Page 38 of Bright Soul

The days in that holding house were made lengthy by my young age. It couldn’t have been too long before Keshora and Ravai returned, but they’d brought someone else too. One moment, I was bored and alone, and the next, Ravai was in my room like a burst of color. She pulled me by the hand to come meet her father.

“You’re coming home with us today!” she said gleefully, listing all the fun thingshomeentailed as we headed into the front room of the house.

“Really?” I wasn’t so sure I’d be released to go, not with all the bad names the matron had called her and her mother.

The matron’s tune had apparently changed when face-to-face with a prince, though. My first impression of Phaeron et Sudair was of the shadows that moved with him as he spoke and gestured, deep in conversation with the matron. They eddied around his boots and added extra coils where his tail twined companionably with Keshora’s. They stood together across a counter from the Iorsio woman.

He was offering her a stack of coins, but his fingers made a cage over them. The shadows suggested claws like mine.

I’d never seen the matron so nervous. “The people of this town have never seen her like before. Itisunnatural for her to have a Moihan power,” she was saying.

“All the more reason she should be raised by a family that understands her abilities,” he replied.

Ravai ran up to him and tugged on his cloak. “Dad, Dad! Look, I got Braza!”

He picked her up with a coil of shadow, affectionately pressing foreheads with her before passing her to Keshora. I was next, weightless for a moment, until he sat me on the counter next to the money. I inspected him with a bit of wonder. Dark blue stain marked a square in the middle of his bottom lip and dusted his cheeks, with paint of the same shade marking runes and patterns over each section of his spiraled horns.

He was Moihan-strange, and were I a bold, outgoing child like Ravai, I’d have rubbed one of the patterns on his horns because I wondered if they were permanent. But it was his eyes that fascinated me. Slitted and yellow, they were familiar in a way the rest of him was not. I’d later learn he was half Iorsio himself, and while hybrids didn’t truly exist in our world, he’d still inherited his mother’s flame-inspired eyes.

Phaeron held out a palm full of shadows that curled and billowed like a small black fire. He didn’t say anything, but his power called to mine, and I played with it like it was putty, squashing and stretching it. Everyone watched me, the Moihan family with understanding and the matron with fear.

“She is shadowborn,” he said.

With a wiggle of his fingertips, the crude wing shape I’d made became a pair of them. They took flight around my head, and I giggled despite myself when they tugged my hair.

I missed warm wing hugs and the vague memories of a mother who would envelop me completely. Moihan didn’t have wings, but still, the matron allowed my adoption and even waved with the money in her other hand as I became the fourth member of the second prince’s family.

Phaeron returned to an ongoing war once we arrived at the capital. The location would become my home, but at first, it seemed far too big as we traveled through it to the palace. The capital had sprung up around the crater of Myuna the White’s landing spot, curved like a crescent moon. Unlike the town they’d plucked me from, it was mixed with all three tribes co-existing and inter-mating with almost no judgment.

They placed me in a bedroom with Ravai, and we grew older and closer together. Those days were a blissful haze of dress-up and tasty food. Keshora became “Mom,” and even though she couldn’t give me wing hugs, she still treated me as if I were Ravai’s pinkish-red double.

I knew of Phaeron only from their stories of him. The first prince, his twin Endaeron, was even more vaguely a family member. My white-skinned cousins were adult age and served as torchbearers, so I only saw them at formal dinners and observed some uncomfortable family dynamics with a king and queen who merely tolerated one another and slavishly loved our goddess and the first prince’s family, who were all blessed by Myuna down to their unnatural coloring.

Mom relied on Ravai and me to tolerate years of oversight, calling usRavitaandBrazitaaffectionately. We were the shadows that balanced Myuna’s light, her less favored subjects, and even as a child, I noticed the goddess looked at Keshora specifically with something less than kind in her gaze.

The twin princes returned when there were two red stars above Soiluire, an auspicious sign that followed their victory. I was to meet my adopted father again when it was starting to become obvious that Ravai and I were of different tribes. She’d grown tall-ish with skinny limbs and a tail just long enough to trip over, with me a head shorter and broader than her with my wings to add to the effect. I, too, tripped over my tail in graceless moments, though.

We wore silver on our faces for the occasion and dusted up Mom’s cheeks and horns for her a little too zealously. The reunion happened at a banquet for our soldiers, with Myuna and the king and queen sitting at the head of the table. In those times, Myuna did not eat, and it seemed she did not need to.

The first prince arrived at the table before Phaeron, as was tradition. He was a broad Iorsio man, his skin and hair bleached white from the goddess’s touch. His mate anointed his face and horns with gold as our people cheered. He was Endaeron et Myudair, the crown prince blessed by Myuna, and the love in the room for him was palpable.

Ravai practically vibrated with her excitement as the celebration for the first prince lulled and he took his seat. We both turned in our chairs as Phaeron joined the celebration. He emerged from a whirl of shadows, casually showcasing his shadowborn powers so close to the goddess.

He and Mom touched foreheads and murmured together before she brushed dark blue powder over his high cheekbones and slid a heavy signet ring back onto his finger. The crowd loved the second prince too. They cheered for him when Momtook his hair out of its tail and twisted it to pin behind his horns. The ritual showed that he was no longer at war, and now that both princes were returned to their finery and families, the feasting could begin.

I didn’t have much to say to Phaeron, ever the quieter child next to Ravai. She chattered away about our palace life and schooling for me when he asked, the buffer I needed when he was akin to a myth in my life, the man who’d intimidated my old matron into allowing me to be adopted into a Moihan family.

“I have a surprise for you all,” he said, smiling with all his fangs. “Endaeron and I have bought an estate far from here to retire to. It will be a school for shadowborn…as I have noticed neither of you have been educated in your extra powers.”

Mom was delighted immediately, while my heart sank like I’d done something wrong. Was I supposed to be practicing with my shadows more? They were mere wisps compared to the power he seemed to have at his fingertips. She occupied his time with questions about where, exactly, the family would be escaping to and how often they’d have to return.

“As infrequently as you prefer, my heart,” he’d replied in an undertone.

Mom suggested something that had me shifting shyly late into the banquet. They were both deep into their cups, and while he fed her bits of fruit from his fingers, she leaned heavily against him and drew sigils on his horns all crookedly. Between giggles, she said, “Why don’t you take the girls to our new home? I’ve had them to myself for years. I’ll follow behind with our things.”

It was a great idea once we figured out the awkwardness of absence in the long carriage ride to our new home. Ravai sat on her hands and clamped her jaw so I could get to know the man who would be my father better. He was smart, athletic, and so very powerful. I ended the trip giddy to finally finish the animaris ritual with him and Mom and become their child by soul and essence.

I held a twist of fragile hope in hand for the days we waited for Mom to arrive. We were eating dinner when a servant burst into the room. Phaeron jumped to his feet, hand on the hilt of his sword, when in stepped a familiar Moihan man. The family’s head of security, who was supposed to protect the caravan of our valuables.

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