“Rosalea, do not do this again,” Nerric was pleading.
“Nerric, why did you not stay in the library if you did not want to come?” Rosalea said a little impatiently, peering around the corner to see if she could make it to the next room without being seen.
“You are just going to get into a heap of trouble again, and Ulric said he would beat you for it, and me for letting you.”
Rosalea sighed and turned back to him. “Stay here then. If you give me up again, I am going to make you regret it. A snake will be the least of your worries this time.”
Nerric frowned, and his face reddened. “Rosalea,” he whined outright, his voice cracking and making him blush harder.
“Look, just because I turned fourteen does not mean I want to learn all this magic nonsense, all right? I just want one more day to think about it, and Ulric is uncompromising. If you do not want to come, stay here.” As he tried to protest further, Rosalea sighed and rolled her eyes and glanced down the hall again, darting to the nearest closet. Nerric did not follow.
She felt so annoyed at him. Neither of them liked Ulric, so why was he in such a hurry to follow his stupid rules? It was not just that, but Nerric was perfectly aware why she did not want to sort her magic - it would end up deciding things for their futures. She ducked down the hall toward one of the doors to the outside; she could all but hear Ulric’s typical admonishment: “Princess! This is no way for you to behave!” She repressed a sigh, another nagging thought pressing down on her. The main reason Nerric felt so much pressure was that Ulric often reminded him that if he was to be the next king, then he would have to make her behave. I try hard to make myself believe I can love him enough to marry him, but he never thinks like me, and he always just obeys.
She had to hide for a moment from someone moving through the hall to dispose of trash in the compost heap, but after that, she made it outside. I am so out of here, and she bolted for the castle wall. She glanced back at the castle, to see if anyone had noticed her, or if Nerric had followed her after all, but no one was there. Confusion flashed through her as she slammed into something in front of her - she hit into it so hard that she almost fell. She yelped as that something grabbed on to her, and she looked up. Her blood ran cold as she recognized Ulric’s face. Her heart sank. What? How?
“Did I not promise to soundly whip you both if you tried this again?” he asked almost unemotionally, but the flush in his tan face showed he was anything but unemotional. Rosalea backed up, but he closed the distance between them and gripped her wrist in a bruising vice. “I could see it on your face this morning. The moment I gave you a chance, you were going to spend the day avoiding your magic.”
Nerric wasn’t far behind her after all; she heard the door open, and then heard his voice crack on a whimper as he too recognized they were both caught, and, of course, now he wished he had stayed behind. She wished he had stayed behind; it always made her feel sick watching him get beaten for what she had caused him to do.
Ulric’s eyes flashed up to Nerric, and she saw his face transform instantly into an ugly expression before he raised his hand and backhanded her. She staggered and remained paralyzed, cheek and corner of her right lip throbbing as blood rushed to the bruise. She held still where she ended up, trying not to move or even breathe.
“You are a bad influence!” he snarled. “How can we trust either of you to bring this kingdom out of the darkness that pervades it when you will not do simple things?” He grabbed her by the wrist and forced her down beneath him, making the joint pop as he did so. “I am tired of fighting with you. I am tired of beating you.”
Rosalea glanced at movement in the corner of her eye - and she realized people were quietly fleeing the area to not have to watch what was happening. A councilman, rather than intervening or doing anything to even observe, was making the fastest of the retreats.
“Look at me!” he gripped her chin and pulled her forward by it enough that she all but fell to her hands and knees. His grip on her face felt like it was going to crush her jaw. “Do you think I like this? Do you think I like hurting you? Why do you always do this?”
This time, when he backhanded her, it knocked her down onto the cobbled ground. She laid there, still, unanswering. It hurt. She knew he was hurting her, but she didn’t feel like she was part of herself. If she just froze inside, then it would end eventually, and when she was unfrozen, she could think about what was said, and she could deal with this pain. There were never right answers when he was like this. She couldn’t tell him she was afraid that she wasn’t an Ieshan. She couldn’t tell him that if she was an Ieshan, there would have been signs already because she would have felt all the animals around her.
Ulric was so worried about her becoming her mother that he and everyone else weren’t thinking about the possibility that she was going to become her father.
