Hereditary (29 page)

“That sounds dangerous.”

He shrugged. “We have—” and then he stopped, his face going white. “Please follow me, Lady. The King has a task for you.”

He turned without waiting for an answer, and with a deepening sense of apprehension, I made a move to follow. To my surprise, Harbringer put a hand on my arm to stop me.

“Just a second, General. I think she’d be interested to hear what you have to say.”

Grenlow paused, turning slowly to look at Harbringer, and then me.

“I can’t,” he said quietly. “He’d kill me for less.”

“You mean Nareon?” I asked.

He seemed to recoil. “Please follow me.”

He led us to Nareon’s tower room and then promptly left us, without any further mention of the ‘task’ that needed doing. With a sigh, I went to the glass wall and peered out over the city below, but Harbringer began pacing agitatedly in front of the door where Grenlow had left him.

“What is it?” I asked, before his jerky movements could make me dizzy.

“I’m fighting a losing battle with the General’s mind. Someone has taught him well.”

I felt my eyebrows inching up, and quickly crossed over to him. Nareon was hiding something big, there was no other explanation.

“Why not compel him?”

“I need to be able to see him. That’s why he left so—”

He stopped pacing abruptly, grabbed my arm and swore. “I’ve seen it. Now he’s sending soldiers to contain us in here. We need to leave now.”

“But what is it?” I dug my feet in, refusing to move.

He turned, giving me a frustrated look. “The synfees use feeders. Every single one of them, even the King.”

“What are feeders?”

“The weakest of any race. There are some humans, some fae, some synfee even.”

“I don’t understand, why keep feeders?”

“Because if you take energy from someone stronger than you, they can control you.”

The realisation hit me with a force big enough to make me stagger backwards.

Nareon is trying to control me
.

I glanced up at Harbringer, and I knew that he could see the horror in my eyes, but it was nothing compared with the fear that swept through me at the sound of booted feet rushing down the corridor beyond the door. Our time was up.

“There are only ten of them,” whispered Harbringer. “I can deal with ten of them.”

He seemed to be asking my permission, and I didn’t even need to wonder why. I shook my head.

“No, Nareon won’t forgive you for attacking his men. He might forgive me.”

I walked to the door, slid my hand against the wood, and closed my eyes, breathing deeply for a moment to calm myself.

You can see me,
I murmured in my mind.
I need you to compel me
.

He didn’t answer me right away, and I knew that he was examining my plan.

Drop it; I’ll do my part.

I nodded against the door, closing my eyes and reaching for my glamor, slowly and carefully drawing it away as Harbringer’s will filled my mind, strong and cogent.

You don’t want to feed.
He soothed.
You’re not even hungry
.

I found that he was right, and I turned to him with a wide smile. He caught his breath, and I waited for the careful hold on my mind to slip, but it held steady, and I finally turned back to the door, striding toward it and flinging it open. My golden skin was shimmering again.

The soldiers in the hallway all snapped to immediate attention, lining either side of the doorway in two rows, with two men at the front, and three at the back. It was an impenetrable wall, one that I shouldn’t have been able to pass.

“There is something important that we need to do,” I said calmly, trying to make myself sound as persuasive as possible.

“Yes, Lady.” One of the men stepped forward quickly, his irises slightly dilated. “Can I help?”

“Yes you can.” I touched his shoulder, and he seemed to draw in a sharp breath, which I took as a good sign. “Would you kindly escort us out of the castle?”

The man nodded eagerly, but another stepped up to push him aside. At first I thought that my ruse was found out, except this man stood to his fullest height and offered me his arm.

“I will escort you myself, Lady. Benjamin isn’t feeling well today.”

The first man—presumably Benjamin—began trying to elbow his way back into his previous position, muttering that he felt fine, but I touched each of their arms, and they immediately stilled.

“You can both escort me,” I said smoothly.

