257 years ago

Bastard.

Bastard. Bastard. Bastard.

It’s an ugly word, one I’ve come to hate a great deal, mostly because I can’t escape it.

I hear it whispered beneath people’s breath as I pass. I see it in their eyes when they look at me. I smell it in the sour breath of the town kids who like to push me around for it. My knuckles are scabbed over from the number of times I’ve had to fight for my honor.

But the worst is when people use it idly.

“That Flynn boy came at my son again.”

“Who?”

“You know, the scrawny bastard.”

“Oh, him. Yes.”

The word is only a step or two up from slave. And I have to wear the title like a badge of shame.

I head into the Caverns of Arestys, twisting my way through the tunnels, the flickering candle in my hand my only source of light. Not that it matters. I can see quite well in darkness, light or no.

My mood blackens as I pass through the roughshod door to our house. A bastard son living in the worst area of the poorest floating island in all the kingdom.

My mother still isn’t home from her work as town scribe, so I move about our house, replacing the nubs of candles with the fresh candlesticks I procured.

All the while, I seethe.

Every plink of water dripping from the cavern ceiling, every draft of chilly air that slides through the myriad of tunnels—it all mocks me.

Bastard, bastard, bastard.

I grab the beets that are laid out on the table and drop them into the cauldron in our kitchen. It’s only once I pour water into the mix and then light a fire beneath the hanging pot that I actually relax enough to rub my split knuckles. Flecks of dried blood coat the skin, and I’m not sure whether it’s mine or someone else’s.

Bastard.

I can still hear the name, spoken like a taunt, on my way home from town.

Beneath the fresh cuts are old ones. I’ve had to defend my shitty title for a long time. Of course, it’s not necessarily bastard that set me off. Sometimes it’s all the insults that spawn from it.

You’ll never be anything more than your whore mother. The street kid had said that to me today. His voice still rings in my ears.

It was the wrong thing to say.

The next time you say that, I warned, you’ll have a few less teeth to work with.

He hadn’t believed me then.

I slip a hand into the pocket of my trousers and touch the tiny, bloody incisors resting there.

He does now.

Behind me the front door opens, and my mother comes in. I know without getting close to her that she smells of old parchment and her fingers are stained black with ink.

A scribe cries words and bleeds ink, she used to tell me when I was little and didn’t know better. I thought it was true, that this was part of her magic. That was before I truly understood what magic was—and what it wasn’t.

“Desmond,” she says, flashing me an exhausted smile, “I missed you.”

I nod tersely, not trusting myself to speak.

“Did you do your reading?” she asks.

We might be the poorest fairies to exist in this godsless world, but Larissa Flynn will spend what little hard-earned money she makes on books. Books about kingdoms I’ll never see and people I’ll never meet. Books about languages I’ll never speak and customs I’ll never endure. Books about lives I want but will never live.

And under her roof I’m to learn everything within their pages.

“What’s the point?” I ask, refusing to admit that I did in fact do the reading because I can’t help but return to those damned books day after day, determined to change my life. Our lives.

My mother’s eyes move to the candles.

“Desmond.” Her voice drops low as she gently chastises me, “who did you swindle this time?” She gives me her no nonsense look, but her eyes twinkle mischievously.

As much as she pretends to disapprove of deals I strike, she subtly encourages them. And on any other day, I might say something to butter her up even more. Because most days I enjoy helping her.

“Does it matter?” I say, pausing over the small cauldron I’m stirring. I smell like beets and my clothes are stained a reddish-purple where the juice has splattered onto me. I gave up a decent meal to trade for those candles. Hence, beets for dinner.

I should be thankful. It could always be worse. There are nights I go to bed with a full mind but an empty belly. And in the morning, I wake up with sand in my eyes and between my toes, like I’m the Sandman’s favorite damned person, and the whole nightmare starts over again.

I hate poverty. I hate feeling like we’re only entitled to the worst this realm has to offer simply because. But more than anything, I hate having to make hard choices. Books or food? To learn or to eat?

“This wouldn’t even be an issue if you would just let me use a bit of magic,” I say.

