Heritage
“I couldn’t resist sharing this extra excerpt from my charm‑based magic story. This scene takes place some time after Blight, when our narrator and Jamael finally confront the Under Lord. The magic in this moment is cool as hell . . . but it has teeth.”
This story won a Silver Honorable Mention in the L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future Contest.
The floor drops out from beneath me, and I crash after it. My knees slam into the unforgiving marble floor and a sob threatens to break free from my throat. Liliana. My beautiful flower.
“You didn’t think he’d keep his word, did you?” Jamael asks. “He lied to you, love. It’s what he does.” His expression is all sympathy. Shouldn’t he be angry with me? Shouldn’t he be scared right now?
“No.” The word comes out my mouth a twisted whisper, lost in the echoes of the Under Lord’s laugh.
The Under Lord waves a negligent hand and two men swarm toward me. They’re holding an iron chain between them – I can feel the hateful metal’s heat simmering through the air.
I lurch to my feet and stumble backwards.
“What are you doing?”
My back collides with a shelf. There’s no escape.
The men come closer.
“My dear,” the Under Lord says, lust covering his face as he watches, “You’re much too valuable to allow to leave.”
His men snap the chain around my wrists and I cry out. The metal burns. My father’s magic scurries for cover deep within my core. Iron is antithetical to my kind.
“Imagine,” the Under Lord says, “My very own fairy.” His eyes flick to my ears. “Or at least a partial one.”
Tears stream down my face. “I won’t work for you.”
His cruel smile is back. “Oh, but you will. All I have to do is make one phone call, and your beautiful little girl will breathe her last. Or worse.”
I hate this man.
The Under Lord turns from me, as if I’m no longer worthy of his attention. He focuses his dark gaze on Jamael, who’s still standing by the far shelf. There’s a rounded lump in Jamael’s pocket that wasn’t there before. Clearly, he doesn’t want to lose control of his HeartStone again. The gesture is futile – Jamael’s hopelessly outnumbered. Doesn’t he know that?
“You look better than I expected,” the Under Lord says, gaze assessing. “Exile suits you.”
“And you look worse.” Jamael’s hands are hidden deep in his amethyst jacket. “Despotism never suited you.”
The Under Lord’s lips curl. “Don’t you wonder why I did it?”
Jamael scoffs, but I know him well enough by now to see through his indifferent mask. He’s desperately curious, but he won’t admit it.
“I didn’t have to kill them, you know.” The Under Lord’s voice is bored, like he’s talking about throwing out some old pizza. “They could’ve still been useful to me.”
Jamael’s gaze turns brittle. A tear leaks from the corner of one eye.
The Under Lord inspects the fingernails of one hand. Waiting. Drawing out the silence until Jamael finally shatters it.
“Then why?”
“Because,” a slow, malicious smile skitters across the Under Lord’s face, “I wanted to.”
He jerks his head at his men. Two flow forward, approaching Jamael from the sides. They’re holding knives, not chains – he’s not meant to walk out of here.
Jamael pulls his HeartStone from his pocket and sets it gently on the shelf next to him. His fingers brush against his bracelet, and magic like orange blossoms whispers against my mind. A speed charm?
Jamael lunges forward, inhumanly fast, catching the men off guard. A twisted length of blackened metal appears in his hand – the wode blade. Its magic jeers at me even as the blade slices through a man’s flesh. Black smoke rises from the wound and the man drops to his knees, yelling.
The other man lunges for Jamael’s unprotected back. His knife glitters in the overhead lights.
“Jamael!” I cry.
Whirling, Jamael ducks the attack. He plunges the wode blade into the man’s stomach. The man chokes out a scream, black smoke pouring from his mouth. He crashes forward, grasping at Jamael’s legs, convulsing. Jamael kicks him off.
At the Under Lord’s shout, the other men rush forward. Knives glitter. The scent of orange blossoms in my mind swells so I’m nearly drunk on it. More speed charms.
Jamael and the men are a whirl, a tornado of flashing blades. A man slams into a shelf, black smoke pouring from multiple wounds. Bottles tumble from the shelf to shatter at his feet, spilling their contents across the marble floor. Multicolored gases rise from the rubble. The man slumps to the floor, face landing in bubbling green liquid.
Somehow, Jamael prevails.
He stands, breaths coming in heavy drags, the wode blade clutched tight in one hand. His hair is no longer strategically disheveled – this is genuine disarray. Blood seeps from cuts along his thigh, his arms, his cheek, as he glares at the Under Lord with icy, violent hatred.
But the Under Lord moved during the fight. He’s now standing by the shelf that holds Jamael’s HeartStone. The odious little man lifts the glittering stone with manicured, stubby-fingered hands.
“You,” the Under Lord says, “Are most inconvenient.” Annoyance crawls through his voice as he surveys his men. Two twitch. The others lay still. Black smoke pours from their wounds. “Do you know how expensive those speed charms are? And they have to be tailored to each individual.”
“Do you know how inconvenient betrayal is?” Jamael growls. His gaze is locked on his HeartStone. If the Under Lord drops it . . .
