The Soulstoy Inheritance
Jane Washington
Copyright 2015 Jane Washington
The author has provided this ebook for your personal use only. It may not be re-sold or made publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
http://www.janewashington.com
Kindle Edition
Edited by David Thomas
ISBN-10: 0994279523
ISBN-13: 978-0-9942795-2-1
Table of Contents
Chapter One: Resting Monarchs
Chapter Two: Kinship through Queenship
Chapter Three: Harrowing the Line
Chapter Four: The Pain in Trust, the Life in Dust
Chapter Five: A Glass of Tears to Dispel your Fears
Chapter Six: You Can Run, But You Can’t die
Chapter Seven: Lies, Spies and Allies
Chapter Eight: Resisting the Resistance
Chapter Nine: Burning Lashes, Battering Ashes
Chapter Ten: How the Haunted have Sauntered
Chapter Eleven: Misbehavior of the Saviour
Chapter Twelve: Respite in the Ground
Chapter Thirteen: Into the Cold
Chapter Fourteen: A Therapy of Violence
Chapter Fifteen: Harbringer of Pain
Chapter Sixteen: Antagonising the Upswing
Chapter Seventeen: Drinking with Vampires
Chapter Eighteen: How the Tainted are Sated
Chapter Nineteen: Festival of Revelation
Chapter Twenty: Fields of Betrayal
Chapter Twenty-One: The Spider’s Web
Chapter Twenty-Two: Queen of the People
Chapter Twenty-Three: From the Reign, Comes the Drought
Epilogue
About the Author
For Ishie,
I don’t know how you’re still sane.
Maybe you’re not.
Acknowledgements
First of all, thank you to the man who had to drag me to bed at sunrise every morning and make me coffee five times a day, despite my tousled appearance and general grumbling. Also, thank you to my wonderful editor. You make me look like a bit of an idiot sometimes, but I’m okay with it. A special thank you for my favourite girls, Leisa, Madison and Erin. Combined, you provide amazing support, much needed champagne breakfasts, and… well… Erin, you’re just super cute. I’m sorry, but I can’t see past your super cute-ness. Last but certainly not least, a massive thank you to Jesse, for being the very first person to buy my very first book, and for bugging me every single day to finish this one.
Chapter One
Resting Monarchs
My life had never been easy. Not by any measure. People either hated me or else they were drawn to me, a little too much for both their comfort and my own. The former was an aversion to my blood and the latter a desire for my power, for every synfee possessed some degree of allure. I had been alone for so long prior to starting at the Academy, and now I was at the epicenter of two very different kingdoms, two kingdoms that had nothing in common with each other and somehow even less in common with me. A year ago, I had nothing. Now I had friends, enemies and people in-between… mostly enemies, though.
Harbringer burst into the room just as I bent to check the King’s pulse, causing me to tumble from my crouched position in fright.
“It’s not what it looks like,” I pleaded with him before he had a chance to accuse.
His eyes were wide, disbelieving. I followed the level expression, witnessing the scene as he might, with a rapidly increasing sense of discomfort. From Hazen, who was barely managing to retain consciousness on the bed—boasting the façade of a man who had just been dragged beneath a parade of carriages—to the unconscious King, and then back to me. I was still crouched over Fenrel’s too-big and oddly crumpled body.
“It looks like someone knocked out the ruler of the Read Empire beside his son’s sick bed.” Harbringer strode forward and brushed my hands aside to check Fenrel’s pulse himself.
“Well when you put it like that, I guess it’s exactly what it looks like.” I slinked back to give him some room.
Fenrel groaned then, and Harbringer shot to his feet, grasping my arm and drawing me toward the door.
“He’ll be fine, but if he wakes up and sees you, you’ll be dead.”
I quickly scrutinised Hazen, but his eyes had already fallen closed again, and this room was the last place I wanted to be when Fenrel woke up. I let Harbringer pull me through the doorway and out into the hall, where two guards walked toward us from the top of the staircase. He slowed immediately and I collided with him, my forehead bumping the center of his back. It was like running into a stone barricade. After I recovered, we continued toward the men at a more civilized pace. Both of the guards nodded to Harbringer, eyes sliding over me only briefly. Harbringer fell into a run again once we were clear of them, pulling me behind him until we neared the ground floor. He took me down a back staircase through several narrow, damp-smelling passages that spearheaded into a maze of servants quarters. Many startled workers were forced to jump hastily from our path, muttering to each other.
“This is not good,” he muttered, just as we tumbled from the kitchens, out through a service entry in the side of the building.
“I’m not going to apologise,” I panted, clutching a pain in my side as he dragged me to a small maintenance gate at the end of the well-worn path from the kitchen exit.
