that his sister had heard him.

  “I second that,” I concurred loudly for Arisella’s benefit. A disgruntled “harrumph” emerged from the next room, and Adrian suppressed a laugh.

  “The Bloodbourn became the race of warriors, created purely for the sake of killing. The gods gave them the gift to produce weapons from their own blood, as well as the ability to manipulate the dark beasts of Fallyre even the Beastbourn had no hope of slaying.”

  “Wait, back up. Weapons from blood?” I cringed at the thought. “How does that work?”

  “Would you like to see?” Adrian offered, as if it were nothing more than showing me his driver’s license. Speaking of which, did he even have a license?

  In the back of my brain, a sensible little voice was screaming, “NO! I do not want to see this guy make lethal weapons out of his own blood. That is unsanitary and insane, and I am probably just having one massive panic attack right now!”

  However, that small voice was small, and therefore easily overpowered by the larger, morbidly intrigued part of me that really wanted to see Bloodbourn Adrian in action.

  “Okay.”

  Adrian rolled up the sleeve of his button-up shirt, exposing his pale wrist.

  “Ready?”

  I could see the excitement in his eyes. “Yeah,” I gulped. “Uh, are you?”

  Adrian closed his eyes. “I’m always ready.”

  His brow furrowed in concentration. When I looked back at his wrist, I could see his skin stretching at a fine point from within the muscle. It looked like a shard of his bone had split from his skeleton and was trying to escape. The point became sharper and higher until something dark cut through the white of his skin. I jumped in surprise. Adrian’s hand was suddenly enclosed around an ebony needle-like blade.

  The sight of it sent shivers down my spine.

  “Well, that wasn’t as messy as I thought it would be,” I admitted breathlessly, earning me a chuckle from Adrian. “That doesn’t seem like such a deadly ability, though.”

  In that instant, Adrian’s expression turned from bright to grim.

  “You don’t think so?” Adrian flipped the smooth blade through his fingers in contemplation.

  In a rapid flash of movement, he flung the blade at the opposite wall, where it promptly buried itself in the wood. The only evidence of the weapon was the clean, deep hole it had disappeared within.

  “Imagine dozens of those being aimed at your head. Imagine fighting an opponent who never runs out of weapons. And they don’t necessarily have to be shaped like that. We can make whatever blade we want.” Adrian’s eyes burned intensely into mine, as if he were trying to describe to me the importance of something he knew he would never be able to communicate clearly enough. “Never underestimate the Bloodbourn.”

  “I’ll make sure to remember that,” I murmured, taken aback by his sudden seriousness. “I want to hear the rest of the story.”

  “Where was I?”

  “Something about the Bloodbourn mind controlling animals.”

  “Oh, that’s right. Anyway,” Adrian began, “the gods had intended the Bloodbourn to be the strongest line of offense, in the possibility that the men of Fallyre would meet a challenge too great for the Beastbourn.

  “Finally, the Spellbourn received the ability to harness magic through curses, charms, and incantations. However, the Spellbourn’s greatest strength lay in their abilities to complement the powers of the other races. Thus, the Spellbourn were created as a second line of defense, behind the Beastbourn, as well as a form of support to the other groups.”

  “That makes four.” I scratched my head perplexedly. “Which one am I?”

  “None,” Adrian responded.

  “But I thought you said I was –”

  “You are. I haven’t gotten to your part yet.”

  I became silent.

  “In the hope that the ancient men might be able to restore order to the world, the gods had been quite generous with the Divinbloods. However, the Divinbloods did not use their new gifts as the gods had wished. Instead of embracing each other’s strengths and uniting, the Divinbloods fragmented into four separate nations and migrated to different areas of the world. Their newly-acquired holy gifts only awakened their insatiable lust for power.

  “Each Divinblood nation became consumed with the desire to attain ultimate control over its counterparts, and the Divinbloods began to violently clash amongst themselves. Rather than create harmony in Fallyre, they enslaved the native creatures and bathed the world in blood.

  “The gods, disillusioned with Fallyre due its chaos and bloodshed, were said to have left our world, similar to the way one would abandon a failed experiment. During their absence, the gods were designing a new world, free of the perilous creatures they had created on Fallyre. This world was created to be safer, more balanced, and more practical than ours. When the gods were finished, they named it Earth.

  “As the gods nurtured their new planet to maturity, they became utterly enthralled with the new race of humans they had created.”

  I coughed again, but this time in pride. Who would have thought the gods would abandon a race of super humans for utterly average mortals? Obviously the gods wouldn’t have done that if earthlings were such pitiful, weak creatures.

  “However, while Earth thrived, Fallyre fell apart. The Divinbloods’ prolonged war had brought them dangerously close to destroying themselves. Thus, the Divinbloods, again on the precipice of demise, made a second plea to the gods, who once more chose to show mercy.

  “In order to assist the Divinbloods, the gods created a fifth race of men capable of possessing multiple divine abilities, rather than only one. Wary of making the same mistake twice, the gods carefully designed the nature of this new race to be honest, just, and less susceptible to corruption, so that they would be more inclined to act for the good of their world rather than for themselves. As the most reasonable and powerful beings of their world, these new men were intended to become the eternal rulers and guardians of Fallyre, so that their world would never again slip into disorder.

