Feral (The Irisbourn Chronicles Book 1) (15 page)

“Adrian.
 
I like that name,” she said much too
sweetly.
 
“And you must be Dylan.”
 
She put her hand on Dylan’s arm and scooted
closer to him, but Dylan discreetly maintained his distance from her by inching
toward me.

“Amber is quite fortunate to have
such fine friends,” Cecelia continued in a silky voice.
 
Her face turned pouty.
 
“Although, I doubt she even appreciates how
lucky she is.
 
Why would she?
 
She’s already got her hands full with someone
else.” Cecelia’s eyes skewered mine with hate.

My blood froze in my veins.
 
So she
did know.

Adrian and Arisella glanced at me
skeptically, but they didn’t seem to catch on.

Cecelia returned her attention to
the boys beside her.
 
“Fortunately, my
hands are completely free.”
 
She flashed
her teeth devilishly at Adrian.
 
“So,
what is a lovely young man such as yourself doing at Pierce High?”

“Receiving an education,” Adrian
said absently, as if he were pointlessly answering a rhetorical question.

Apparently Cecelia mistook it as an
attempt to be humorous, because she produced a shrill, over-enthusiastic
laugh.
 
“Oh, you’re too funny, Adrian,
dear.”

Turning his head so Cecelia
couldn’t see, Dylan mouthed, “Is she for real?” I nodded sadly.

Cecelia’s eyes passed over Adrian
with an intent, smug look.
 
I recognized
that look.
 
It was the way girls looked
when they were determined to get something they wanted – from shoes to boys –
and willing to pummel through anything that might stand in front of them.

Cecelia leaned forward, her
obscenely low-cut top hanging much too low for my comfort. I secretly wished
one of the administrators would notice, so that she could be taken away and
given a detention.

“Have you been to Albina’s?” she
inquired.

Adrian seemed slightly
irritated.
 
“I can’t say I have.”

“You mean Amber hasn’t taken you to
Albina’s yet?
 
What an absolute shame.”

I gritted my teeth while she
addressed me in arrogant disapproval.
 
I
was fairly certain no one at the table knew what an “Albina’s” was, except for
her.

“We really must go.
 
The food is absolutely to die for, nothing
like this slop the school serves us.”
 
Cecelia stuck out her tongue at Adrian’s meatloaf.
 
“Perhaps you can take me.”

“Perhaps.”
 
Adrian removed a small book from his pocket
and became exceedingly preoccupied with it.
 
I recognized the cover.
 
The Great Gatsby
.
 
The corners of my lips twitched up.
 
I loved that book.

Cecelia looked offended that Adrian
had dared to devote his attention to a book rather than her, but she remained
undeterred.
 
“Or, if you prefer, there’s
a lovely Mediterranean restaurant that I know you’d love.
 
Everyone
loves it.
 
I could show you around the
school too. I know Amber has probably been trying her best to show you around,
but it must be quite difficult for her.
 
She’s only been here for a few weeks.
 
New students advising new students can be quite counterproductive.
 
I’m sure my knowledge of the school would
naturally be far more comprehensive than hers.” She spoke animatedly,
desperately trying to maintain his attention by running through various topics
in the hope that one would find purchase.

To Cecelia’s dismay, Adrian’s
indifference was only marred by a slight frown and a curt repetition of
“perhaps.”

I couldn’t help but snicker at
Cecelia’s exasperation.
 
Adrian’s head
abruptly snapped up at the sound, and his clear sapphire eyes found mine.
 
His book sat momentarily neglected in front
of him, while he watched me with curiosity.

Disconcerted, I averted my eyes,
only to meet those of Cecelia.
 
The fact
that I had claimed Adrian’s attention without even trying seemed to infuriate
her.

Cecelia tilted her head toward
Dylan.
 
“Have
you
been to Albina’s? Let’s go there for lunch one day.
 
You’ll never look at cafeteria food the same
way again.”

“Oh no, I love cafeteria food.
 
It’s delicious,” Dylan said quickly.
 
To prove his point, he swallowed a spoonful
of Arisella’s discarded meatloaf without gagging.

Cecelia flinched and turned back to
Adrian.
 
Clearly she considered Dylan a
lost cause.

“And that is how you get out of a
date,” Dylan whispered softly enough so that only I would hear.

“Shut up.”

