Hereditary (12 page)

He trailed off, and the words that he didn’t say hung about us in the air.

In case your body gave up
.
In case you died.

Since the memory of Hazen almost kissing me was still burnt into my mind, I quickly changed the subject, even as his words echoed around my brain, taunting me.

If you still want me to kiss you when all of this is over tomorrow, then you can look at me like that. Not now. Not like this.

“The Healer is going to suggest I stay here for a week, but that’s ridiculous, I can’t hole up in the castle and be waited upon by other people’s staff. Dad can help me get home, right, Dad?”

I turned to the man in question, but his face had taken on a hard look, the kind of hard look that he used to wear in my childhood, when he was determined to get his way.

“I can’t be with you all the time, you know that, Bea. I think you should stay here.”

“Of course she’ll stay here!” declared Rose, striding back into the room as if she had been listening at the door.

I looked imploringly to Cale, but he shook his head, indicating that I was going to get no help from his quarter, and then I sighed, sagging back against the pillows.

“I’m so embarrassed… of all the places that this could have happened—”

“You’re lucky it happened here,” interjected Rose, “and so are we.”

“Why? You’d all be less one synfee in the world.”

“Beatrice!” My father jumped up, looking outraged, but Cale only rolled his eyes.

Rose, however, seemed to understand.

“I was surprised too,” she said, “I was worried that my parents would just let you die, but you know what my mother said?”

“Feed the naughty servants to her?” quipped Cale.

I could feel my father’s outrage deepening, but both Rose and I laughed.

“No,” Rose answered. “She said that there are no good and bad races, there are only good and bad people, and every race has their fair share of either.”

“Wow,” I said.

Cale and Rose predominantly carried the conversation after that, and gradually my father seemed to relax again, until he had to leave, and then he dropped a somewhat awkward kiss onto my forehead and disappeared. And then, not long after that, the Queen returned.

“How are you feeling, Beatrice?”

“Only tired, Your Highness.”

I wondered if I should call her
Your Highness
, or
Your Majesty.
Having never actually visited the castle, or even laid eyes upon the royal family before starting at the Academy, I wasn’t very well schooled on the current politics, but she seemed to realise what I was struggling with, and smiled.

“You can call me Miriam. You are as much a child of the court as Cale is, even though you have never visited.”

“Thank you.” I managed a smile in return.

“Now it’s been decided with your father that you’ll stay here until the Healer says you’re better, and—” she held up a hand, cutting off the polite protest that I was mustering, “that is not something to be negotiated.”

I found myself wanting to laugh at her expression, as it was so achingly similar to something that I would expect to see on Hazen’s handsome face, and she softened a little when my smile became more relaxed.

“I really appreciate it,” I told her, looking over at Rose to include her, “how much you have all done for me, if there is anything I can do in return, please tell me.”

“I’d hazard a guess to say that you’ve already done it,” Miriam told me, her gaze touching on Cale for a moment, and then she was turning and heading back to the door. “Try not to wear her out too much, you two.”

“Does she think that Hazen is watching?” I asked Cale once she had disappeared.

He nodded, “and once he sees that you’ve woken up, he’ll probably come home.”

“I wouldn’t be putting all your chips on me. Maybe he left because—” I snapped my mouth shut then, almost having forgotten that Rose didn’t know as much as Cale or Hazen, and that she was suddenly looking at me with thinly veiled curiosity, waiting to hear what I would say.

Luckily, Cale smoothly saved me: “ahh you heard about what happened after you left us a couple of hours before midnight.”

“What happened?” asked Rose, much to my relief, because I was also curious.

“Hazen got rip-roaring drunk.” He seemed pleased by this memory.

“He
did?”
both me and Rose asked, and I could hear that she was torn between laughter and disbelief.

“Yup,” Cale perched himself on the windowsill and looked down over the grounds. “Him and Kaylee finally sealed the deal too.”

Rose made a face. “She’s been trying to get my brother to sleep with her for years.”

“I thought they were a couple.” I said, fighting to keep my tone even, despite the sudden, sickening feeling clenching in my stomach.

“Well I suppose they are now,” Rose muttered, and flopped onto the bed. “Which actually would be a really good reason to flee the kingdom.”

