Hereditary (10 page)

I could see the relief in her eyes, though she did a good job of quickly covering it up.

“Don’t be silly, your beauty is natural. If anyone should be ashamed of playing up their beauty, it’s those shape-changers. Don’t you ever wonder if they are all fat and ugly beneath the masks they put on every morning, fooling us all?”

I found myself laughing. “Maybe.”

Chapter Seven

It Begins and Ends with Pain

To keep Rose happy, I let her lead me back down the darkening corridors and staircases to the entrance chamber, which now held a scattering of people who all seemed to be moving through into another room. They didn’t stare at me as much as they usually did, and certainly not with the same amount of disgust or fear, and I realised that this was Rose’s doing. Either me being on her arm or me looking so utterly different was working in my favour, or perhaps they didn’t even recognise me at all. Rose led me through to another chamber off the main one, which was where most of the people had gathered—or so I thought—until I saw the outside grounds beyond.

“Wow… did Hazen invite the whole kingdom or something?”

“Word spreads quickly around here,” came the voice of Hazen himself, close behind us.

We both turned, and Hazen barely glanced at me, allowing his sister to give him a kiss on the cheek, but I could see a group of girls waving her over to them, so I was unsurprised by her next words.

“Well, you’re in capable hands now, Hazen will look after you, I’m sure,” she said as she gave me a pat on the arm and then ran off.

Hazen stared after her confusedly, and then began to turn from me, “look I’m sorry, but—” he began, before something made him pause, and he slowly turned back around to face me.

His eyes widened and swept over me, before flying back up to meet mine. It was strange, that whatever sparked in his dark gaze had my breath catching, and the silence stretched between us, sizzling with something indefinable as I waited for him to speak. Finally, another voice broke through whatever held us, and Cale walked up, ignoring me just as Hazen had.

“Hey, have you seen—wow…”

He had followed Hazen’s stare to me, and his eyes swept over me in much the same way, until a small flicker of discomfort passed over his features, and he turned to Hazen, who still hadn’t spoken a word. Hazen himself had gone blank again, and had tilted his head slightly to return the stare with an arch of one dark eyebrow.

“Rose got to me,” I finally said, by way of explanation, though it was more of a desperate attempt to break the weird tension.

Both heads snapped back to me, and Cale, as reliable as always, picked up the conversation from there.

“Pretty good crowd tonight, imagine how furious they’d be if they knew what they were celebrating.”

Whatever else they said was soon lost on me, because now I, too, was forced to face what we were hear to celebrate—or, in my case—to hide from. As was the common pattern over the last four days, as soon as the worries surfaced, so did the debilitating moodiness that would usually have darkened the world around me, if I hadn’t learnt to control it a little better by now. Unfortunately, that left me to deal with a sudden desire to smash the nearest object into the nearest wall. Spotting an unopened bottle of wine on a table not far away, manned by a butler, who was delicately pouring glasses and arranging them on trays for other servants to carry around, I turned from Cale and Hazen’s conversation. It was harder to move through the crowd now that people didn’t give me a wide berth wherever I walked, but I soon reached my goal, and snatched up the bottle of wine, holding it out to the surprised butler with an innocently imploring look that I had seen Rose use earlier. The man reached for the bottle, almost by reflex.

“You want this one, ma’am?”

“I need you to uncork it.”

To my surprise, he actually seemed to blush, and then hastened to do my bidding, uncertainly handing me back the now-open bottle.

“Thanks,” I offered, flashing him a smile.

He smiled back automatically, though I was beginning to worry about the dazed look in his eye, and quickly moved away from him and back to the others, pretending that I didn’t notice that they were staring at me too.

“Am I golden?” I asked Cale in a low voice, taking a quick swig from the bottle.

“I’m not following.”

“Golden,” I repeated, pointing at my hair, and then at my eyes, “everyone is acting dazed, am I golden?”

He laughed, and took the bottle from me, taking a swig himself before handing it over to Hazen, who passed it back to me without drinking any, his dark eyes watchful.