Cecelia sneered at Adrian’s
book.
 
“Printed words on paper are
ridiculously dull, if you ask me.
 
I
could never understand how people found books so interesting.”

“Maybe if you actually read a few,
you’d change your mind,” I spat.
 
Adrian
laughed without making any effort to hide his amusement.

Cecelia looked taken aback.
 
“Let’s try to keep this conversation cordial,
Amber.
 
I know you’re not very good at
that, but you can at least give it a try.”

I was disgusted by Cecelia’s
sickeningly superior attitude.
 
My
fingers twitched toward Arisella’s meat loaf; I was seriously considering
cramming it down Cecelia’s throat so she would shut up.
 
But Cecelia wasn’t done yet.

“Why, I wish you all could have
been here to see Amber on her first day of school.
 
She was so hilariously embarrassing, I felt
bad for her.
 
She was arguing with the
class about some ridiculous little surfer school she used to attend.”

I stared at her, openmouthed.
 
“Your memory must be seriously impaired,
because
you
were the one arguing with
me
.”

“You do realize Amber and I went to
the same school, right?” Dylan said, insulted.

“Really?” Cecelia inquired without
a trace of shame.
 
“I didn’t mean to
offend
you
, Dylan.”
 
Yeah, only me. “I was only joking, you all
must know that.”

She fidgeted awkwardly in her seat,
like she was finally beginning to realize that she was unwelcome.

Cecelia scribbled seven digits onto
a napkin with an eyeliner pencil she had pulled out of some unknown region of
her skirt.
 
Adrian looked up when Cecelia
shoved it in front of his face.

“Well, if you ever want to do
anything, here’s my number.”

Adrian scrutinized the smudged
numbers on the napkin like they were the oddest things he had ever seen.
 
“Why would I want a number?”

“It’s not just any number, it’s my
number.”

“I know, but why would I want it?”

It dawned on me that Adrian must
not have been very familiar with certain elements of human etiquette, such as
the exchange of phone numbers.
 
Did they
even have phones where he came from?

Cecelia stared bug-eyed at Adrian,
like she couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

“Oh, don’t be rude, Adrian.”

“I’m not the one being rude.
 
Your number is of no use to me,” Adrian
answered smoothly.

“You can’t be serious.”

“Oh, he very much is,” I chuckled
knowingly.

“Fine, suit yourself!” Cecelia’s
face was turning scarlet, and she looked like she might explode.
 
Any charm she might have had was quickly
disappearing.

“Here Dylan, for you.”
 
She tossed the napkin toward Dylan
spitefully, like it was a privilege he didn’t deserve.

Dylan glanced at it once.
 
“Do you give your number out to
everyone?
 
Because, you know, that’s not
very safe.”

“It’s only unsafe if you’re an
untrustworthy person to begin with,” Cecelia said through clenched teeth.

“You may want it back then, because
I consider myself pretty untrustworthy.”

Cecelia opened her mouth as if to
say something, but stopped, smoothed her expression, and forced a smile that
looked faker than the ones on Barbie dolls.
 
“Well, it seems you all still haven’t figured out exactly how this
school works yet, but you will soon enough.
 
When you do, you’ll want that number.”
 
Cecelia turned and strutted away.

“I highly doubt it,” Adrian
said.
 
He creased the page he was on and
tucked his book back into his pocket.

“She was getting kind of rude.
 
Nice idea, by the way, playing dumb like
that,” Dylan said to Adrian.

“Sure… thanks.”
 
Adrian said, confused.
 
“What are you doing?”

Dylan had picked up Cecelia’s
number and was punching it into his phone.
 
The simple human action fascinated Arisella and Adrian.

“Traitor,” I accused.

“I don’t actually intend to call
her.
 
But it also doesn’t hurt to have
her number.
 
It might come in handy.”

“Because there will come a time
when we will desperately need to call Cecelia Stone,” I muttered.

“You never know.
 
Anyway, I’m late for an appointment with my
counselor, so I’ve got to go.”

“What’s the appointment for?”

Dylan looked away toward the
hall.
 
“New student stuff.
 
The usual.”
 
Huh, I thought he was done with all that.

“Okay, I’ll see you in fifth period,
then.”

Dylan departed for the front
office, leaving me with Arisella and Adrian for the remainder of lunch.

