Hereditary (30 page)

When I opened my eyes and sat up, I still hadn’t cried, but I felt utterly depleted, as if I had spent the entire evening sobbing my heart out. Harbringer sat next to me, a bandage across his head, and another wound about his left forearm. Grenlow and a small group of men and women were standing over by the door, talking carefully, and they all turned immediately, somehow knowing that I had awoken. I looked away from them, toward Harbringer.

“He’s dead,” I said.

Those inky black eyes ran over my face, and then he nodded. I didn’t realise that I had finally begun to cry until he reached over and touched one of my tears.

“There’s something else you need to know,” he whispered.

Grenlow approached then, with the other men and women in tow, and one by one, they fell to their knees before me.

Confused, I looked behind me, and then froze, because half of the kingdom seemed to have gathered beyond the destroyed wall. They all stood there, in the darkness and the pouring rain, golden-tinted eyes glinting at me in the night. And then, one by one, they began to lower to their knees. 

For a horrible second, I thought that they were thanking me for killing their king, and I felt the darkness surge up sickeningly, but Harbringer put his hand on my knee, and when I looked at him, he shook his head sadly.

“Nareon named you his successor,” he said, though the words sounded alien coming from his mouth.

I blinked at him, sure that I was going insane. The sympathetic expression on his face had me scrambling to my feet, backing away from him and the others.

“No.” I shook my head. “This is all a mistake.”

I rounded on Grenlow. “Stand up,” I snapped. “Tell them that this is a mistake.”

He rose to his feet, and while he didn’t look particularly happy about it, he didn’t confirm my words. Instead, he turned, and took a small wooden box from the woman behind him, carrying it over to me. He tried to pass it to me, but I refused to take it, and so he sighed and opened the lid himself. Inside was a small, rolled length of parchment. It lay half-uncoiled in a velvet lining, and seemed to be so old that I feared to touch it lest it crumble apart beneath my fingers.

“This is our Hereditary Scroll,” he said softly. “Our rulers are not chosen by the bloodlines that run through our population. They are forced by the bloodlines inked in this scroll.”

“I don’t understand,” I said flatly, suddenly wanting to turn away from the little scroll.

“The scroll presents the name of the next ruler, on the hour of the old ruler’s death. The more powerful the old ruler, the more influence they will have over the scroll’s choice. No new ruler has been chosen for hundreds of years.”

I saw myself reaching for the scroll then, and wondered if I were even in control of my own limbs anymore. Perhaps I allowed it because, for a moment, it felt as if Nareon was still controlling me. My fingers brushed against the dry, rough surface, and then curled around the edge of the scroll, drawing it out of its little box. It unrolled itself as I pulled it away, and the black letters of my own name winked at me from the centre of the parchment.

Beatrice Harrow
.

“The throne still needs to accept you,” Grenlow continued, but I blocked out the rest of whatever he had to say, and turned my eyes to the ceiling, the Hereditary Scroll falling from my fingers.

I wished that Hazen were here to put me to sleep, that Cale and Rose could be standing either side of me, grasping my hands and lending me their strength. And
Nareon
…

My heart clenched, a vicious shudder ripping right through me until it broke apart completely, shattering into a million empty pieces in my chest, and I fell forward again, sobbing into the carpet. And then I felt it again. And I picked myself up from the carpet, without even realising that I had done it. I looked down, astonished, and stopped crying immediately.

“Harbringer.”

He stepped forward, and I grabbed him, pulling him close enough that nobody else would be able to hear me.

“Who is in my head?”

He didn’t seem to understand, but then his eyes widened suddenly, and he froze, grabbing my head and pushing his way into my mind.

“Impossible,” he whispered. “I can feel him, in your mind.”

I jerked my head free, and began to pull Harbringer out of the room, pausing for a second, and motioning Grenlow to come with me. I led the way back to Nareon’s glass-walled room and then turned on Grenlow.

“Why did Nareon’s body disappear?”