“Get up!” he yelled, but she couldn’t bring herself to move, so he grabbed her by the front of her dress, fist pressing against the front of her throat and stopping air for a moment as he hauled her up to her knees again. “You are doing this. Now. Here.” His voice was so growly that she was afraid he was going to turn into a bear right here and right now and really see if he could beat her. “I have trained you, and you have resisted. You are sorting your magic right here, right now. Nerric, get over here.”
Rosalea couldn’t comprehend what he was asking at first as he let her go, and she coughed for air, and her throat felt tight and weird after the pressure. No, Nerric, run away. Why are you coming over here? He’s only going to punish you for me.
But Nerric was, as ever, utterly dutiful, and he walked up to Ulric and accepted his beating - lashes across his back with a belt. Rosalea tried to look away, but Ulric’s snarl made her jerk her eyes back up the young man’s blue eyes as he cried out under the belt several times, and his eyes glassed up with tears by the third blow. Fortunately, Ulric stopped this time after just five strokes and told Nerric to sit against the wall and not move until he told him to.
Ulric growled. “It makes me sick to my stomach. But I knew, I knew! You would dare walk out of that lesson. Do you think rebelling will give you sympathy or a place here if that magic of yours turns out to be dirty?”
Rosalea stared at the ground. This was always the worst part. He always seemed to know what shame she felt, and he never failed to dig right into it with his words. Her whole body tensed. She wanted to say something, but the feeling in her chest was so tight, she could barely breathe, and the heat behind her eyes so intense, she was afraid she would cry at any moment - which Ulric would also beat her for, for a Queen must always keep an iron composure. There was no winning.
Ulric towered over her, literally shaking with fury. He had become so intense after Nerric had been brought to the castle, as if something had happened that Rosalea should know, but couldn’t figure out. Now that Nerric was here, his violent temper had known no boundaries. He must have felt he had to do more, to drive his point home, so he slapped her. “So help me, if you hurt our people, I will hurt you,” he snarled. Rosalea kept staring at the ground. There was nothing she could do now that he was like this. It didn’t really matter how she reacted; he was in a black fury. Silence stretched between them, as if even the wind was afraid to rustle through the willow leaves.
He balled up his fists, growled again, and Rosalea braced, thinking that he wasn’t done trying to make his point. She quivered. He deflated suddenly, as if tired. “I know you are scared, but I did not raise you to be a coward. Genya did not raise you to shirk your duties. Nashota did not place his faith in you despite all odds so you could malinger out of your future, and Nerric will not be marrying a wandering queen. Now sit here, and meditate the way I taught you, and we will get this over with.” Rosalea didn’t move; there was a long, painful silence.
“It takes people days of trying,” Rosalea said with a sharp worried tone, not wanting to start, and certainly not wanting to start here in public in the middle of the courtyard. “I do not want to.”
He did not soften. “I do not care. Meditate. Now. You are not ill-educated nor do you lack the willfulness to manage your magic. Do it.”
She was stung enough about the insults and Genya that she didn’t want to argue any more. Stupid Lindir, did you not care at all what would happen to me when you made your choices? I would not even have to care if you had run away with any other race, but you ran away with one of the Uryans. You did not care about anything, and Ulric thinks you and I are the same.
Her heart ached. Her body ached, pain radiated through her face, shoulders, and neck. It was very hard to focus, to try to lose herself in any kind of meditation to reach her metaphysical and magical center of being, but with time… as Ulric predicted, she managed.
She lost track of the pain, lost track of the tense sensation in her heart, and she soon found herself overlooking her inner core of magic. It was a spiritual place; she had practiced getting to before, but had never quite reached because she didn’t have Ulric standing over her with a black rage threatening to all but kill her until she did as demanded. Even at this stage, seeing the black mass like a big lake at the core of this inner world, with its tangled masses trying to flow every which way through her body, it gave her a sense of reverence.
She did all the things he had trained her to do; she worked with that source of magic within her to bring order and discipline to the wildness within. When she was done, it would show what kind of mage she was. The closer she got to finishing, the more her heart became heavy, and her panic grew.