  “The gods marked their new race with piercing purple eyes, so all Divinbloods could recognize and respect the peacekeepers. For this reason, the new men became known as the Irisbourn.”

  I gasped in realization. “I’m an Irisbourn.”

  “Yes,” Adrian affirmed. The sides of his mouth twitched up as he watched my stunned expression.

  “Keep going.”

  “Grateful for the gods’ aid, the Divinbloods willingly accepted the Irisbourn as their new rulers. The gods watched as Fallyre began to function peacefully just like they had initially hoped it would. Pleased by the improvement, the gods welcomed Fallyre back under their protection.” Adrian stopped.

  I assumed he was giving me an opening to ask questions. I struggled to organize my thoughts into coherent questions and then triage them. “If I’
m Irisbourn, does that mean I have the abilities of the Beastbourn, Bloodbourn, Spellbourn, and Strongbourn?” It struck me that I sounded almost greedy, inquiring if I had all these abilities when Adrian and Arisella only possessed one.

  “It’s possible, but not likely,” Adrian said with candor. “Most Irisbourn had only two or three abilities. Very rarely an Irisbourn ended up with one, but it was even rarer for an Irisbourn to have four. It had something to do with the gods wanting the Irisbourn to be only as powerful the world required them to be.”

  “Oh,” I replied. “So which abilities do I have?”

  “Well, right now we’re certain that you have the Beastbourn ability.”

  I frowned. That meant I had the same ability as Arisella. “How do you know?”

  “You changed during your fight with Aris. Don’t you remember?” Adrian blinked, surprised.

  “Changed what? Changed clothes?” I was clueless. The last thing I could remember was falling onto the ground like an imbecile after my embarrassing attack on Arisella.

  “No, you changed into a big black cat. It was a.. a…” Adrian stared off into the distance, trying to remember the word. He grimaced. “I’m not familiar with your animals,” he admitted. “ARISELLA, WHAT DID AMBER CHANGE INTO AGAIN?” he bellowed at empty space.

  “A panther!” said a muffled voice from the wall beside us.

  “That’s right, a panther.”

  “I did what? I didn’t become a –”

  Then I remembered the searing pain, my shredded clothes, my sudden proximity to the ground. I had been changing, just as I had seen Arisella change.

  “But why a panther?” I muttered, before I answered my own question again. I groaned in understanding.

  Damn Pierce High’s stupid subliminal panthers. Well, I guess I could have changed into something worse, like the armadillo on the cover of my biology book. “So how will I know what else I can do, if I even can do anything else?”

  “You see, there’s a problem.” Adrian became troubled. “Summoning each ability puts an extreme amount of stress on your body, especially you since you were just human. You can barely handle the Beastbourn change as it is. You can’t sustain your animal form for over a minute and you immediately faint. Not that that’s bad,” Adrian said quickly when he saw my lowered expression. “That’s actually pretty impressive for your circumstances. However, because you were recently human, your body is weaker than ours. Trying to initiate further abilities could potentially kill you. We’ll have to wait until you’re stronger, whenever that may be, before you can try.”

  My face fell in disappointment. Discovering I was Irisbourn was like winning the lottery, but then being told I couldn’t spend my money until I turned twenty-one.

  “You will get stronger,” Adrian assured me. “It will take time, though.” Adrian shifted his weight on the dresser. It couldn’t have been very comfortable up there.

  I sighed. “Why don’t you sit on the bed?” I patted the sheets in front of me.

  Adrian clucked his tongue. “You’re a little quick to be sharing your bed, don’t you think?”

  I felt the heat rise to my face. I hadn’t meant it that way. “Well I hope that dresser makes your legs numb,” I muttered, intentionally letting my irritation color my voice.

  Adrian chuckled and helped himself to the bed anyway. He sat on the far end, as if to show me that he would give me as much space as I needed to be comfortable. “It was a joke. Gods, Amber.”

  “Whatever.”

  “Now, do you want to hear more?”

  I sat up straighter. “You haven’t finished the story?”

  “The early stories are nearly over. But our history is extensive, and there are more things you need to know.”

  “Yes then.”

  “After creating the new race, the gods were still fearful that Fallyre might slip back into disarray, even under the Irisbourn, so the gods presented the Irisbourn with an apparatus called the ‘pons.’ The Irisbourn could use it to create a portal to the human world. That way if the Irisbourn ever felt that they were losing control over Fallyre, they would be able to draw inspiration from the human world that the gods so cherished.” Adrian stopped and glanced at the orb hanging around my neck. “You’re wearing yours now.”

  “My mother’s necklace,” I murmured. No wonder it had seemed like more than an ordinary piece of jewelry.

  Adrian stuck his hand into his pocket and withdrew another pons. Its metal claws had different engravings than mine did, and the fluid inside the orb was more crimson than golden. Otherwise, it looked nearly identical to the one around my neck.

