The Cycle

Chapter fifteen

"So... How did you end up like that? I've never heard of the Nature kingdom having hybrids." Langdon asked, looking up at me from the floor as I sat on a wooden beam up in the ceiling.
We both sat in a sparring room located in an "attic space" in the castle. Langdon held a piece of torn cloth to his bloody nose and I had a cloak wrapped around me tight.
I had shifted into my more animalistic form and shifting back was proving to be rather difficult.
"I have no idea," I sighed before standing up and walking along the wooden beam "my earliest memory of it was sparring with Carlisle. I almost tore his throat out."
Langdon laughed loudly. The sound was strange and disturbing due to his previous serious and threatening persona.
"Hybrids were never meant to spar with regular fae. We were always taught that if there was a hybrid in battle, your best bet was to run and hope they didn't chase you."
He talked so naturally of me. So easily. Things weren't adding up. I had been feared. No one had known what to do with me or how to treat me or anything. I was a monster. My mother had kept me away from Angelique until she was roughly ten and I still wasn't allowed near Mary.

"She's a freak, Jarseth! She can't control herself or pace herself or anything! Carlisle could be scarred for life!"
"Lilliana, my dear, he's fine. It's hardly a scratch."
I looked around the door and watched my parents argue, my body still humming with energy from shifting.
"A scratch?!" My mother shrieked "it is a deep gash! His shirt was soaked in blo-"
"Well what do you want me to do about it!?" My father roared.
The room fell silent. My father never yelled. He never snarled or growled or hurt anyone who wasn't on the battlefield. My mother stared at my father and her next words broke my heart in two.
"Either train It. Or lock It up."

"I guess no one knew that in Nature." I said with a shrug, remembering my mother's words about me.
It.
Not 'my daughter'.
It.
"We knew that you were blessed but we had no idea you were a hybrid. And a cat hybrid at that."
My brow furrowed in confusion.
"Wait.. there are different types?" I asked and Langdon nodded.
"Yeah. Mermaids are fish hybrids. Werewolves are wolf hybrids. Vampires are a warped bat hybrid. The list goes on."
I digested that information, taking in the words he had said and pulling a face. I had just been lumped in with creatures of the night. Horror stories of the human world created to scare and terrify.
I was just like the monster my mother made me out to be.
"What exactly do you know about hybrids?" I asked curiously.
Langdon, despite his mean attitude and off putting people skills, turned out to be well read and a fountain of knowledge. While he had been arrogant and mean acting as a prince, he seemed to gush as someone on the verge of a new discovery. The arrogance was still there but the meanness had crawled away.
He talked and talked about the science of it all and the way people perceived hybrids.
"They're people just like fae but they're more in touch with the animalistic side which we lost when the four kingdoms were formed. Before then, we were little better than savages. We fought and battled. Back then, everyone had a form to shift into. Nowadays, very few people still have that form."
"So I'm part animal?" I snorted and Langdon rolled his eyes at me.
"No you fucking moron. We all have animal in us. You can just access the animal part of you more easily than others can. Cara could do it too. She was a fish hybrid."
I snorted.
"There's a whole host of jokes which I'm sure you and your brothers already exhausted." I grinned.
Once again, Langdon rolled his eyes.
"We would never be that mean."
"Okay. So Adam and Jasper exhausted the jokes."
Langdon decided that my statement was fair and stood up to stretch.
A million thoughts seemed to plummet in and out of my head. I had never heard of 'hybrid' before. I had heard monster, yes. That was easy.
But never hybrid.
Perhaps this was why they had taken me.
But Langdon had only suspected. He hadn't known for sure.
"Am I here because I'm a hybrid?" I asked after what felt like an eternity of silence.
Another long silence. This one was fuelled by a long and heavy sigh from Langdon.
"You're here because of the way you were born."
Because that made so much sense.
From the look on my face, Langdon could tell that I had no idea what he was talking about. With a soft smile and looked up at me.
"Have dinner with my family and I tonight. We will explain everything to you then."
Turning on his heel, the dark haired boy with shark eyes and a surprising amount of knowledge left the sparring room.
And left me with a lot of questions.

(~*~)

Ariana worked her fingers through my hair slowly and hummed a gentle, haunting tune. Her nimble fingers were soft against my honey coloured locks and seemed to move with a grace and kindness I couldn't remember from the first few times she had worked on my hair.
Her soft and happy face could be seen above mine in the mirror and it suddenly dawned on me that I knew nothing about the girl who looked after me.
"Ariana?"
She looked up in response, the light at the base of her throat glowing gold.
"How did you get here?"
She smiled kindly before letting out a sigh.
"My family was poor. At the time, we sold ourselves for our light. It was the only use we had. My mother had to stand by an old woman's bed every night, all night to give her light. My father worked in the early hours of the morning and the late hours of the night on farms when it was too dark for others to see. My brothers were taken away to fight for the Black Knights and we were struggling," she let out a shuddery breath "My father sold me to a man who wanted to marry me. I was to be his trophy wife."
I looked at her golden hair and piercing eyes and my heart ached.
Before the Black Knights had been disbanded, it had been dangerous to be beautiful. You would have been kidnapped, stolen, bought or just killed if you resisted. With the queen of the kingdom of Light ailing and the Black Knights causing riots in the Shadowlands and the towns, the people had suffered. They'd gone missing, been sold to the human world. There was a long list of people who were being searched for by their families.
That list still kept my father awake at nights.
"We rode through the kingdom of Shadow. We didn't know it at the time but there were no people. Nothing. My husband was killed by wraiths and I got away." She looked down at the light and smiled knowingly "this thing is more valuable than anyone ever thought."
I thought- no, hoped- she would elaborate but she fell silent again, the only sound being the light tousle of my hair.
Ariana had been saved by the wraiths, in a way. She had been freed. Had she chosen to live here? Did she get paid for the work she did? Was she happy here, knowing that the kingdom of light was no longer in the hands of slavers? Or did she yearn to go home and seek her family? Her brothers? Old friends?
I wanted to ask so many questions but they all seemed so intrusive. So awful to ask of a girl who had been through so much that I kept my mouth firmly shut.