Black undeveloped magic remained when she focused on the physical world. I am Uryan, not so much like my mother as I turned out to be like my father.
When Rosalea came back to her stiff, sore, aching physical body, her heart was heavy. When she opened her eyes, she was blinded by the glowing in the air and around all the plants. Her sight was magically sensitive now, and more, she felt as if there was a whole new, second layer of sensations in the environment. Nerric had described it to her once, seeing the world of magic with spiritual eyes, but with the way her head immediately ached; she wished she could go back to the dull world without it.
The bad news was worse than just inheriting her father’s magic. Humans didn’t have more than two elements within their magic, most only called upon one. Yet there was evidence of all four elements within her, for there were that many distinct strains of magic within her core. She was so exhausted feeling, she just closed her eyes, and, not for the first time, wished she was just dead.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
However, Nerric cleared his throat, walked to her, and placed his hand on her knee. “You know how you focused to get into the magic world? Just focus on yourself, even with your eyes closed. What do you see?”
It was hard to think with her head throbbing, but she did as he told her, his hand resting gently on her knee, and she could see the twisted flow of the black through her body separating out into colors that were fanning through the air. “I see my magic sort of… circulating? Around me?”
“That is correct. Now, imagine that you are holding your magic in your hand, and if you close your hand, you can stop the circulation,” he prompted gently. Rosalea wondered where Ulric was, until she heard someone fidgeting. She had expected him to try to teach her. Rosalea though, was content he didn’t touch her and listened to Nerric. She looked at how the magic was fanning into the world around her from her hands, and she slowly closed them. When Nerric saw her close her fists, he said, “Try opening your eyes now.”
When Rosalea did, there was only the barest of glimmers in the world around her, no brighter than the blue and green moon of Demias above. She looked up at Nerric and smiled in a relieved way. He smiled sympathetically back. “I had the same problem when I organized it. Master Ulric, we have a little time before bed and before it gets cold. May I be permitted to teach Rosalea a few things?”
Ulric looked calmer, though still sullen, perhaps even haggard, and he nodded curtly. “Rosalea, what color was your magic?”
Rosalea looked down, fear fluttering in the pit of her stomach.
“It does not matter right now, does it? Nashota is traveling back from Castle Restorell, and it cannot concern him until he is home.” Nerric spoke quickly, as if he had already thought of this.
For once, Ulric softened. “I will see you in the morning,” and at last he left them. His shoulders stooped forward, as if the weight of disappointment was crushing.
Rosalea swallowed hard, as if she would burst into tears right away, but Nerric caught her by the hand. “Let us go learn and play,” he said chipperly. He guided Rosalea over to the stream and sat down.
“Now, you contained your magic, do the same thing, but let the weather magic I saw loose, all right?”
Rosalea was grateful for the distraction. She closed her eyes, and then focused; it came easier this time. She focused on the blue twined in the black, and she slowly opened her hand. There was an odd tingle through her as it flowed out of her.
Nerric was busy taking his shoes off and his socks, and once he had his feet in the water, he pointed to the water next to him. “Here, the water is cold because it is still early summer.” A reddish hue spread around Nerric’s feet.
Rosalea nodded, and slowly unlaced her shoes and slid them off, tying her skirt up so it wouldn’t get wet. Her body ached so much. She let her feet go into the water. It was a bit of a shock of cold, and then she watched the reddish magic move from his feet to span across to hers, and it was warm. “So how do you change the temperature like that?”
“Good, you saw the red move from me to you, right? It actually means more of a change in temperature. So, look up at the sky. Do you see how mostly you only see pinks, which are small changes of temperature - and that yellow is the light interacting with the water droplets. Blue is how heavy the air is with moisture. To change the temperature, or to move the moisture, or to capture light, you extend your magic to it.” He seemed to hesitate, and looked to Rosalea. She didn’t know what he wanted, so she kicked her feet mildly, noting that when she left that aura of red, the water was instantly cold again. “So red represents changes in temperature, but not temperature itself, does that make sense?” he was repeating himself, something Ulric never did, but she supposed it took a minute to try to figure out how to explain things.
“That means the red in the water is from you changing it, but I do not see red in most of the water because it is not changing temperature?” she prompted him.