Ten minutes later, all ten men were escorting me down the many staircases and corridors that would lead us back to the fountain room, each jostling to walk beside me. I felt ridiculous, especially since I wasn’t making any kind of conscious effort, but Harbringer seemed to be heavily amused by it all, so at least one of us was enjoying my newfound powers of persuasion. We made it to the fountain room without any trouble, and then the whole castle seemed to burst into chaos. A horn wailed somewhere outside, but the sound seemed to reverberate beneath the floors, and I put my hands to my ears reflexively. The men around me were jostled out of the hold of my compulsion, and Harbringer’s hold on my mind slipped.

My throat began to burn, and my senses were swamped by the many scents of the people standing around me, but it wasn’t as bad as I had experienced in the past. It was a miracle that I didn’t pounce on any of the men now turning on me, eyes wide and swords drawn, but my fear was now overtaking my hunger, and I clutched Harbringer’s arm, as more people rushed into the room.

Except they weren’t rushing toward me, they were rushing past me. And soon even the soldiers surrounding Harbringer and I were moving toward the door we had just come through.

Little Spitfire. Come to me
.

I choked against the heady compulsion, the feeling that was uniquely Nareon flooded through me and I felt a crippling urge to run after the soldiers. I tried to drag Harbringer with me, but he stood his ground and eventually just grabbed me and hauled me out of the room.

“Let me go!” I screamed, hitting the arm that angled across my waist, feeling tears spring to my eyes.

The world darkened. Harbringer paused at the doors to the castle, looking out at the brief stretch of courtyard that led to the gates. Small whirlwinds of dust were flying across the ground, and the force of the wind was staggering. I could feel him fighting against it, trying to step outside, but I was too strong for him. Or perhaps Nareon was too strong for him. I didn’t even know who was to blame for the sudden show of Force, but Harbringer eventually dropped me, and I spun on my heel and raced back toward the sweet and wonderful voice that called to me.

Harbringer raced after me, and we found ourselves in the throne room, having to fight through a barrier of soldiers struggling against some invisible wall that I was able to slip through easily. The room was lined with people, each holding their arms up, facing a single man who stood in the middle of them.

“Nareon!” The name slipped from my lips in an anguished cry, and his grey eyes snapped open and focused on me.

I thought I saw relief pass across his face, and suddenly I wasn’t sure that he was controlling me anymore. I simply needed to be here.

The others noticed me when Nareon did, and I found myself facing Davery and Enon. They seemed uninjured, and most shockingly of all, alive. Harbringer shoved me aside, and the two scowled, switching stances to prepare for another battle. Someone tried to grab me from behind, and I elbowed them, but they only grunted and grabbed me tighter. It sounded like a man, so I aimed my elbow lower, and struck again. This time they dropped me, and I fought with the oncoming darkness in my mind as I struggled to keep a hold of my Force. I figured that if I were always channeling the one, then I couldn’t possibly channel the other at the same time, and the last thing I wanted right now was to accidentally kill every person in the room.

I cast a glance back to the doorway, but none of the soldiers seemed to have succeeded in pushing through the invisible barrier yet, and so I concentrated on getting to Nareon, who looked to be struggling as he fought some kind of internal battle with the circle of men and women surrounding him. They were all muttering quietly, their eyes closed and their fingers twitching occasionally, though they didn’t move from their position, with their hands upraised to Nareon. His grey eyes followed me as I pushed my way into the middle of the circle, and I felt an odd force pushing against my own power. I hadn’t been doing much more than keeping up a steady flow of Force to keep the death ability at bay, but now someone was fighting against it, trying to push it back in. I seemed to realise that the thirty-or-so people surrounding Nareon and I were all Force-users at the same time as they realised who I was. One-by-one, their eyes opened and slid from Nareon to me, before settling back on Nareon.

I felt as if they had just assessed me, and dismissed me, and I could only watch hopelessly as Nareon’s face creased in pain. Here was the old synfee King, almost brought to his knees. I turned then, and tried to spot Harbringer, my heart lurching even more as I found him surrounded by more of the Force users. He suddenly jerked and flew back against the wall, and I screamed my rage, lashing out with my own power before I had the chance to form it into any kind of intention. The group who had been advancing on him paused, and two of them crumpled to the ground, dead or unconscious I wasn’t sure, but at least they turned from Harbringer and instead decided to join the circle surrounding Nareon and I.

