Hereditary (3 page)

“Gerald Barlow,” she said to the mechanical bird, which clicked a few times in nonsensical, mechanical bird-speak and then flew out the window.

“Now,” she turned back to me, and gestured to one of the recently-vacated desks in front of her, “take a seat.”

I did as I was told, and watched as she rummaged around in the cupboard behind her desk. When she moved back to me, her arms were piled high with random objects, which she spilt onto her desk. She shifted through the paraphernalia, shoving some things off to the side, and placing others at the edge of her desk, before finally extracting a small, metal cube. She placed it on the scratched, wooden surface before me, and poked the cube, as if awaking it.

“Touch the top, if you please. These objects have all been enchanted to draw magic—if you have a specialisation, they will know.”

I reached forward and put my index finger on the cube, expecting it to be as hard as it looked. To my surprise, it was soft and spongy, and when I drew my hand away, my finger had left an indent creased with the impression of my fingerprint. Hectarte made a note and took away the cube, replacing it with what looked like a dead rat. I gave the thing a horrified look, but when she gestured impatiently, I gingerly poked it with my finger. It stayed dead, and she made another note, replacing it with a small ball of crumbling clay, which also gave no response. The next was an empty bamboo bowl, which filled with a dismal puddle of water on my touch, and a wax-less candlewick, which sizzled with brief flame before spluttering out. After I managed to cause a small, wooden spinning top to jolt into dizzying life, Hectarte actually seemed to be impressed and muttered something incomprehensible as she scribbled away. The next object was a glittering pebble, and when I reached out to touch it, she waved me off.

“Let it come to you.”

Feeling a little silly, I pulled back my hand and sat there, watching it, until it slowly began to glow and move toward me, as if being dragged by an invisible string.

“Very powerful, your compulsion,” She muttered as she snatched up the stone, and replaced it with a propped-up mirror.

“Do you see anything?” she prodded, as I peered into it.

I stared at the fuzzy outline of myself and frowned until, eventually, she leaned over the desk to see for herself.

“You’re wearing a glamor.”

My gaze snapped from the fuzzy image to her own surprised expression, and I shook my head mutely.

“A glamor,” she repeated, pulling the mirror back and replacing it with a rusty thermometer. “If you don’t even know about it, I’d say you unconsciously did it over time—it’s not exactly a shape-shifting ability, but it’s a natural fae ability, like a shield or a mask.”

I didn’t get a chance to argue my innocence, because just at that moment, as she spoke, I reached for the thermometer, and it exploded.

“Oh… oh dear,” Hectarte exclaimed, jumping up and scraping the mess into the bin with a ruler, before sitting down at her desk to make a few more distracted notes. I waited for her to reprimand me, but when she finally finished writing, she only turned to me thoughtfully.

“I can see why they had so much trouble with you. You’ve specialised in bender abilities, very strong ones at that, and you have three of the elven elemental powers, which is almost unheard of, even for them. Usually they only specialise in one, or two at the most. Do you know which you have?”

“Wind, fire and water.”

“Correct, your fire and water are mediocre, but the wind is quite strong, and combined with the bender abilities, it’s almost ferocious. I suppose that’s what set the poor thermometer over the top. It’s not used to such strange combinations.”

“What about the other one?”

“What other one? You didn’t specialise in anything else.” She looked down sharply, as if she may have forgotten to record something.

I thought about my last tutor—how he had laughed and called me crazy when I tried to describe my unusual affinity for the plants around me—and then suddenly realised that I would be enough of an outsider around here without that to add to it.

“Nothing, sorry, my mistake,” I quickly amended.

She looked at me a moment longer, her gaze steady and searching, and then she gave a short nod and waved her hand absently in the direction of the door.

“You may be on your way now; if you choose not to attend History for the remainder of the lesson then I advise staying out of sight until it’s over. I’ll draw up your specialisation card and have it sent to your other teachers, I’m sure some of your classes will also be changed after this. Better check back at the office at the end of the day for a new timetable.”

