Strange Magics 2: Blighted Abyss- a M/M/F fantasy romance

2- Going Home

MEM, Seven Years Later

It was nearly eerie how easily I had made it hundreds of leagues from home without any troubles. "Aided by the gods," my brother Amer would claim, though my elder sister Hestiel would likely scoff at that and call it idiots' luck. Not one for sentiment, our Hestiel. Not one for much of anything these days but her new man and trying to keep me locked in a protective bubble. Though she had always looked after both me and Amer since we were small, lately my sister had all but locked me up in a tower until I agreed to marry.

Something she had sworn to Amer that she would not do. She promised him, when he had thought he was being taken as a sex slave to end the El'kahrian war with Akar, never to force me into a similar situation. And she had broken her promise, again and again. Over and over, she had somehow convinced me to meet this noble or that royal, and I had never hated the sight of a stranger as much as I did now.

It was only as she had begun to fall for Alex, a visiting prince from one of El'kahr's borderlands, that Hestiel was distracted enough by her new lover— gods, I had never seen Hestiel so thoughtless and thoroughly gobsmacked— I had taken advantage and left in the dark of the morning. I had left Hestiel a note that I was visiting our brother and our newest niece, and it was only a week later, after only a few days in Amer's home, that I was again traveling, this time towards the We'ren Empire.

I had been reading to Jude and Harley before the roaring fire in Amer and Geir's home when a messenger had come with a letter from Geir's cousin, Galen. My brother Amer and his husband had taken in the ten-year-old twins nearly seven years before, just after my sister Hestiel took the throne of El'kahr. The twins, nearly passing out in my lap with the story I read them about a great battle many centuries ago between angels and demons, leapt off of my lap and, their little elbows and knees digging into me, making me grunt in pain, jumped at their Papa Geir when he announced who the letter was from.

"Uncle Galen!" they yelled in unison, and I chuckled at their antics as Amer rolled his eyes as their excitement woke the child he had only just managed to rock to sleep. The babe had been left by an Akaran woman who had survived slavery, the child the result of a violent rape by so many men she didn't know which the father was. Neither Geir nor Amer had told this to me, but I knew. I didn't know how I always knew these things, but somehow, I had watched the woman walk away two days after the birth without a single glance at the child she had given birth to, and the story had played out behind my eyes as if they were images projected against my eyelids.

I had always known things, many things that I shouldn't know, without really understanding how, but this kind of knowing, this kind of seeing, I had only endured for a few years. Ever since the carnival I had snuck away from the castle to attend. I had run into a woman among the traveling entertainers, and she had taken one look at me, staring into my eyes, before she had shaken her head and muttered out a few words I would never forget.

"Oh, you're going to regret taking that one from me, kid. 'Tis not a gift I'd wish on my worst enemy, the Seeing."

I had never told Geir or Amer that I knew of the baby's father, because I knew how much it meant to them that the babe never know, if possible, the violence that brought her into the world. If only to protect her from the judgements and prejudices of others, who would think less of an innocent child because of the evils of only one of her parents.

If anyone knew of that weight, it was me, Amer, and Hestiel. Our father had allowed, even encouraged, a man to rape and destroy the lives of countless children, started wars for greed and misplaced pride, and treated the people he was meant to serve as chattel.

Though she had never told me outright, I had seen how Hestiel had put an end to our father, just as I saw other things I had no explanation for. I had seen her standing over his body while he writhed in agony, foam dripping from his mouth onto the rich carpet beneath him, a bowl of stew spilled all around his body, and his body coated in pink-tinged sweat. He screamed soundlessly, his eyes bulging, broken blood vessels visibly darkening the skin around his eyes and across his face.