“They’re dazed because you don’t have your ‘
back the hell off’
sign on today. You’re not golden.”

I was relieved, but frustratingly, all of the tension I had acquired over the last few seconds remained, and I took another, deeper swig of the wine. It was my first drink as an adult, though children in the Read empire were generally given cups of wine with dinner from the age of sixteen onwards.

“What time is it?”

“You have two hours,” Hazen answered automatically.

I paused, the bottle halfway raised to my mouth again, something in my brain clicking together.

“How long have you known?” I asked, aware that my tone sounded accusatory.

“The whole time.”

I looked over at Cale, who grimaced, and looked a little guilty.

“How
much
do you know?” I amended, looking back to Hazen.

“Honestly, your thoughts are a mess, they have been almost incomprehensible the last two days. But I gather that something is supposed to happen when you turn eighteen, and you want to be around me, in case you lose control.”

Now it was my turn to grimace. “Does that make me selfish?”

“You weren’t thinking about yourself. You were worried about the damage you could do.”

“Yeah,” I mocked, “I’m a regular saint.”

I took another large swallow and almost spit it all over Cale when Kaylee approached us and slipped her arm through Hazen’s, planting a kiss on his cheek and winking over at Cale. She was wearing one of the ‘swoop necklines’ that Rose had tried in vain to get me to wear, and my eyes were irrevocably drawn to the flesh that spilled out, even as she finally recognised me.

“What the hell is the synfee doing here?”

“Getting drunk, apparently,” answered Kai, the other blond elven girl that generally hung around their group.

I tipped the bottle to her in a mocking salute, and then went right back to drinking, turning my back to ignore them both. In truth, I wanted to skip off and disappear somewhere, but I didn’t dare wander too far from Hazen. And then I realised… what if
he
wanted to sneak off somewhere? The memory of Hazen up against the building with Kaylee draped all over him flashed through my mind, and I accidentally choked on my wine. I heard a laugh behind me, and I had the disturbing impression that it had been Hazen himself, and while I was momentarily tempted to turn around, just to see what he looked like when he laughed, the need to escape was stronger.

“I’m going to wander around for a while,” I whispered to Cale, already stepping away from them.

He turned and slipped his arm through mine easily.

“Alright, Little Synfee, let’s take a turn through the garden.”

We threaded through people, with me clutching my wine bottle possessively to my chest, and skipped down the stairs into the lit garden beyond, which seemed to stretch on for yards. Cale didn’t seem inclined to talk as he usually did, and we walked in silence, me preoccupied with my wine, and him with…

“What’s the matter?” I asked.

“You’re friend is following us,” he said, casting a glance behind us, his expression—as I was only now realising—was strained, worried even.

“What friend?”

“The one who walked you home the other night.”

I froze, and Cale looked down at me, alarmed.

“We have to go back to the party,” I whispered, already turning back the way we had come, and pulling Cale behind me, cursing myself for not remembering earlier that the whole point of this party was to be surrounded by people.

Of course, what my wine-muddled mind was apparently overlooking was the fact that someone
following
us naturally would have been behind us to start with, and when the beautiful man stepped into our path, I could only freeze again.

“Hello, Bea,” he said politely. “Fancy seeing you here, and tonight, of all nights.”

Feeling the panic get a better hold of me than I had of it, I could only whimper, and Cale’s arm moved around my shoulders protectively, though he didn’t say anything yet, for which I was thankful. Of course,
Cale is here
, Nareon was either going to get what he wanted with minimal fuss, or he’d get what he wanted, and throw aside anyone that stood in his way in the process.

Clearing my throat, I forced my tone to sound as composed as I could manage.

“Nareon, this is my friend Cale, Cale this is Nareon.”

“Also a friend,” Nareon supplied, stepping lightly forward to offer his hand.

Cale’s answering smile was as easy as ever, and he shook the other man’s hand. Unfortunately, Nareon wasn’t going to play as nice, and his eyes fell upon me, his fae glamor in place, though those grey eyes were still inhumanly beautiful, even when they dropped to my lips and a thrill so intense ran through me that I was surprised I didn’t whimper again, or faint.