“Thank you,” I muttered quickly, grabbing my books up again and shuffling out of the classroom.

Chapter Two

Contrary Connections

I was glad that she wasn’t going to make me go to History, as I was fairly sure that I never wanted to walk in late to a class again. I wandered around the Academy until I found a wooden bench beneath a flourishing cherry-blossom tree. Spilling my books onto the bench, I sat atop it and held my hand out, waiting until—from somewhere above me—a flower detached itself and drifted down to rest on my open palm, the petals curving slightly to embrace my hand. I closed my eyes and sighed, the familiar buzzing feeling quickly spreading through me.

“Well that’s nothing I’ve ever seen before.”

I snapped my eyes open, and turned stiffly to see the stranger who had apparently been standing on the other side of the tree.

“You’ve never seen someone catch a falling flower before?” I asked, quickly throwing the blossom to the ground.

It seemed to wilt a little as soon as it left my palm. He shrugged at my answer, strolling over to sit on the table next to me.

“Hey, I won’t tell anyone.”

Frowning, I scooted a few inches away from him, wondering if he were here on some cruel mission from his classmates. I may not have gone to the Academy before, but I had more than enough experience with the young people in the kingdom from my own childhood to know better than to accept a friendly face for just what it appeared to be. Though he did have a very nice face, I admitted. He was tall, and broad about the shoulders, leading me to think he was one of the older students that sometimes get picked to stay on for commissioned training. His hair was chocolate-brown, and his skin was lightly tanned, suiting his athletic build. His eyes, when he turned to look at me, were an attractive shade of russet-brown.

“Why are you here?” I eventually asked. “Did someone dare you to try and provoke me, or did you just want to see the freak show up-close?”

I watched as the understanding slowly dawned in his eyes and wondered, for a moment, if he really was just trying to be friendly. Then he laughed.

“Aren’t synfees supposed to be notorious charmers? You’re a little stunted in that department, just from my own observation.”

“I’m not a synfee.”

“You have their blood, don’t you, Harrow?”

I shot him a dark look, which somehow only made his smile widen.

“How does everyone here know who I am?”

“You’re infamous. Apparently you have hair the colour of a desert sunset, and eyes that flash like a desert storm—nobody told me that your personality was like a desert cactus as well.”

To my surprise, a laugh bubbled from my lips. Usually when people commented on my beauty, it was to mock me, but the way this boy spoke, it was as if he were completely unaffected by both my beauty and my blood, which made me warm to him, if only a little.

“Bea,” I looked away from him, to the blossom that I had thrown to the ground earlier. “Call me Bea.”

He held out his hand, much to my surprise.

“Nice to meet you Bea, I’m Cale. Cale Sekron.”

I stared at him, my eyes moving from his hand to his mischievous expression, until the name finally clicked in my mind. I jumped off the bench, and he let his hand drop, something in his eyes telling me that he had expected this. My first reaction was to walk off haughtily, to regain some of my dignity, but Cale was the first person who had been nice to me, and was likely the only person who would be nice to me today, if not all year. Was it really his fault that his father lived to make my own father’s life hell?

“Nice to meet you too,” I finally said, flashing him a hesitant smile.

He seemed surprised.

Just then, the deserted courtyard that had been my temporary sanctuary began to fill with people, and I assumed that class must have finished. I turned from Cale to survey the people now congregating into groups and sneaking off to their own respective corners, with only a few milling about the grass in the open.

“If I were you, I’d clear out right about now,” I heard Cale whisper.

Unfortunately, the group heading for the table beneath the cherry-blossom tree had already locked onto me, and I found myself momentarily arrested by the sight of them. They were a mix of elven and human, with only one fae girl that I could see. She was, naturally, the most beautiful of them all, though the male leading them could certainly have given her a run for her money. She was average height, but willowy, and walked with the looping grace of a trained court dancer. It took me a moment to recognise the short dark hair and dark eyes from my first lesson, but as soon as she saw me and once again flinched away from my gaze, I remembered her. The leading male had similar colouring to her, with the pale skin of the fae, dark hair, and fathomless dark eyes, though he was a human. He was very tall for his age, and while he did have a certain willowy quality to his limbs, he didn’t look weak by any means. Flanked either side of him were two other humans, both male, and both looking angry at my presence. Similarly, two blondes walked arm-in-arm with the dark-haired girl, only a few steps behind.

