A Glint of Shadoewynne: Book 1 of the Shadoewynne Series Read online

  Sibhre was shouting at me, but I couldn’t hear her words over the rushing water that was only in my mind. I suddenly remembered I was supposed to return as soon as the door was removed. I closed my eyes and followed the energy string back to my body. Opening my eyes, I was back at the family room. The candles were burning low, but the biggest difference was the power I could feel flowing through me. It was almost more than I could contain.

  Sibhre opened her eyes and smiled. “Let me close the circle, then we can work on getting that power under control. It will only take a moment.” She got up, and blew out the candles in a counter-clockwise direction, chanting under her breath some more. When the last candle went out, the dome overhead flickered out as well.

  She held out her hand. I took it and stood up. My feet were asleep, so I stood there for a minute to let tingling stop. It had felt like only minutes, but a quick check of my watch told me it had been four hours. It was close to noon. My stomach growling loudly had me turning red, and Sibhre chuckling.

  “I may have done most of the work, but a good bit of the energy to do it came from you. Let’s go eat before we start the lessons. You will need all the energy you can get.”

  With those ominous words, she turned and headed to the kitchen, where I could hear voices. It sounded like Travis and David, and there were two other female voices. One was Janelle, but I couldn’t place the last one.

  When we arrived at the kitchen, Sarah and Janelle were just putting lunch on the table. They set the last stack of bowls on the table, and looked up at me.

  “Hi, Evalia, how are you?” Janelle asked sweetly.

  “I’m good. Sibhre broke through the door! I am very excited!” I was bouncing on my toes, eager to start the training. But the chili in the pot on the table smelled heavenly, too.

  A man I hadn’t noticed strode forward from the corner of the room. “Hello, Evalia, My name is Kaitsja, but everyone just calls me Kait.” It was like a bucket of cold water had been poured over me. A chill went from the top of my head to the bottom of my feet. That was the name my mom had given me. I studied him for a minute. He was slightly taller than Travis, but his slight build and average coloring would make him blend in almost anywhere. His hair was a dark blond or a light brown, and cut short, and his eyes were a muddy brown. There was absolutely nothing remarkable about him.

  Travis stepped forward. “The crown employs him as a tracker and for various other jobs, and my father agreed to have him come help you. I’ve known Kait my whole life.”

  I studied him again. “Various other jobs sounds kind of ominous. I am sorry to be blunt, but how do you know my father, and why would he leave your name as someone to contact if I was in trouble?”

  He smiled slightly, but the smile did not reach his eyes, which appeared hard. “Your father and I have known each other for a long time. I was his protector from when he was five years-old until right before he joined the army when he was in his twenties. His mother originally hired me to protect him until his magic matured, then I was supposed to teach him, but he rejected his magic. I stayed on as his protector until he could protect himself through mundane means.”

  “So, you did not know him after he married my mom, or I was born?” I don’t know why, but I did not trust this man. I think it was because of how cold his eyes were, and he seemed even less human than Sibhre. Where she moved a lot, and was very jerky, he stood perfectly still, not even seeming to breathe.

  “I kept in touch with him for a while, but, at his request, never met your mother. He was very private about his Shadoewynne heritage, and did not want me around you.”

  “Did that bother you?”

  “No. I was a hired hand who became a little more than an acquaintance. It did not bother me.” A slight tone in his voice seemed to indicate that was a partial lie. I caught David’s eye, and thought, I hope loudly, that I wanted him to listen to this guy’s thoughts and I didn’t trust him. David nodded at me.

  “If he didn’t want you around me, why would he give me your contact info to call if I needed help?” I knew I was being a bit difficult, but I wanted to understand, because his story wasn’t adding up.

  He sighed. “I know this doesn’t make sense, but while he rejected his heritage, he knew that someday, that may put you in danger. He was deliberately handicapping you by not teaching you about your magic and this world, and he knew it. Right before he died, he was attacked by a Lorgaire Scath, and he killed it. He knew then that they were actively searching for both you and him, and that you would be in danger. He contacted me, which was the first time in years, and asked if I could provide the same services to you as I did to him. I told him I would, but only if you asked. I had considered him a friend, and it hurt me when he walked away from me, his family and his birthright all those years ago.”

  I had been rubbing my eyes, but the word birthright caught my attention. “What do you mean ‘birthright’?”

  “Do you have somewhere comfortable? This is going to take a while.” His question was addressed to Janelle. She nodded.