“I see your cut healed, I’ll have to be careful not to be so rough next time.”

That was where he had made his mistake, and the very comment that was meant to send me over the edge was the only thing that that kept me composed in that moment.

“I see,” was all I said, because, abruptly, I
did
see.

For some reason, he
wanted
me to lose control. His eyes narrowed, and the flash of anger that swept over his face was so obvious, I couldn’t help feeling a small twinge of victory. It was short-lived, however, as his compulsion swept over me, and my legs really did buckle this time.

“God,” I gasped, placing the wine bottle down carefully beside me, though my hands were now shaking terribly.

“Bea? What the hell was that?” Cale was beside me in an instant, turning my face up to his. “Talk to me, please.”

Instead of answering him, I looked past him, feeling the compulsion double, though for the moment, it was only holding me where I was. Nareon himself seemed to have disappeared. Cale gave me a good shake, and I turned back to him, trying to blink away the sudden haze that slipped over my vision.

As much as I hate to see these humans touching you, you have to kiss him now. The other one is watching, it’s just what you need, to get you past that last barrier.

Nareon’s voice in my head was as soft as it was when he spoke aloud, and my body immediately ached to do exactly as he ordered me, though my mind was suddenly screaming in protest. Cale’s eyes widened, and I realised that I was crying, but the compulsion was too strong, and with a gasp of pain, I pushed myself the rest of the way to close the space between us, pressing my mouth to his. His reaction was shocked at first, but that disappeared quickly, and when he kissed me back, I tasted his energy, just as I had with Nareon. And it was just as heady. But the darkness in my mind was steadily growing, and I was becoming powerless to hold it back any longer. The sudden flash of lightning, which was immediately accompanied by the sound of close, ripping thunder, had Cale lurching away. His eyes turned upward, horrified, before flying back to me.

“Oh no,” he said.

The compulsion left me completely then, and I fell back to the ground, exhausted and barely even conscious, left with the impression that Nareon had used much more than he had previously.

“Hazen,” I whispered.

“I’m here,” answered Hazen, though I hadn’t realised he had approached, and I felt his touch sliding around the back of my neck.

I turned my head, catching sight of one of his legs, kneeling beside me, and I managed to uncurl myself enough that when I fell, it was into him, and my arms were able to wind around his neck. I clung to him then, as I trembled, and he gathered me carefully into his arms, one of his hands running soothingly down my back as the darkness slowly receded from my mind. It took a lot longer than it had the first time, and when I finally blinked back into reality, the first thing I saw was Cale. He looked completely torn apart, but when he caught me watching him, his expression melted into something neutral.

“Don’t look at me like that, Little Synfee. It was just a little compulsion festival. Nareon turned a crippling force on you, and you turned an equally crippling force on me.”

“I’m so sorry,” I whispered, not even sure who I was talking to, as I carefully loosened my desperate grasp on Hazen, and slid awkwardly away from him.

“Save the apologies for later, it isn’t even midnight yet,” said Hazen, his gaze carefully avoiding me.

“Dammit. I’m golden now too, aren’t I?”

Cale chuckled, though the sound was a little strained. “That’s one way to put it.”

“It went away last time, but I don’t know how long it will take this time.”

“The real question is, what was that all about?” asked Hazen, looking briefly at me before his gaze flicked quickly to Cale.

I also looked at Cale, who seemed to know what it was that I wanted to know, before I even asked.

“He’s gone, I don’t sense him around anymore.”

“I think he wanted me to drop my glamor.”

“And how did that happen, exactly?” Cale asked.

“Desire,” I answered, feeling numb as I repeated Nareon’s words to them. “Synfees feed off desire.”

Cale grimaced, and pushed a hand through his hair. “Guess that explains the rest of it then.”

“But why didn’t he just kiss you himself? It’s not exactly a hard task, and he’s done it before, apparently.” Hazen pushed to his feet, and looked down at me, deep in thought.

“He lost control last time. I don’t think he was expecting my power to match his own.”