“All your posturing is futile, you know,” the Under Lord says. “I’ll destroy this little bauble before you get that blade into me.”
Jamael sighs and sheaths the wode blade. “You’re right, Benjamin. I can’t beat you.” His gaze flicks to me. “Not alone.”
I cock my head. Is he talking to me?
The Under Lord laughs, “At the end of the day, each of us is alone.”
“No, we’re not.” Jamael shakes his head, his eyes still on mine. “And I have friends whose magic you can’t bind with iron.”
What is he . . ?
I’m an idiot.
Jamael’s figured out my heritage. Both sides. My father’s magic may be quelled by these chains, but my mother’s remains unfettered. The magic of stone and will.
And I know exactly which runes to use.
“I hope you’ve got quick hands,” I say, and the Under Lord turns my way in confusion.
Jamael flashes me that cocksure grin. “I’ve got the best hands in town, love.”
I roll my eyes.
My mother’s magic leaps at my call, infusing my toes as I drag them along the floor in front of me. The marble tiles underfoot are shiny, expensive . . . and perfectly obedient. Marble is stone, after all.
Three runes etch themselves into the floor, following the pattern my foot makes.
Pursuit. Holding. Enmity.
The Under Lord cries out as the runes glow with an otherworldly light. Panic is fully rooted in his voice. And fear.
We druids are not welcome on this side of the Veil.
The building rumbles around us as the floor undulates at my command, surging like waves toward the Under Lord. He runs, but where can he go? The marble extends throughout this room and all the way down the hall to the stairwell.
Jamael’s HeartStone flashes in the overhead lights as the Under Lord tosses it aside, so concerned with his own survival that he’ll waste this opportunity to watch Jamael die. The HeartStone tumbles through the air. If it breaks . . .
Jamael dives after his HeartStone, fingers locking around it centimeters before it smashes onto the floor. Saving his own life.
The Under Lord makes it a few paces down the hall before my marble grabs him, halting his flight. It drags him back into the room. He looks comical, body caught in midstride, marble vines wrapped around his legs, thick and sinuous. Fear pours from him in palpable waves.
I push down a laugh as my mother’s magic whispers in my mind.
I could kill him right now, it tells me, if I wanted. It’d be so easy. I wouldn’t even need another rune – the stone will obey me for a few minutes yet. Just one word and my marble will twine about the odious little man, wrapping tighter and tighter, climbing higher and higher up his hateful body. Squeezing. Crushing. Contracting until he explodes in wet, gloopy crimson.
I want to do it.
Sensing my desire, one marble vine snakes higher around the Under Lord’s body, circling his torso three times before I can stop it. He cries out, face turning red.
This is why my mother’s magic is so dangerous. It’s an avalanche, hungry for all in its path, bent only on causing as much destruction as it can.
And oh, it’s so tempting to give it free rein.
“Mertensianne.” Jamael’s warm voice breaks through the cold roar of stone in my mind.
I turn to him.
He’s kneeling, the floor undulating beneath him, fear naked on his face. One marble vine has found him, too. It’s twining around his leg, climbing, slowly inching its way up his thigh.
“Mertensianne, love, control it.” Jamael’s voice is steady and sure. Calm, like all we’re doing is discussing where to get dinner.
“He lied to me.”
He nods. “Yes. He lied to me, too.”
“My daughter . . .” My voice breaks and the Under Lord screams as a marble vine crushes his arm. Blood spurts, coursing over the white stone to splash onto the white floor. I want to see more blood.
“We’ll get her back.” Jamael’s voice is all confidence.
“We?”
“You hired me to do a job, love.” His gaze flickers to the Under Lord. “But I need him alive.”
For now.
The unspoken words are heavy with promise.
He’d better deliver.
I drag a breath into my lungs. Another. And I wall my mind off from the seduction of my mother’s magic.
I am no killer. Though once Jamael has what he needs, I may make an exception.
The marble retreats from Jamael and the Under Lord, rippling back into its tiled form. I blink, and the floor looks the same as it did before. Level and flat and innocuous. My runes are gone – the spell is spent.
The Under Lord collapses with a cry, cradling his crushed arm against his body. Blood pools beneath him.
Jamael pushes to his feet, his expression hard.
“Here, love.” He presses something into my hands. His HeartStone. “Hold this for me while I talk with Benjamin.”
My hands wrap around the stone of their own volition. It’s warm as fresh blood and smoother than marble under my fingers. Jamael’s just handed me his life.
He draws the wode blade and steps to the Under Lord, who looks even less impressive than before. Ghastly wounds will do that to a man.
Jamael kneels, his back to me, shielding his actions from view.
They share a murmured conversation, but my ears can’t pick out their words.
Jamael’s arm darts forward and the Under Lord cries out.
Black smoke billows up to the ceiling, curling around the fluorescent lights.
Jamael rises and turns to me. He sheathes the wode blade once again and meets my gaze.
I gasp.
Obsidian streaks mar the crystalline blue of his eyes, like the petals of an unholy flower. The wode is claiming him, corrupting him, and soon he’ll be blightborn. There’s no stopping it.
I shake my head. Not Jamael.
I told him the price would be too high.