I tried not to laugh, but it escaped anyway, and I was somewhat selfishly relieved that Rose also seemed to dislike Kaylee.

“Which reminds me,” piped up Cale. “You had a gentleman caller of your own, Little Synfee. He said his name was Nareon.”

“Who was he?” asked Rose, disturbingly eager. “I saw him myself, he was well… he was very
good-looking
, Bea—is he your boyfriend or something?”

“Or something,” I clarified. “He helped me out in a bad situation a little while ago, and now I’m not sure what he wants.”

“I’d say he wants a piece of Beatrice Harrow.” Rose wiggled her brows, and I suddenly laughed so hard that I momentary got dizzy and had to gasp for breath.

Cale also seemed to be amused, but Rose shook her head at me.

“Nareon isn’t to be trusted Rose,” I stared at her seriously, to emphasise my point, but she only rolled her eyes.

And then Cale suddenly jumped off the windowsill, eyes wide and sliding to fix upon me, his expression saying very clearly that he had just figured out my secret.

“Rose,” he said, his voice uncharacteristically hard. “Give us a minute, will you?”

Rose jumped up, a little shaken, and threw me a look. I nodded to her, to let her know that it would be okay, and she hurried out of the room, closing the door behind her.

“He’s a synfee. That’s why he’s wearing a glamor,” Cale hissed, storming to my side and pinning me down with a sudden, furious glare.

“He is,” I said carefully.

“Why didn’t you say so?”

“You would have thought I was working with him.”

“Don’t be absurd, Bea.”

I shrugged, and sat up a little straighter, feeling self-defensive.

“He only approached me on my first day at the Academy. He said that he needed to help me control my…” I hesitated, and Cale’s eyebrows shot up.

“The time for secrets has passed, Little Synfee.”

I winced. “He told me that I would come into my inheritance power when I turned eighteen.”

“What the hell is that?”

“Something called Force. He said I would be able to control the forces of nature around me, like the wind, the temperature, the rain, that kind of stuff.”

“Well you did specialise in those elements, so that’s kind of a no-brainer.”

“I think he was talking on a larger scale than specialisation.”

“Like hurricanes? Stor—”

He cut off abruptly, and I knew that he was remembering the sudden clap of thunder that had surprised him when I had been compelled to kiss him.

“That doesn’t really make sense,” he mused. “If your inheritance power was that volatile that the synfees had to send someone to keep an eye on you, wouldn’t that be a good thing for them? I mean, you’re in the middle of
our
kingdom, not theirs, so a sudden natural disaster would be a godsend as far as they are concerned, wouldn’t it?”

I shrugged again. “He wouldn’t tell me anymore, though he did manipulate me into dropping my glamor a few times, which also doesn’t make a lot of sense.”

“Unless he specifically wanted your glamor down for the moment that you turned eighteen.”

“What would that do?”

“Beats me, Little Synfee.”

We spoke a little longer, and then Rose knocked on the door and poked her head in to tell Cale to go home, because I needed to rest.

Once alone, I sank quickly into sleep, and didn’t wake up until the next day, when the door suddenly slammed open. I jolted up and quickly rubbed my eyes, blinking as Hazen’s face slowly came into focus. He strode to the side of the bed, and I found words stuck in my throat. Unfortunately, he also didn’t seem inclined toward speech, and the silence stretched on, with him gazing down at me as if he couldn’t quite believe I was really awake, or alive, and then Rose also busted into the room, gasping to catch her breath.

“Man you’re fast,” she mumbled, as she threw a dark look at her brother and came to flop down on the bed beside me again. “Sorry Bea, I did tell him that you were sleeping.”

“It’s fine,” I muttered, finally dragging my eyes away from him, which seemed to spur him into action.

“You look better,” he offered, pulling up a seat beside the bed. “Before I left, you were so pale…”

The silence stretched on again, and Rose cleared her throat. “You’re going to go crazy, locked away in here for a week; maybe we can sneak you down to the garden tomorrow.”

I turned to smile at her. “That would be amazing.”

Cale ambled in then, and didn’t look the least surprised to see Hazen sitting there.

“And how is everyone this morning?” he asked.