  Chapter 13

  Janelle led the way to the living room. On the way out of the kitchen, David caught my hand and held me back for a minute. He leaned in to whisper in my ear. “I know him, and he’s trustworthy. He is telling you the truth. I get the impression he is holding something back right now but it seems he intends to tell you if it becomes necessary.” I nodded, and we continued on to join the group. This power of his could be pretty useful.

  The cozy atmosphere helped loosen the knots in my stomach. Janelle stood by the door, and Sibhre took a chair in a corner. Kaitsja stood in the opposite corner. I sat down in the overstuffed chair that was almost in the center of the room. David stood behind me on my right side, and Travis stood behind me on my left. Both laid a hand on my shoulders in a very protective manner. If I didn’t know better, I would think they had arranged it. I glanced up at them, surprised, but all their attention was on Kait. Splitting my attention between the two of them, I studied their faces. Both were handsome, and both were very sweet. I was lucky to have them as friends.

  Kait drew my attention by clearing his throat. “How much do you know about your father and your Shadoewynne heritage?”

  “I know practically nothing about my heritage, and now I wonder how much I actually knew my father. I knew nothing about this until last Sunday, when I saw a gateway in Travis’ woods. Then, my life went to hell, and everything I knew was tossed out the window.” I proceeded to quickly tell him everything that had happened in the past week. It was hard to believe it had only been a week. My stomach growled loudly again during my story. Janelle slipped out of the room. Before I was done, she had returned with sandwiches and drinks for us all. She passed them out, and I nodded my thanks. I finished my story with Sibhre blowing open the door that was holding back my powers this morning.

  Kait had sat stoically throughout my tale, with nothing of his thoughts showing on his face. When I finished, he waited for a beat. “I wish your mother had given you my contact info when your father gave it to her. I could have helped.” He sighed as he waved a hand. “Oh well, what’s done is done. I am at your service. Both because your father wished it, and because Travis has asked his father to provide me as security detail.”

  Shocked, I looked up at Travis, who was studying the bookshelves as his face turned red. I tapped his hand, and he glanced down at me. He winked, which shook me and made my body warm. I peeked over at David, who saw me look and nodded. It seemed they both thought I should trust Kait.

  “Okay,” I said, “What do we do now?” I started eating my sandwich.

  Kait snorted. “You are very much like your father. Right to the point.” He looked at Sibhre. “You were going to train her?”

  She nodded. “I was, but you are more qualified. If you wish to take over, I will not argue.”

  He looked back at me. “Are you comfortable with me training you?”

  Swallowing the last of my sandwich quickly, I
said, “I need to know more about you, your powers and your relationship with my father, please. I would also like to know what you know of my ancestry and if you know why Dad was so opposed to me knowing about it.”

  “As I said, it’s going to be a long story. I will start with me. My powers are hard to describe. I am a mongrel, my grandmother was a water nymph, my grandfather a Lorgaire Scath and sylph mix, and my father was an elf. I have a broad range of powers that cover pretty much all the bases. Also, I am over two hundred years old. I don’t seem to age like most Shadoewynne. I knew your great grandmother, and was also her protector. I have always worked for the royal court.”

  My mind stalled at that. He seemed to be implying that my great-grandmother was part of the royal court. “Are you saying…”

  He held up a hand to stop me. “Let me finish. Your great-great-grandfather hired me when I was around twenty earth-years old. I worked my way up through the ranks and eventually became the leader of the security detail for the king and queen, partly because of my longevity, and partly because of my unique mix of powers. When your great-grandmother became queen, I was her protector. She was the queen when everyone went missing. I happened to be away on a mission at the time, and when I finally found her, she had given birth to your grandmother. My understanding is your grandmother was full Shadoewynne. Your father was half. That makes you one-fourth, but Shadoewynne blood doesn’t dilute that quickly. It will eventually fade from the line, but it takes a millennium. Your line is strong, so you should be as strong as a good percentage of full-blooded Shadoewynne. One of the reasons your father rejected his heritage was because it was his great-grandfather who had caused the accident that threw the royal household all over the dimensions.”

  WAIT! WHAT! I wasn’t aware I had spoken out loud until David and Travis started rubbing my back.