He got a self-conscious look. “Uh, actually, let us just start with manipulating water. I think that was easiest for me.”
He moved his hands, starting with his palms down and then making a circle in the air with them. Once his palms were face up, he lifted - and a globe of water came from the irrigation ditch. It was glowing a bright blue… and the blue coating it shifted and the water turned pink and then red as he warmed it. “I used magic to gather it, pressure to warm it, and my hands and magic to move it.”
He dropped it back into the spring. “See the light?” he pointed to the yellow auras above them. He made a gesture with his hand, a circle, and then closed his fist, which began to glow, “I gathered it up.”
She couldn’t help but smile a bit, watching the blue webs on his hand so bright, and then the physical light streaming through his fingers and turning the flesh pink in spots.
“Water is inclined to naturally flow though, so it is most friendly,” he made the gathering gesture, and then with a few more gestures it turned to a square, and then into a pyramid. “So uh, try it.”
Rosalea nodded, and she put her hands out over the water and tried imitating his gesture from before. Exactly nothing happened. “Try again,” he urged. So Rosalea did, but it felt as if she was making the gesture without feeling anything in the water.
Nerric made a musing noise, “I think I know what is wrong. Let us try this: just focus on getting a sense of the water, the way it flows, and then just try to pull a little toward you.”
Rosalea stared hard at the water, willing it to move, speaking to it in her head, keeping her hand reached out toward it. Nothing happened. She couldn’t make it budge.
Nerric smiled, “You have a kind of cute concentrating face,” he said off-handedly, with a look Rosalea knew he was just teasing her with. She huffed at him, and then she looked down at the water again, grateful to him despite the beatings they’d gotten today.
“So… maybe you should try to put your hand in the water and start with touching it?” he asked after several seconds. “Or are you trying it again?”
“You know perfectly well that I was not!” Rosalea reached down to “feel” the water by splashing it at him. None of it reached him; a purple barrier, the color she recognized internally was his magic, flared up, and the drops splattered on it and fell. She could not help but smile, and he smiled comfortably back. The softness of the moment soothed her after earlier. Even though there was a sort of shame waiting for them both when Nashota did return, at least for this moment, they could practice and play in the water.
Rosalea was quiet again and looked back to the water. She made a beckoning motion. Nothing happened. Come on, she thought, making pulling motions with her hands. She didn’t get anything but an irregular ripple. And she wasn’t sure if that was there, or she had just imagined it in her hopeful efforts to see something happen.
“Well, we could try one thing, and see if it works,” Nerric volunteered, an impish look on his face.
“What is that?” Rosalea asked.
He pointed up.
Rosalea made a strangled, startled noise as she saw a bath’s worth of water in the air above her. “Catch!” Nerric said gleefully.
Rosalea threw her hands up, closing her eyes, fully expecting the deluge to wash over her. Nothing happened. She opened her eyes just slightly, enough to see the water hovering above her in a black barrier. This startled her, and she thought Nerric must not have let the water go.
Swoosh! It came down hard, washing her breath away and sloshing everywhere as it ran back into the ditch. The only upside was that it was somewhat warm.
Nerric was laughing. Rosalea tried to decide if she was offended or not. She made a swinging motion with her hand.
A minor wave came rushing from the creek and splashed Nerric full in the face, running down the front of his shirt. He wasn’t nearly as wet as Rosalea was though. “Cold!” he cried, jumping back.
Rosalea felt a little satisfied at that.
Nerric was using magic to pull water off both of them, and to heat the air around them, so that it wasn’t so cold. Moments later, they were both dry and warm. “I cannot believe that worked,” he said with a grin. “And then you dropped it on yourself!”
“You did not think it would work?” Rosalea demanded.
Nerric gave her a sidelong glance and a grin. Rosalea felt instantly annoyed at him. “You just wanted to get me wet!”
He grinned. “Well, I did not officially drop it on you. You did that yourself. With your eyes closed!”
Rosalea made a motion like she would slosh more water out of the creek. He put his hands up, making signs for peace. Rosalea relented.