I can feel my power burning under my skin and beneath my fingertips, waiting for me to call it forth.

“No magic.”

“Mom, everyone thinks we’re weak.” The strongest fairies wield the most magic, the weakest, the least. Everyone who’s met me believes I’m one of those poor, rare souls born without it entirely.

A fatherless, powerless fairy. Aside from slaves, this might be the worst fate for a person living within these realms.

The rub of it all is that I have plenty of magic, and now, so close to puberty, I can feel it like a storm beneath my veins. It’s taking increasing effort just to leash it.

“No magic,” she repeats, setting her satchel next to our rickety table before taking over the stirring from me.

“So I’m to have powers but never use them?” I say heatedly. This is an old, scarred battle of ours. “And I’m to read but never speak of my knowledge?”

She reaches for my hand and runs her thumb over my knuckles. “And you are to have strength without abusing it,” she adds. “Yes, my son. Be humble. Speak, but listen more. Rein in your magic and your mind.”

Which only leaves me my muscle. Even that she’d have me hide away from the world.

“They call me a bastard,” I blurt out. “Did you know that?”

Her eyes widen almost imperceptibly.

“They call me a bastard and you a whore. That’s why my knuckles are always bloody. I’m fighting for your honor.” My anger is beginning to get the better of me, which is problematic. And under my mother’s roof, I had to live by two hard and fast rules: one, I must never use my magic, and two, I must control my temper. I’m decent at the former and shit at the latter.

She turns to our sad pot of beets. “You are not a bastard,” she says, so softly I barely hear it over the bubbling cauldron.

But I do hear it.

My heart nearly stops.

Not … a bastard? Not a misbegotten? The entire axis of my universe shifts in an instant.

“I’m not a bastard?”

Slowly, her eyes move from the pot back to me. I swear I see a flash of regret. She hadn’t meant to tell me.

“No,” she finally says, her expression turning resolute.

My heartbeat begins to pick up speed at an alarming rate, and I have the oddest urge not to believe her. This is the kind of talk you sit your son down for; you don’t just casually slip it into the conversation.

I stare at her, waiting for more.

She says nothing.

“Truly?” I press.

She takes a shaky breath. “Yes, Desmond.”

Something that feels an awful lot like hope surges through me. Bastards live tragedies. Sons live sagas. All my mother’s books are very clear on that point.

I am some man’s son. His son. Masculine pride rushes through me, though it’s quickly doused by reality. I am still the boy raised by a single mother, and I have lived a fatherless existence. Perhaps I’m no bastard, but the world still sees me as one, and knowing my mom’s love of secrets, the world will continue to see me as one even after today.

“Did he die?”

How? How did our lives come to this?

She shakes her head, refusing to look at me.

“Then he abandoned us.”

“No, my son.”

What other answer is left?

The only one that comes to me has me scrutinizing my mother, my hardworking mother who keeps many, many secrets and who has taught me to do the same.

“You left him,” I state. Of course. It’s the only logical answer left.

She grimaces, still refusing to look at me, and there is my answer.

“You left him and took me with you.”

It feels like someone’s stacked stones in my stomach. This sense of loss is almost unbearable, mostly because I didn’t know I had anything to lose in the first place.

“Who was my father?”

My mother shakes her head.

This is the kind of revelation that I shouldn’t have to pull teeth to get.

“Tell me. You owe me that.” I can feel my magic hammering beneath my skin, begging for release. A name is all I need.

Again, she shakes her head, her brows furrowed.

“If you have any love for me, then you’ll tell me who he is.” Then I could find him, and he could claim me as his son, and all those kids that called me a bastard would realize I had a father …

My magic builds and builds. I can feel it crawling up and down my back, pressing against the skin there.

“It’s because I love you that I won’t tell you,” she says, her voice rising in agitation.

This is where I’m supposed to drop the subject. But this is my father we’re talking about, one whole half of my identity that’s been missing all my life. She’s treating this conversation like it doesn’t matter. 