  “Their appearances change, depending on the families they’ve belonged to. I’ve heard some people say that they’re not completely inanimate either, that they hold the memories of their prior owners.”

  “Why do you have one if you aren’t Irisbourn?”

  For a moment, Adrian seemed unsure of how he was going to answer. Just as I was about to move onto the next of my hundred questions, Adrian spoke. “We needed one to get to Earth, of course. It’s the only way to move between our worlds.”

  He hadn’t quite answered my question, but I decided to let it go.

  “Why are you here?”

  “That’s wrapped up in the information I haven’t told you.”

  “Well then, you should most certainly tell me.”

  “Well then, you should most certainly stop interrupting,” Adrian said in a humored voice. He closed his eyes again.

  “For many centuries, Fallyre prospered under the Irisbourn. The Irisbourn were respected for their reasonable rule and sensible judgment. They were, in all ways, the best gifts the gods ever gave us.

  “Generations of Divinbloods untouched by war lived and died. Irisbourn who had never seen true bloodshed relaxed their rule and stretched their trust. Meanwhile, the Bloodbourn, the race created to kill, grew restless during the era of peace. The arrival of the Irisbourn made their purpose obsolete, and for this the Bloodbourn felt cheated.

  “The Bloodbourn united through this bitterness, and that bitterness quickly grew into hatred of the Irisbourn. They established their own secluded society, which outsiders never entered and insiders never left. A fierce Bloodbourn illegitimately established himself as his people’s Blood King. Under his rule, Bloodbourn culture became so distinct from that of other Divinbloods, that they began to be known as ‘the backwards barbarians.’”

  “How were they so backwards?” I broke in.

  Adrian did not look upset that I had interrupted. “Socially, they became more primitive in their practices and culture. Children were learning how to throw knives when they barely knew how to walk. The status of women drastically declined, and the Blood King transformed his kingdom into a strict, unforgiving patriarchy.”

  “That really is backwards.” Children throwing knives? I shuddered at the thought.

  “The Irisbourn King and Queen of the time were troubled by the Bloodbourn’s contentious actions. However, they were wary of being the first to disrupt the peace that had been unbroken for centuries. So instead of creating discord, they allowed the Bloodbourn to branch off from the other Divinbloods, as long as they did so peacefully. Despite Bloodbourn antagonisms, the King and Queen remained beloved by the Spellbourn, Strongbourn, and Beastbourn, who adored the ruling family and blindly believed the era of peace would never end.

  “The King and the Queen also had three daughters, said to be the most lovely and talented Irisbourn in all of Fallyre. Even the Blood King was not immune to their enchantment, and he soon found himself captivated by stories of the eldest daughter’s beauty. He became so fixated on having the most alluring woman of Fallyre as his wife, that he was willing to break the Bloodbourn law he had created, which forbade the Bloodbourn from marrying others outside their race.

  “The Blood King proposed the marriage to the King and Queen under the pretense of a compromise. He claimed that the marriage would help bridge the gap between the
Bloodbourn Kingdom and theirs, as the Irisbourn princess would become the Blood Queen. However, when the King and Queen presented the offer to their daughter, she vehemently refused. This only made the Blood King more persistent in his advances toward her. He sent her countless servants, luxurious gifts, and the rarest beasts of his kingdom, hoping to lure her to his side. She continued to refuse, and the Blood King grew increasingly impatient.”

  “The Blood King sounds like a pompous jerk,” I muttered.

  Adrian grunted in agreement.

  “Then, one day, the eldest princess was said to have vanished. Immediately everyone assumed that the Blood King had been responsible, that he had spirited her away to his palace in the dead of the night. But the Irisbourn King and Queen assured their people that this could not have been so, and extensive searches for the lost princess were carried out across Fallyre. She was never seen again.

  “The Blood King was furious that the most beautiful woman of Fallyre had slipped through his fingers. As repayment for what he had lost, he demanded that the royal family guarantee him marriage to the second princess. The Irisbourn Queen, offended by the Blood King’s audacity, publically spurned his demand. Enraged that he had been shamed by the words of a woman, the Blood King swore that the royal family would pay for their insolence, and he retreated to the seclusion of his kingdom. The outside world did not hear from him again for years.

  “Months after their daughter’s disappearance, the Irisbourn King and Queen succumbed to a mysterious illness, leaving their kingdom in mourning and the Bloodbourn in celebration. The second princess inherited her parents’ throne, and her kingdom celebrated her as the new Queen of Fallyre; however, because she was a woman, the Bloodbourn refused to recognize her as the legitimate ruler of her own kingdom, much less Fallyre.

  “The Bloodbourn were convinced that the rule of a woman would bring their world to its demise. The Blood King ceased this opportunity to proclaim himself the one true king of Fallyre. Even after the new Queen wed an Irisbourn who would stand by her side as King, the Blood King continued to assert his claim to the throne. By manipulating his people through their hatred of the Irisbourn, he convinced them that the Bloodbourn, not the Irisbourn, were meant to be the true rulers of Fallyre.