His face creased into something that resembled sorrow, and I gave him a minute to compose himself.

“I’m not sure Lady—er, Your Highness.”

“Bea,” I snapped. “My name is Bea.”

“Yes, Your Highness. I don’t know why his body disappeared.”

I turned my head, catching sight of myself in the glass window. My glamor was still down. Strange, I didn’t feel the slightest tinge of hunger.

Nareon
, I sang in my head, feeling stupid,
show yourself.

I didn’t think anything could surprise me anymore. But suddenly, the King himself was standing behind me. I could see him wavering into existence in the window, and when I turned, he really was there, grinning down at me.

“I didn’t expect you to figure it out so quickly,” he said, as Harbringer stared on and Grenlow fell to his knees, eyes wide with disbelief.

I wanted to run forward and hug him, or fall to the ground with Grenlow in relief, but there was a niggling feeling in the back of my mind demanding to be acknowledged. It was anger. Nareon had used me again, and had somehow irrevocably used me to save a piece of himself, to tie some part of himself to this world through his control of my mind.

“That’s why the scroll chose me,” I muttered.

He nodded, and went to sit in a chair, except that his seemingly solid form slipped right through it, and disappeared for a second into the room below. When he reappeared, he seemed unsteady on his feet.

“That’s going to take some getting used to,” he grunted, taking a cautious step, as if testing the reliability of the carpet beneath his feet.

“I can’t believe you would do this.” I jumped forward and would have struck him, except that my hand flew straight through his chest.

He winced, and I jumped back, rubbing feeling back into my suddenly numb knuckles.

“You don’t even know what I did, so how can you complain?”

“Tell me what you did then!”

“I simply made sure that you killed me before the others did.”

“
Why
Nareon!” my voice had risen again, and I supposed it was probably panic at the way he had said
you killed me
.

It was Harbringer who answered, stepping up to my side, a curious amusement shimmering in that black gaze.

“When a synfee kills a person, that person’s power, energy, life—everything is transferred to the killer. But if the person being killed is stronger than the one doing the killing, a part of their soul remains, attached to that person.”

“I always intended to remain forever, and haunt the person who finally managed to kill me,” Nareon intoned glibly. “I was quite looking forward to it.”

I fell into a chair. “So why did you choose me? Why didn’t you just let the others kill you and haunt them forever?”

“Because, combined, they were stronger than me. They would have directed my stolen power to their chosen leader, and the Hereditary Scroll would have named him the new ruler. I couldn’t have that.”

“Him? You knew who he was?”

“Is, Spitfire, who he
is
. He escaped.”

“The good news just keeps on coming,” I mocked, throwing him a glare, which he ignored.

“You willingly enslaved yourself.” This came from Grenlow, and he looked and sounded utterly horrified.

Nareon rolled his eyes, gesturing to me. “I enslaved myself to a beautiful Queen. It’s not so bad, as far as second lives are concerned.”

“It’s not a life at all,” Grenlow countered, seemingly at ease going against the former King’s words, now that said King wasn’t able to smite him for insolence anymore… or could he?

“What do you mean, enslaved?” I asked.

“Exactly as the man says.” Nareon again tried to take a seat, and again fell straight through the floor.

When he re-appeared, his expression was faintly amused, and he continued speaking as if nothing had occurred.

“I can only appear when you summon me. I can only use my power when you order me to, and I can only disappear when you request it.”

“And then where do you go?”

“Wherever ghosts go.”

“You’re a ghost then?”

“I haven’t a clue.”

I sighed, but had begun to realise that things weren’t quite as bad as they had seemed. Except for one.

“I can’t be this kingdom’s Queen.” I turned to Grenlow. “You have to make the scroll pick someone else.”

Nareon laughed, but Grenlow only sighed, rubbing his temples.

“Oh, Spitfire, it truly doesn’t work like that.” Nareon said. “Besides, you won’t even need to do anything. Ruling is all about instilling enough fear into your people that they all do as you say, and then leaving the rest up to your High Council. And I will help you, where you need it.”