“What kind of answer is that?” I say hotly, my annoyance turning into anger. My power becomes frenzied at the taste of my heated emotions. Harder it presses against my back, becoming an itch.

“Desmond,” she says sharply, “if you knew the truth, it could kill you.”

My heart beats faster. Sharp, sharp pressure at my back!

Who is my father? I need to know!

“You’re the one who’s always droning on about educating myself,” I throw at her. “That ‘knowledge is the sharpest blade,’” I say, quoting her. “And yet you still won’t tell me my father’s identity.” My words lash out, and with them I feel the skin of my back give.

I groan as the flesh parts, and my magic shoves its way out of me. I have to bend over from the force of it, leaning my hand on the nearby counter.

My wings are sprouting, I think, distantly. My back throbs, tingling with my magic, and it’s not quite pain but it isn’t exactly pleasant either. My power consumes me, darkening my vision and making my body shake.

Didn’t know it would be like this.

I sense rather than see my mother turning away from the cauldron to give me her full attention. This is about the time I get a verbal lashing. And then her form stiffens as she takes me in.

I breathe heavily between waves of magic.

Why, now of all times, did my wings have to sprout?

They tug at my back, and they should feel heavy, but my magic is making them buoyant, about the weight they’d be if I were submerged in water.

I blink, trying to bring the room into focus. My sight sharpens for a moment, and I see my mother clearly.

Her eyes are wide as they gaze at my wings. She takes a shaky step back, nearly knocking into the heated cauldron.

“You have his wings,” she says, sounding utterly terrified.

Her form slips out of focus, and my attention unwillingly turns inward. I fight against it, determined to finish the conversation.

“Whose wings?” I say, my voice sounding very far away to my own ears. I feel like I’m in another room. My magic pulses tha-thump, tha-thump, tha-thump inside me.

I don’t hear her answer, and I’m not entirely sure whether that’s because she never spoke, or I simply didn’t hear it over the whoosh of power deafening my ears.

“Tell me and I’ll swear to the Undying Gods never to tell.”

My power begins to ebb, the darkness clearing from my vision. I make out my mother, and she gives me the same sort of pitying look all the townspeople give me.

“My son, that is not a vow you can keep,” she says softly, her voice breaking. Her terror and her pity are giving way to a more hopeless expression, something that looks a lot like desolation.

She’s not going to tell me—not today and from her expression, probably not anytime soon. She’d have me endure the taunts and insults for years more! All so that she can shelter me. As though I’m a defenseless babe!

My anger rises swiftly within me, dragging my power along with it.

… You are a man now …

I am. My wings are proof enough of that. My wings and my magic, the latter of which is building on itself, darkening my vision once more. My wings flare out, so large I can’t fully extend them in our cramped quarters.

Too much magic.

I sway on my feet. My anger amplifies my power, and my power, in turn, amplifies my anger, building to some elusive crescendo.

Can’t control it.

I know a split-second before I lose control that my magic is too big for my body and too strong for my will.

And then the storm trapped beneath my veins is trapped no more.

“Tell me.” My voice booms, my power rippling across the room. Our dining table slides across the floor, the chairs tumbling. The kitchen utensils hanging over our cauldron now fly across the room, and our crude stoneware plates shatter against the far wall.

It’s a testament to my mother’s strength that my power only manages to make her stumble back a few feet. My dark power coils around her. I can actually see it, like tendrils of inky smoke.

As soon as I release my magic out into the room, it loosens its hold on me. Again I can think clearly.

Horror replaces anger. Never have I spoken to my mother this way. Never has my power slipped its leash—though never has my power felt so vast.

I can still see my magic in front of me. It circles my mother’s throat and seeps into her skin.

I feel sick as I watch her throat work.

What have I done?

… Don’t you know? …

… Can’t you feel it? …

… You’ve compelled her to answer …

Gods’ bones. Now I can feel it, like a phantom limb. My magic is clawing its way through my mother’s system, prying the secret from her.

Something flickers in her eyes, something alarming, something that looks an awful lot like fear.

Fear of me.

Her throat works as she fights the words. But eventually she loses.

“Your father is Galleghar Nyx.”