Chapter Twenty-One

Flowering Supremacy

If they had been ignoring me before, they certainly weren’t now. I felt a crippling wave of pain spread through me, and a sudden pull that I knew instinctively was drawing away my life force. I wondered if this was what it felt like when I fed from Nareon, but then dismissed the thought. This was Force.

Nareon’s presence flooded into me again, and while there was no specific order that I felt or heard, I began gathering my own Force in response. I gathered enough of it that I felt the electricity of it in the air, and a sudden cold descended, raising goosebumps along my arms. The murmurings of the other Force users increased and began to sound panicked, but the tone only pleased me, and at Nareon’s silent command, I released my power. It tore through the throne room like a cyclone, ripping one of the walls away and spraying everyone with miscellaneous matter. I yanked the connection open and searched for Harbringer until I felt him, and then I pulled him toward me. It was like drawing a bowl of water, or trying to move a concentrated sphere of fire. I knew there was the danger that all those unique parts of him could fly apart if I lost control, but eventually his unconscious body slid to my feet and I dropped down immediately to check his injuries. There was a gash on his head, but he was breathing, and it didn’t look like I’d accidentally ripped anything away—either on the inside or on the outside—when I had moved him. I crouched over him protectively, watching Nareon as Nareon watched me.

I was prepared when he filled my consciousness again and began to draw on my power, but I was not prepared for the ability that he had decided to draw from. I struggled to resist him as the darkness crowded into my head, doubling the amount of Force that was already flying through the room in an attempt to overpower the will to unleash the death ability.

“No,” I begged, my voice ragged. “Please Nareon, I can’t.”

He wasn’t listening to me. He had fallen to his knees, and there was a steady trickle of blood seeping from his nose. The other Force users were advancing on him, and I glanced desperately at them, noting the various expressions of triumph on their faces. They were killing him.

“No…” I moaned again as the darkness finally slipped from my mind.

I tried to channel it, tried to push it in the direction of the people advancing on us, tried to get it as far away from Nareon and Harbringer as I could, but Nareon seemed to have other ideas. I wasn’t sure if it was my connection to him, or if it was simply because I was conscious this time, but I felt exactly where he was directing my power. He was directing it toward himself. I yanked it from him with a violence and a strength that I hadn’t known I possessed until that moment. Then I heard someone laugh.

It was a man directly to my right, the man who I had turned the darkness toward. The man who should have been dead the minute my power collided with him. I realised with a sickening jolt that they were all unaffected by my recent show of Force, whereas Nareon seemed to have suffered exponentially. It didn’t hit me until I felt the darkness collide with Nareon, and I ran to him, clutching him as he fell into me.

He didn’t die instantly, as the others had, but he held onto me, kept a tight grip on my mind, drawing more power from me, and directing it as he willed. I was lost, tears streaming down my face as I clung to him, unable to deny his efforts even as the death ability wound it’s dark poison through his heart.

When he released my mind, I couldn’t help but feel that it was because he was done. Even in death, he was setting his own terms. It was unnecessarily cruel that his body disappeared as his life slipped away, but I didn’t spare a moment’s thought for it, as I had now become only a vessel for the furious power that welled within me. I stood carefully, turning to the others, ignoring their expressions of confusion and suspicion, because all that mattered in that moment was that they died. I lashed out, again and again, not caring which ability I used, only that it caused as much hurt as they had caused me. I knew that some of them ran, and I could feel that some of them died, I could feel it because I absorbed their energy, their power, and it only made me stronger and more furious. 

When the room began to flood with Nareon’s men, I fell to my knees and let my head fall against the red carpet that ran through the centre of the room to the empty throne. I stayed that way even when I heard Harbringer’s voice, stayed that way even when people began to touch me, urging me to stand. Eventually, darkness descended, and a fine mist began to blow through the damaged wall, settling along my spine and gradually soaking my dress to my skin. I stayed that way.