“Dammit, Harrow.” He slammed the gate behind us and then spun suddenly, pinning me back against it, his eyes fierce. “If you ever take off like that again without me, I won’t be responsible…”
I gripped the wrought-iron bars behind me, my breath catching on a choking gasp, the speed of his ranger-like movements more of a fright than his warning, though that look in his eye would have been enough to send me running on a good day. He seemed to realise how badly he had scared me, and backed off the tiniest bit, but his hands rose to press against the bars on either side of my head, deliberately trapping me in.
“Did you save him?”
“Yes.”
The corner of his mouth turned up briefly, “And I take it Nareon… distracted the King?”
“I… yes.” I hung my head, ashamed because Nareon was my burden now. A burden I needed to learn to control.
A wailing sound filled the air, trembling through the ground and setting my teeth to chattering. It had the robust tenor of a horn, reverberating from one of the higher towers at my back, still enclosed within the castle walls.
“Fenrel woke up,” Harbringer groaned, “let’s get you out of here before he has you hung.”
He grabbed my wrist again and turned, barely waiting for me to gather my momentum before he was moving at an impossible speed. People on the paths beside the dirt road mostly ignored us. It had to be because the alarm had sent most of the Market District into a flurry of panicked activity, two more fleeing people were of little significance in light of the unrest brought about by the distress horn. It was possible that this was the first alarm to go off even though the castle had been attacked earlier. That struck me as strange, but I had no time to dwell on it as we came to a breathless stop outside of my father’s house.
We barreled through the door and Harbringer slammed it shut, hands grasping fistfuls of his hair in pure agitation, the expression on his face strained, as if he were grasping for some notion which eluded him. It seemed as though the mental strings that he attempted to grasp were merely slipping through his fingers; no matter how he pulled at his hair, understanding could not be reached. I wondered if he were as confused about the alarm as I was, or if some other complexity perplexed him.
“He saw me.”
“Of course he saw you. Did he also see Nareon?”
“No, just me.”
“And then he wakes up, with a nasty bruise on his head and no way of telling that his son has been helped at all.”
“Hazen woke up,” I countered, hurrying after Harbringer as he moved into the other room, probably to block out those windows too.
“He looked pretty unconscious to—“
Harbringer’s reply died off, and just before I stepped into the room, he turned and grasped my arms, trying to turn me away.
“Harrow, no…”
But it was too late.
“Dad!” I screamed, pushing past Harbringer, and falling to the carpeted floor, my hands finding my father’s white face, and then his chest, skirting the knife embedded between the second and third button of his vest.
He was still almost warm, the death mark on his forearm looking faded and dull as it lay beside my knee. I shook him, the tears blinding my vision as I tore the knife from his chest in one sickening movement and tossed it aside.
My voice tore with a plethora of rough, half-formed words as pain spread down my throat and welled within my chest. I was strangling on nothing, my head swimming, black spots flashing across my vision, “Hell… Say something… open your eyes… Please don’t do this!”
I could hear Harbringer swearing, could feel him behind me, pulling me away. When his hand covered my mouth, I finally stopped struggling, and the sounds from outside permeated my despair. There were soldiers on the lawn already. They were shouting at us to come out.
“I was wrong,” Harbringer whispered in my ear. “The King didn’t wake up and raise the alarm. He didn’t wake up at all.”
I felt my whole body slacken, and if Harbringer weren’t holding me up, I would have dropped straight to the ground.
“Nareon killed him?” My voice sounded flat, emotionless.
What did I care? My father was dead.
“No, he was fine before we left. Someone killed him after we ran.”
“Who?”
He released me and I fell to my father’s side again, this time silently.
“I have no idea.” He paced to the window, where the soldiers were barely visible, mere flashes of gold and red peeking through the gaps in the curtains.
I grasped my father’s wrist, trying to fool myself into thinking that he might still be alright, but his skin was considerably colder than the last time I had touched him. The stiffness of death was beginning to set in. My flame-haired, warm-hearted father was turning cold.
“Joseph! Bring the synfee out and we won’t harm her!” someone shouted, banging on the front door.
“We make no promises for you though,” someone else muttered, sounding far too close.
There was a thump, a groan, and then another person yelled, “Nobody will be hurt if you just come out! Don’t make this harder than it has to be!”
Harbringer moved back to me, plucking the knife from the carpet, and turning it over in his hand, his expression dark.
“Harrow, look.”
“Bea,” I reminded him numbly, not even realising I had corrected him, as I took the bloodied knife he offered. I was on auto-pilot.
On the handle, a message had been carved.
You should have killed me.
I stared down at it in shock. It was a long time before my eyes wandered back to Harbringer, who appeared just as perplexed as I was. Our silent, private universe of shared confusion was invaded by the sound of a new commotion outside.
“Fetch the King’s Guard! They have another body in there; the synfee was carving it up, I saw the knife in her hand!” A silence descended for the barest of seconds, and then there was chaos. “Take the fastest horse and head straight to the barracks, have them dispatch all men to surround the street. Now!”
I spun around, my eyes meeting the gaze of a soldier through the gap in the curtain, and then Harbringer was pulling me to my feet again.
“Is there a back door?” he asked, hauling me out of the room.