“You two seem close,” Adrian
observed.

“That’s because we are,” I said
honestly.
 
“I’ve known him for most of my
life.”

“Will you be able to leave him
here, if the time comes for you to leave with us?”

I dropped my fork on the table with
a clatter.
 
I hadn’t been expecting him
to ask this question so bluntly.

I had been asking myself the same
question all day, wondering if I would be able to leave Dylan again after
already abandoning him once.
 
This time,
though, there would be no phone calls, no emails, no surprise reunions.
 
Our existences would be completely and utterly
disconnected from one another.
 
Hell, we
wouldn’t even be on the same planet, maybe the same universe.

“I’ll do what I have to.”

The thought of leaving Dylan made
me uncomfortable, so I rushed to change the topic.
 
“But it’s not like I’m the only one who has a
human friend.
 
You seem quite popular
yourself.”
 
It was no surprise either.
 
Adrian and Arisella were probably the most
attractive students on campus, which really wasn’t fair considering they had
special god-given superpowers as well.

Adrian snickered.
 
“That girl?
 
I generally don’t associate with people like her.”

“What, people like humans?” I
asked, taking a sip from my milk.

“No, I don’t despise humans, but
I’m not especially fond of egotistical individuals who assume themselves
superior to their equals.”

“It’s infuriating,” Arisella
agreed.

The flat, computer-generated tone
(that, for some reason, people were still calling a bell, even though it
sounded nothing like one) blared over the school intercom, and Arisella,
Adrian, and I joined the massive body of students pouring out of the cafeteria.

“What exactly were that girl’s
intentions?” Arisella asked suspiciously, as Adrian left to wedge their two
uneaten meatloaves into an overflowing trashcan.

“She was hunting.”

“Hunting?”

“It’s a different kind of hunting,”
I clarified, and shot her a meaningful look.

Arisella snorted.
 
“And my brother was the prey.”
 
Arisella shook her head and laughed.
 
“What a foolish human.
 
My brother is
never
the prey.”

Chapter
Seventeen

I watched the knife hurtling toward
my face, paralyzed with panic.
 
I had
known it was coming; I had even received warning, but that didn’t make it any
less scary.

Adrenaline coursed through my
veins, and my brain worked faster.
 
I
fell to the ground just before the blade impaled my face.
 
It whizzed past my ear, pulling a few loose
strands of hair along with it.

Arisella did a very unimpressed
slow clap.
 
“That was better.”

“Better? I still almost died!”

Against my better discretion, I was
back to playing target practice with Arisella and her knives.
 
But, unlike the last time, I had agreed to be
the target.

I used my sleeve to wipe the beads
of perspiration running down my face.
 
“I
don’t think this really counts as training.
 
You seem to be enjoying this a little too much.”

“It
is
a lot nicer being on the throwing end of the knife than the
receiving…”
 
Arisella stuck her finger
through the circular loop at the butt of the knife and spun it.
 
“… but we haven’t even gotten to the hard
part yet.
 
This is the first training
Bloodbourn children go through.”

“That’s barbaric!
 
How did they not die?”

“Some did,” Arisella said
gravely.
 
“Our instructors told us it was
how the strong were separated from the weak.
 
Now, do you want to learn how to dodge a Bloodbourn blade, or not?
 
You’re going to be doing a lot of it, so I
expect you to pay attention.”
 
She
widened her stance and tightened her grip on the blade.

I halfheartedly got to my
feet.
 
“If we’re going to be practicing
with knives, I don’t understand why I’m not training with your brother.
 
He’s the Bloodbourn, anyway.”

Upon arriving at my house, I had
been severely disappointed to discover Arisella waiting for me in front of my
gate.
 
When I had agreed to train, I had
hoped it would be with Adrian, not his sister.
 
I’d been under the impression that she would have preferred to kill me
rather than help me.

She had led me into her backyard,
which served as their private, walled training ground.
 
The entire yard was just a grassy field
choked by weeds, with a few massive trees jutting out of the ground every
couple feet.
 
Piles of knives were
everywhere, on the ground, on racks, stuck in the trees, along with other
weapons I couldn’t name.

“I’m just as good with knives as
any other Bloodbourn.
 
Anyway, Adrian’s
busy doing a patrol for more caeci.”

“Are you better than Adrian?”
 
I was trying to stall for time.
 