“It’s not that simple, Nareon, I’m young, but not so young as to be completely naïve as to what needs to be done here. I’d still need to track down the rest of the Force users, I’d need to find their leader, I’d have to stop their damn disease from ruining your entire kingdom, and then, presumably, I’d need to heal the lands that they already
have
destroyed. And—”

Something else struck me then, and I stared down at my faintly golden hand. “Why am I not attacking people?”

Nareon shrugged. “I suppose you inherited that from me, when you killed me. I’d love to see how strong your compulsion is now.” He clapped his hands together delightedly. “You might be the strongest ruler this kingdom has ever seen.”

I pulled my glamor back into place and carefully opened my connection to the physical world, revelling in the onslaught of wriggling, thriving energy that flooded into me, causing me to smile in pleasure, even though I was now far from the ground.

“Wow,” I breathed. “Do you think I could live off this?”

“Unfortunately, no. You will still need to feed.”

“Great.” I closed off the connection, some of my new-found wonder slipping away, and then turned to Grenlow. “What are your other options?”

“Well,” he seemed to chew it over. “If you died, another ruler would be chosen, but it will most likely go to whoever led the attack last night, as much of the King’s energy had already been stolen by the time you killed him.”

“Ah… any
other
options?”

“The Ki—Nareon is right, if you elected a High Council, most of the work would be done for you, you wouldn’t even need to be here. It has been done before, a long time ago. And there is still the Throne Test, you will need to pass it before your Queenship becomes official.”

Nareon waved his hand dismissively. “The Throne Test will not be a problem—as soon as she is rested, she can get it over and done with, and then a High Council can be established.”

I nodded, because there didn’t seem to be many other options at that moment.

“What do you want to do now?” Harbringer asked me.

“I need to go home. I need to speak to the others, make sense of all this.”

“Very well, I’ll take you back. Your father’s men might not be waiting, so we will have to take horses with us.”

Grenlow shot towards the door, probably relieved to have some definitive thing to work with. “I’ll have them brought around to the front, and I will announce that you are in the process of selecting a High Council to bring justice to the dead king. It will put people at ease.”

I nodded to Grenlow, and winced as he made a quick bow and then strode out the door, leaving me wondering how to also make Nareon disappear before the whole castle saw him. At the thought, his grey eyes swung toward me, and he bent into a mocking bow, crooked a smile, and vanished into thin air. Harbringer stared at the spot a moment longer and shook his head, and then we began moving toward the door as one.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Revolts

When we broke through the barrier back into the Read Empire, and trotted to the clearing where we had left my father’s men, it was to encounter my father himself. He was alone, pacing agitatedly beside his horse, and his head jerked up as we broke through the line of trees.

“Oh thank god,” He breathed when he saw me, and I slid from my horse, running over to clasp his hands.

“You were gone so long.” He flicked a look to Harbringer, eyes narrowing on the new bandages, and then he seemed to realise that my own bandages had now disappeared.

“The king is dead,” I said, knowing that there would be no keeping this new development a secret. “He left his… ah… kingdom to me.”

My father was struck speechless, and I felt the grip on my hands slacken and fall away.

“What did you just say?” he croaked.

“He was attacked tonight, by the same people who attacked me. They were winning the fight, and so he used… he used…” I trailed off, feeing the horrible desolation return, reminding me that even though I hadn’t lost Nareon completely, he was still dead, and I was still the one who had killed him.

“He was lost in the battle.” Harbringer edged his horse forward, and I looked down to the ground, unsure as to why he would lie, until I realised that admitting one thing would inevitably lead to questions about
why
Nareon would choose for me to kill him, moments before he would have died anyway.

Because then everybody would know that a part of him remained, inside
me
somewhere. What would the human King do with this knowledge?

“And naming Beatrice as successor?
How the fuck did that happen
?”

I blinked, surprised at my father’s language, and looked to Harbringer, glad that the question had been directed to him instead of me.