When they reached me, Cale jumped off the bench and put his arm lightly about my shoulders, a touch that took the others momentarily aback, and me along with them. I froze, not sure how to react to another person touching me, and wondering how he had even gartered the courage to do it in the first place. The only people who had ever dared to touch me before were my parents. Even the court Healers refused to come near me, which were the only times that I was thankful for my synfee immune system.

“You do realise who she is, don’t you, Cale?”

This came from one of the elven girls, who had come to the front of the group and touched the arm of their dark-haired leader. He was the only one of them who didn’t seem to be highly disturbed by my presence, and in fact, if his dark gaze hadn’t travelled briefly over me, I would have assumed that he didn’t see me there at all.

“Isn’t your mother part of the King’s Harem, Kaylee? You don’t see me calling you a whore now, do you?” returned Cale.

Kaylee’s eyes flashed, and she made to take a threatening step forward, but the dark-haired boy stopped her, turning his bored expression to Cale. Once again, he hadn’t seemed at all bothered by Cale’s behaviour, though I was becoming increasingly uncomfortable.

“What’s she doing here?” said the dark-haired boy.

I quickly stepped out from under Cale’s arm, before they could keep talking about me as though I didn’t possess the ability to speak for myself.

“
She
was just leaving,” I said softly, turning on my heel and quickly heading back to the shade of the nearest building.

When I felt the hand on my shoulder a few moments later, I wasn’t as surprised as I had been the first time.

“Hey, sorry about them, they aren’t all that friendly to most people anyway, let alone… well…”

I rolled my eyes at Cale, and he fell into step beside me.

“The notorious student-spawn of the most feared tainted creatures in our world?” I supplied.

“Right,” his mouth quirked up a bit at the side. “I knew you had some charm hidden away in there somewhere.”

“So who were those people?” I asked, as I found a new seat just outside one of the doors to what looked like a giant greenhouse.

He sat next to me and pulled a bundle out of the pack slung over his shoulder. I eyed it enviously; I’d have to get one of those to carry all my books, and my lunch…

“Dammit, I forgot,” I accidentally said aloud, as he unwrapped a baguette. Smiling a little at the direction of my gaze, he broke his sandwich in half and handed over the second half to me, which I accepted after only a moment’s hesitation and a mumbled thanks.

“Well,” he said, leaning back against the wall, “those are the spoilt-rich spawn of the most important people in the kingdom, which—essentially—makes them the most important people here as well.”

I thought about Cale’s own father, who was the commander of the King’s Guard, which was a position that constantly warred with my father’s own position as Commander of the Black Guard.

“Do you usually sit with them?” I asked, when what I really meant was
aren’t you one of them
.

“Usually, yes.”

“Won’t they be angry at you, for… you know…”

He laughed. “They don’t own me… although, technically, one day Hazen will, and even Rose can order me about. They generally don’t abuse that power though, not at the Academy anyway.”

It took longer than it should have for me to process what he had just said, and then to recall up what I knew of the royal family.

“The Prince and Princess…” I turned my eyes back to the bench beneath the cherry tree, where they had all gathered now, occasionally casting furtive glances to where Cale and I sat.

All except for the dark-haired boy, who still exuded boredom.

“Yes, Rose is the little girl with dark hair, she’s your age I think, nearing her last year here. Hazen is the one who looks like Rose, he’s my age, they kept us back for commissioned training because of our powers… and I suppose because of our families too. We grew up together inside the castle, he really isn’t so bad as he seems.”

I squinted at the girl with dark hair, making sure that the faint shimmering of her skin which labeled her as a fae wasn’t just a trick of the sunlight that had initially fooled me, but once I was sure, I drew back, confused.