Brittle | MXM Short Story

Chapter 1: 𝘽𝙚𝙩𝙧𝙖𝙮𝙖𝙡

CHAPTER ONE

KORT

Father never loved me.

Because of me he didn't have my mother and I was the pitiful exchange for her death. When he was drunk he'd always cause ruckus drawing all the attention with his cusses of how she died at birth for me. Cursing at me for being born in the first place.

But it wasn't fair.

I wasn't at fault alone because my brother was born that night as well. In other words we killed her together. Or was it because I was the last one delivered? Because my looks and screaming was so annoying to endure, it caused her end? I was born frail, short-fanged and vulnerable to disease even after infancy. Every month I found myself catching a fever or cold having all the maids rush to my aid when I only wished to continue playing with my friends.

It was something I learned to live with for my entire life. Now spending my evenings avoiding his rage filled glares in the hallways or his comparisons to Malcom - my brother. Malcom was everything I envied. When we were young I remember sharing blood bags with him, colouring in our scrapbooks, ignoring all the important duties that were laid ahead and even pulling tricks on the coven's workers. I was Kort to him and nothing else, his dearest Kort.

That was the past, nowdays he shunned me.

"Ko! Listen to them for me, these are my only friends...our friends." He told me, nudging my shoulder deeper into the cave causing my knees to off balance and nearly trip. Malcom's tone was pleading but my cries were worse, I never wanted to go inside but they forced me. The one person who loved me and gave me security - so I thought - put me in danger.

It angered me. They knew I was frail, the smallest of all the young, yet still forced me into such a thing.

Drek, one of the stable boys, was the only one who did not laugh when I eventually stumbled into the dark pits. All five of them, all five of my 'friends', watched as I slid accidentally on the mossed rock and succumbed to the cave's darkness.

The next thing I woke up to was my bed chambers and the nurses wailing at my rising. Monoplegia they called it, my entire right leg was stiffened from the fall after my head slammed down five feet causing brain damage.

From then came the downfall. All I remember was spending nights alone. Lips bursting with blood from my nipping. My paralysed leg violently shaking from the cold while my eyes dotted around the window hoping for Malcom to appear to tell me something. It didn't even have to be a sorry, just anything!

Those hours awake were in vain because he never came to my disappointment even after 20 years. I swear if he had visited once I would've found it in myself to forgive him as he was just under pressure, but no, the cowardly vampire remained distant. When my hope was running thin I found myself believing that that day he showed his true feelings towards me.

Hating me just like everyone else.

And I hated it, everyone knew him as the braver son, the more handsome one, the walking one. When I was just Kort who killed his mother and couldn't get to point A to B without his legs buckling.

No matter how much I would encounter him in the hallways and at dinner he never uttered a word. Barely glancing in my direction. The air was always bitter when we were together and whenever father was added to it things were worse. Just the sight of me made him want to ruin my life because he enjoyed seeing me struggle. Father did this in ways like removing me from his inheritance or as an heir for the Coven Leader - not like a disabled vampire could be one anyways.

When potential suitors would visit, he'd purposely lock me in my chambers where not even my screams or scratching on the door could be heard from downstairs where Malcolm was, drinking and dancing with princes from far kingdoms and heirs for other coven's. Sometimes I wondered if he took it for granted, all the attention and love father showered him in.

It was something I'd never reach nor have.

That was until noticing the mage. The head chief's son.