I glanced once more at my father, a last tear spilling down my cheek as I tried to memorise his cold, pale face. I had an awful feeling it might be my last chance to say goodbye. Tying the bloodied dagger to my belt, I jogged toward the back of the house, Harbringer close behind me, and pushed through the door of the kitchen. We rushed to the door leading outside and had almost made it before a crashing sound behind us had me pausing.
“Miss Harrow!” Gretal gasped, falling out of a cupboard and spilling a number of pots out onto the floor. “I was so afraid! That man… there was a hood covering his face… shouldn’t have let him… he just…”
“Gretal,” I made a move toward her, but Harbringer grabbed my hand, his eyes on the housekeeper.
“We can’t stay, there are soldiers outside. They think Beatrice killed the King, and now her father. We have to leave now.”
Gretal squared her shoulders, pushing the rest of the way out of her hiding place, “You are my… mistress now… now that… It is all my fault—“
I swallowed and cut across her, not wanting her to voice the words. I knew that she would turn herself in to protect me, even if she had never liked me in the past. It wouldn’t work. She would probably die too.
“I’m taking you with me. Hurry, Gretal.”
We burst out the back door just as three of the soldiers rounded the side of the house and Harbringer flung out his arm, causing a large slab of earth to rise with a slow, grinding effort from the ground. It rose until it was the height of my father’s house, and I didn’t check to make sure it left no gap between this house and the one beside it. Harbringer wouldn’t have made such a mistake. We raced around the back of the row of houses, our pace a little slower now that we had Gretal in tow, though I found myself strangely glad of her presence.
When we reached the Black Barracks, Harbringer disappeared for a few minutes and returned leading three horses, which we took through the gate into the abandoned garden. The barracks themselves were empty, which meant that the kingdom’s deadliest weapon had amassed at the castle, where there was no longer a threat. We had to skirt the wall until it connected up with one of the game trails, as the northern forest was otherwise too dense for the animals to be led through. Once we were mounted, there was no formal acknowledgement of the path that we would travel, but I turned in the direction of the one place that I knew no Read soldier would be able to follow us. Harbringer trailed me, having come to the same conclusion. A few hours later, as we drew near to the wastelands, I slowed my horse to come up beside Gretal. I would have to prepare her before we crossed over.
She looked up from the trail, meeting my eyes with a devastated expression. It was the first time that she had ever looked to me with something other than fear.
“Gretal…” I hesitated.
“You’re going to the Tainted Ones. I know.” She twisted her hands in the reins, her expression worried. “Will we be safe?”
“The soldiers can’t follow us over the border. There is some kind of repulsion enchantment. If they tried, they would just turn right back, thinking that there was something really important that needed to be done in their own kingdom. The only way you can cross is if someone takes you. Someone who has gone over before.”
“Oh.” She looked down again and I dreaded the question that came next. “I didn’t mean the soldiers…” She hesitated. “I meant…”
“The synfees?”
“Them. Yes.”
“Their King is dead. He died tonight or…” I looked at the sun, beginning to peek over the edges of the trees, wondering how I wasn’t yet tired. I had battled a group of powerful Force-users, been forced to kill Nareon, saved
Hazen and fled the execution of Fenrel only to arrive at the execution of my father, all in the space of a single night. “He died last night,” I corrected myself. “He kind of left me in charge of, well, everything.”
“He what?” Gretal seemed to lose even her sadness. The mask of everything that I had known her to be so far—fear and social rigidity; anguish and sadness—all crumbled away until only stark astonishment remained.
“Their rulers are chosen differently to ours,” I tried to explain. “The old King was a complicated man. He breathed manipulation. If you ever found out something that he was hiding, it was only because he wanted you to. This is all a part of some grand scheme that he has whittled into being. And I suppose none of us will really know the truth until it’s too late.”
“But he’s dead.”
“Yes,” I muttered half-heartedly. “He’s dead.” And determined to haunt me forever, until he finds a way to manipulate himself back into the world of the living.
“We’re almost there,” Harbringer called over his shoulder.
I turned back to Gretal, reaching over and grasping her hand. She stiffened, but I ignored her. Gone was the little synfee girl who cringed whenever a stranger looked at her, or one of her own friends touched her. Someone harder and stronger now possessed my body.
“You’ll be safe,” I assured her. “I’ll keep you safe.”
I’d have to. Fenrel hadn’t been much of a loss to me, but once upon a time, before Hazen, Cale and Rose; before Harbringer and Nareon… there had been my father. My entire life. My only friend. Gone.
We dismounted to cross the border, and I held tight to Gretal’s hand. She pulled away at first, as the enchantment worked its manipulation on her mind, and then she was clutching me as the usual group of soldiers ran to meet us.
“Lady Queen!” Grenlow broke free of them, and deposited a quick bow before me, his eyes sliding only briefly to the other two. “It is good of you to return so soon. The people are restless that you have made no formal appearance.”
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