“Rose is relieved that I’m back, Bea is exasperated that you’re not surprised to see me here, because she thinks we’ve been communicating secretly in your head, and I am fine,” Hazen answered for all of us, causing his sister to reach over me and punch him in the arm.

“Well, you did contact me as you were riding past my house,” Cale spoke, moving to sit on the bed beside Rose. “If I remember correctly. What was it again? Oh yes, ‘
Wake up, I’m home
.’ Eloquent as ever, Hazen.”

Hazen’s lips twitched in that half-smile of his, and Miriam appeared in the doorway, her eyes falling on her son with no small amount of relief.

“Hazen, you’re back!”

Hazen stood and walked to his mother, kissing both of her cheeks and walking her to the chair he had just vacated, all in his typical, unemotional manner. Though I got the feeling that she was used to it—or perhaps saw beyond it—as the brightness in her eyes never dulled, even when she turned back to me.

“And how are you today, darling? The Healer checked on you while you slept earlier, he said you were moving along exponentially fast.”

“He did?” I looked down, assessing the soreness I had felt the day before, surprised to find it gone. “Oh,” I said, flicking back the covers and swinging my legs to the side of the bed, moving to stand experimentally, though it looked like Rose was about to jump up in objection.

My legs protested a little, and I waited for the wave of dizziness to assault me as it had the day before, but I remained steady, and a wide smile soon spread across my face.

“Excellent!” Miriam exclaimed.

Cale whistled, and Rose relaxed a little, but Hazen’s face was as blank as ever—in fact, his eyes were narrowed slightly on the hem of my shift, which reminded me that I was still only wearing a shift, and then I quickly slid back to the bed and pulled the covers to my chin, flushing red with embarrassment. His eyes snapped to mine, and I thought that he might smile, but Miriam seemed to realise the same thing that I had, and she looked admonishingly at Hazen and Cale both.

“Time to give her some privacy; Rose and I can take it from here.”

Hazen did smile then, and Cale rolled his eyes, jumping off the bed and moving to the door with Hazen, though he couldn’t help the remark he threw over his shoulder:

“You know nobody is faster at stripping off clothing than I am!”

Miriam looked as if she’d smack him over the back of the head, and Rose giggled, but the door closed on his grinning face before anyone could do anything, and I again pushed back the covers to stand. It was slow going, getting out of the shift, and they even waited in the bathroom while I showered, sitting on the bathtub and chatting quietly in case I fell over. If I didn’t feel so weak and shaky, I probably would have been mortified, despite the fact that royals had handmaidens who saw them naked all the time, but as it was, I was grateful for the help. That is, until they started dressing me in another of Rose’s dresses.

I began to protest, but Rose silenced me.

“Oh hush you, I’m not going to put you in anything scandalous. I only made you try on those for the party, this is a court dress.”

I closed my mouth obediently, and Miriam chuckled as they slid the gown over my shoulders and she began fastening the buttons down my spine, her fingers working far too deftly for a queen. Which is when I realised that I was letting royalty fawn over me.

“Oh god, I just realised… shouldn’t a servant be doing this?”

Rose rolled her eyes. “You really do act like a bone-head sometimes, Bea. We’re fae, we love to do this kind of thing. You should have seen my mother when I was younger. She did my hair almost five times a day, and dressed me up separately for every meal. It was a nightmare.”

Miriam laughed, the sound like tinkling china. “You’re much worse than I ever was, miss Rose. Don’t act like you don’t dress your handmaiden up when you think I’m not paying attention.”

Rose blushed, and I suppressed a laugh of my own.

“Besides,” said Rose. “My handmaiden is nothing compared to you, you’re every fae’s dream.”

“I’ve never of a synfee being a dream, rather than a nightmare.”

Miriam
tsked
me for the joke, but Rose sniggered, and together, they began tugging and pulling at my hair while I looked down and admired the dress. It was pale lavender again, and I was beginning to think that Rose had labeled it as ‘my colour’. The sleeves where capped off at my shoulders, secured with little buttons, and while the neckline did dip a little, it didn’t dip anywhere nearly as low as most of the dresses she had made me try on before the party. There were delicate sections of lace braided along the neckline and waistline of the dress, which cinched in only to flow out in soft ripples to just above my knees.