They were quiet for a while, sitting on the bank, with their feet out of the water. Rosalea leaned on Nerric because he was warm. Demias was rising early tonight, and for a time, it was easy to lose themselves in the blue shining seas of the moon, and to look at the clouds in its atmosphere occasionally revealing gaps of brown-green land.
“You know, back then, when I first came here, I was really worried when my father, well, you know, sold me off to the Ieshans. I thought you might be some terrible pampered monster with mind-control, how the worst stories go. But, the mind-control turned out to just be a headache and a weird sensation, and I found myself walking with slaves as docile as if I was one, and I still cannot remember where home ever was.” He took a deep breath, uncharacteristically open with her. “Back then, it was neat to see you in the tree,” he admitted. “Though I did not know that was you.” He sloshed water from the creek, “And I told myself that at least I will get to be king, which is more than my brothers can say for themselves,” he lifted his arm out from between them and put it around her, sharing his warmth. “You know, if Ulric was less the meanest tutor ever born, it would be pretty good here. It is, well, pretty good, between you and me, mostly.”
Rosalea stared at a little fleck of light between the clouds on the moon, and she breathed out slowly. A sober feeling clung to her. His entire future depends upon me. While she had been playing with Nerric and learning magic, her headache had faded, but now it seemed worse than ever. “Thank you for today,” she said faintly, “but...”
“Nah, I was allowed to go to council meetings since my birthday, you know. And Ulric being, you know, a little low class like he is, he does not know the truth. You will be queen, and I will be king; it was decided a long time ago. See, there is a prophecy or something, and they think you will be grandmother to some special someone. It is the real reason they, er, well, bring slaves here.” Even though Nerric was talking about his own people, he seemed to be immune to the implications. A king was above everyone, after all.
Rosalea stared up into his face, and he seemed entirely serious. She looked down. “Nerric, my magic is black. I am Uryan. I will be stuck with some feral animal companion that might lead me to become a traitor. Everyone has told me about this so, so many times.”
Nerric kicked his feet against the water and squeezed her closer to him. “I know. It scares everyone that you are a little wild and never do what you are supposed to do. If you stop, and you start, you know, acting the way they want, we would both suffer a lot less, and you will be Queen. There is no one else in Iesha’s line but you. Nashota said you could just stay out of the public, and I could speak for you.”
He turned his blue eyes to her, staring at her until she looked up at him. Suddenly she was aware of all the heat radiating off his arm, she was aware of the heat radiating from the whipping earlier. She was aware of every throbbing bruise on her body because her heart had suddenly started beating so very fast. “Rosalea…” he started to say, and she suddenly felt like he was getting close, much too close. She couldn’t help but pull back a little. It was too awkward, it was too much suddenly all at once.
He sighed a little, “Anyway, we will sort it out,” he said, and he removed his arm and got up, picking up his shoes and hers.
“Thank you. I really appreciate you.” She got up and began to follow him inside.
“In the end, you are royal blood, and there is absolutely no one else after the failing of your parents and their parents… so you know, they have to take you for what you are, no matter what it is. Just… let us both do as we are told for a while so that we can have a few less beatings?”
Rosalea tried to smile at him, but she was so tired and wobbly and head-achey, she was grateful he helped her inside.
Genya was cleaning something out in the closet when she entered. The maid took one look at her face and frowned. “What did ya do now?” she asked.
Rosalea shrugged, unlacing the back of her dress to ease the pressure on her body. “What I always do, Genya.”
The maid sighed and put her hand to her forehead. “Child, ya are never gonna stop getting in trouble, no matter how many times ya sneak out.”
“I know,” Rosalea mumbled and flopped into her chair. “I feel really off; my head hurts so much.” She pressed her palm to her forehead, the pressure felt like it helped.
Genya hmmed and checked her face with the back of her hand. “Ya feel warm all right.” Rosalea looked up at her. “Sorting magic does change a lot. It lets your connection ta the world come inta harmony with your body. Da ya want ta lay down?”
Rosalea nodded. “I wish harmony didn’t make my skull pound,” she huffed. She let Genya help her out of her still damp clothes and she crawled into bed. It felt like there was something literally coming loose somehow in her mind, but it was too weird a sensation to even try to describe to Genya.
She fell asleep right away.