The fewer sharp objects she threw at me, the
better.

Arisella grimaced.
 
“No,” she admitted reluctantly.
 
“My brother’s…
unusually
talented with weapons.
 
That doesn’t mean I’m untalented, though.
 
You’re Beastbourn, I’m Beastbourn.
 
I’m teaching you.”

“How do you know so much about the
Bloodbourn, if you’re Beastbourn?”

“You’re a curious little thing,
aren’t you?
 
Ready yourself.”
 
Arisella launched another blade at me, and I
successfully darted out of its way. “Good.
 
The reason I know so much is because for the first twelve years of my
life, I thought I was Bloodbourn.”

“How?” I asked, genuinely
interested.

Arisella suddenly appeared very
tired.
 
“It’s not a pleasant story, and I
have to warn you, it doesn’t have a happy ending.”

“Realistic stories rarely do.”

She sat down and gestured toward
the patch of grass beside her.
 
“Sit.”

Grateful for such a fortunate break
in training, I obeyed without hesitation.
 
She played with another knife from the pile in front of her, spinning it
more effortlessly than I would have spun a pen.

She exhaled slowly and began.
 
“A Divinblood child will always possess the
same ability as one of his parents.
 
Always.
 
No exceptions.”
 
She looked up and tilted her head toward
me.
 
“Remember that.”

“Like, the daughter of a
Strongbourn mother and a Spellbourn father must either be Spellbourn or
Strongbourn, but not both and not anything else?”

Arisella forced a small smile.
 
“Exactly.”

Arisella flipped the knife in her
fingers and fluidly drove it into the dirt, making me flinch.
 
She clasped her free hands under her chin and
looked up at the sky, like she were trying to transport herself to an earlier
time of her life.

“Like most marriages between
highborn Divinbloods, the marriage between my mother and my father was
arranged.
 
My father had quite a
reputation for his skill with weapons, and my mother was well known for her
beauty.
 
The Bloodbourn determine the
worth of a woman by her appearance,” Arisella reminded me.

“Yes, I believe Adrian mentioned
that…” I remembered.

“The Bloodbourn have always been
incredibly intolerant toward women; they often say that the gods created women
as a source of weakness to men, but, of course, we both know that’s absolute
madness,”
 
Arisella said bitterly, and
shot me a knowing look.
 
“By Bloodbourn
standards, my parents seemed like the perfect match, and so my father and
mother were united under the Blackwing family name.”

I plucked a long blade of grass and
thoughtfully wove it between my fingers.
 
“What were their names?
 
Their
first names, I mean.”
 
It had always been
hard for me to visualize nameless faces.

“Edric and Marcella,” Arisella said
softly, then continued.
 
“The marriage
was not a happy one, I’m afraid.
 
My
father was extremely chauvinistic and treated my mother no better than a mere
house servant he had purchased to bear his children.
 
He stripped her of what few freedoms she had
been born with, and my mother became her husband’s prisoner.

“After the wedding, she was
forbidden from seeing her parents and sisters, and she was never to leave the
house except if she were at her husband’s side.
 
My father wanted to control every aspect of her life, even her
thoughts.
 
He tried to poison her mind
with his family’s obsessive hatred of the Irisbourn, but, even for a
Bloodbourn, my mother was a woman of reason, and his words fell on deaf ears.”

I grimaced.
 
With every word that left her lips, Arisella
fed the growing disgust I felt toward Bloodbourn men.
 
The feeling swelled within me, and finally
spilled over when I broke in, “No offense, but your dad seems like an
insufferable tyrant.”

Arisella did not look offended at
all.
 
If anything, she looked
indifferent.
 
“That’s because he was.

“My mother was strong, but also
very sad.
 
She once told me that if it
hadn’t been for Adrian, she might have taken her own life.
 
Thankfully, six months after the wedding, my
mother found herself pregnant, and, for the first time in a long time, she had
something to be happy about.
 
When she first
told my father, she thought he might explode with pride.
 
My father wasted no time deciding that, if
his child should be a boy, he would transform his son into the most merciless
fighter the world had ever seen.

“The pregnancy sent my father into
a frenzy.
 
He began to truly care for my
mother in ways he had never cared before.
 
He sat with her, he fed her, he stopped
cursing her.
 
He even demanded that the
best Strongbourn nurse be brought from across the land to deliver his child.

“Sure enough, the Strongbourn nurse
arrived at the Blackwing estate, but she did not come alone.
 
She had been accompanied by her twin
brother.
 
The nurse insisted they were a
dynamic duo, that she could not work without her sibling, and so my father
reluctantly granted him permission to assist in the delivery.
 
Before the birth, it was decided that the
nurse would serve as my mother’s midwife, while the nurse’s brother would be
the doula.

“As much as my father hated the
idea of my mother closely interacting with people other than him, my mother
became very close to the twins during the final months of her pregnancy.
 
She was so fond of them that she begged my
father to let them continue to stay in her company after the baby was born, and
my father grudgingly agreed.
 
My mother
was pleased.
 
For once, she was the
center of her husband’s attention, and she felt loved.

“Then the baby came, and everything
changed.
 
As soon as the birthing was
done, my father snatched the infant from my mother’s arms, named it Adrian, and
handed it off to the Blackwing wet nurse.
 
A week passed before my mother saw Adrian again, and by then, the house
servants knew Adrian better than his own mother did.

“My mother was distraught.
 
All affections her husband had once shown her
immediately ceased.
 
He treated her worse
than he ever had before, and he severely limited her access to their
child.
 
She was neglected, left to drown
in her misery with the man who had served as her doula, while the Strongbourn
nurse cared for her child.”

“Did she ever see Adrian?” I
asked.
 
The idea of forcefully separating
a mother and her child seemed unthinkable to me, and my heart went out to
Arisella’s mother.

“Sometimes, if my father was
merciful, and my mother pled enough.”
 
Arisella’s glassy eyes looked right through me.
 
She was somewhere else, trapped in her
mother’s memories.
 
“Other times, her
doula would help her sneak into the nursery.

“The doula went out of his way to
show my mother true kindness, something that had become foreign to her.
 
For that, my mother adored him.
 
The doula was compassionate, intelligent, and
generous.
 
But most importantly, like
her, he was young and careless.

“My mother exchanged the story of
her life for a secret the doula made her promise to take to her grave.”
 
Arisella paused.
 
“Of course, she ended up breaking that oath.”

“Obviously,” I acknowledged.
 
“What was the secret?”

“The doula revealed to my mother
that he was not Strongbourn, but Beastbourn.
 
Unlike his Strongbourn sister, who took after his mother, the doula had
inherited the feral ability from his father.
 
When the doula entered the Blood Kingdom, he had disguised himself as a
Strongbourn so that he could assist his sister with my mother’s delivery.
 
The doula knew that if he had revealed
himself as a Beastbourn, my father would have turned him away at the gates.
 
It is the Strongbourn, not the Beastbourn,
with an affinity for healing.

“Yet it was not hard for the doula
to convince others he was Strongbourn; after all, a doula does not need a
Strongbourn affinity to be a good doula.

“Still, my mother did not
care.
 
She was love drunk, and she did not
hesitate to break the oaths that bound her to her husband.
 
But they loved in secret, for the Bloodbourn
penalty for adultery is unforgiving, specifically for women.”

“And that penalty is?” I
interrupted.

Arisella eyed me dubiously, like I
should already know.
 
“Death.”

I swallowed back the bile that rose
to my throat.

“It did not take long for my mother
to become pregnant again,” Arisella continued.
  
“Even she did not know if the child was her husband’s or the
doula’s.
 
My father suspected little, though,
and he repeated his ritual of pampering his pregnant wife.
 
However, this time, my mother knew that my
father only cared for her because she was the vessel that carried his precious
unborn child.

“As much as the doula claimed to
love my mother, he was terrified of my father’s wrath should he ever find out
about their affair.
 
The cowardly doula
took his sister and abandoned my mother before she gave birth.
 
I was born one year after Adrian.
 
After my birth, my father slipped into one of
his rages, and lashed out at my mother for not giving him another son.
 
Regardless, I was blood of his blood, and,
with time, he learned to treat me as such.

“For the majority of our lives,
Adrian and I were isolated from our mother.
 
We were raised coldly by our father and his hand-chosen servants.
 
We learned to throw knives, to kill, to
inflict death while evading it.
 
My
father was the brother of the Blood King and the head of the Bloodbourn
Battalion, and as his daughter I was granted privileges other girls weren’t.”