  Kait smiled slightly again, this time it almost reached his eyes. “I said, let me finish. By the time I found your great-grandmother, she had already found a human and married him. She did not want to go back. Her marriage to your great-grandfather was an arranged one, and she did not love him. But she loved her human. Magic was severely restricted and hardly worked correctly for about five years after the accident. So, your grandmother was close to six years old by the time I figured out where they ended up. I stayed and helped your great-grandmother, protected and trained your grandmother, then did the same for your father. He dismissed me when he was around nineteen years old. We were in contact off and on after that, but once you were born, he cut off all contact with me. It is my understanding that he told your mother that you were almost full human and had no powers because she would have insisted on you having a Shadoewynne teacher, and that would have comprised him and you.” He looked at Travis. “Your family did a wonderful job putting the government back together, and have led the people well, but Evalia’s family was the true royal court. I served them until they did not want me, then I offered my services to your father. That was about twenty-five years ago.”

  I was starting to feel dizzy. I couldn’t process all this new information. I focused on taking deep breaths. “So, my mom doesn’t know any of this?”

  He shook his head. “He told me that your mom knows that he is part Shadoewynne, but she knows nothing about the rest. The last time I spoke to your father, he was still very insistent that you and your mother did not need to know anything about it, even though you were being hunted. He thought you would be safer if you didn’t know.”

  I put my face in my hands, and tried to slow my thoughts. I was trying to convince myself that this did not change anything about me. I was the same person I was before I learned this. David rubbed my back harder. I looked up at him, and he smiled reassuringly at me. “Why are you telling me, then?” I asked, hesitantly. If he was that willing to go against something requested by someone who was his employer and supposed friend, I wasn’t sure how trustworthy he was.

  “I feel that recent events override your father’s paranoia.” He reached into his pocket and pulled something out. As he held it out to me, he said, “I found your great-grandmother with a charm I gave her when she was a child. Its sole purpose was to allow her to be found easily by me if she was ever kidnapped. Here.” It was a thin gold ring that looked like a wedding band. “This is the charm. Please wear it so I can find you if you are kidnapped again.”

  I thought about it for a second before I put the ring on my middle finger of my right hand, next to the blue and gold one I had gotten earlier. Considering I didn’t typically wear a lot of jewelry, I was gaining quite a collection. Looking back down, I gasped. The ring was gone! I ran my finger over where the ring should be and I could feel it. “Why can’t I see the ring?”

  “It’s spelled so only I can see it or use the enchantment to find you. It doesn’t do us much good if it can be used against you.”

  I stared at him for a minute. It almost seemed like he made a joke, but he was so serious, I wasn’t sure if he had, so I ignored it. “Fair enough. Let’s go back to why my father didn’t like Shadoewynne. He told Mom that they just weren’t human enough.”

  “That is true. Also, like I said, your great-grandfather caused the lab accident that threw the royal household all over the dimensions. No one knows what he was studying, but it has been determined that he was conducting illegal experiments. I personally never liked the man, but tolerated him because he was my king. Your father’s other reason for avoiding Shadoewynne was because the Svikari were becoming active when he was young. Their purpose is to put your family back in power, preferably under their thumb. Rather than fight, he just wanted to avoid them. He was concerned the Svikari had eyes on his family, so we left them when your father was a teenager, and we traveled together for a while. When his relationship became serious with your mother, he asked me to leave. He felt he could protect himself, and that he was hidden enough. That was true until about two years ago, which is when they found him. As I said, he was attacked and then he contacted me. It was the first time I had spoken to him since you were born. In our discussion, he said he had received a letter asking him to embrace his birthright and become the ruler of Shadoewynne. He turned them down, and a week later, he was assaulted. Two weeks later he died in the car accident, which I am not sure was an accident.”

  That piece of news didn’t stun me, as I had been thinking along the same lines during his story. He had paused and watched me closely to see how I took that news.

  I sighed, and rubbed my face. “I was starting to wonder about that myself after Mom said that he gave her your contact information right before his accident. It seemed like too much of a coincidence.”

  He nodded. “I thought so as well, so I did some investigation of my own. The official police report says he fell asleep at the wheel, missed a turn and went over an embankment. His car stopped at the bottom of the embankment, and a tree branch went through the windshield and impaled him.”

  I shuddered. I remembered. It’s hard to forget when your father dies in a gruesome, freak accident. Kait continued, “However, I went to junkyard where his car ended up and the scene of the accident. As you know, his car was silver. There was black paint on the side of his car and on the guardrail where he went over. Obviously, he, and the guardrail, were hit by someone else, which is most likely what caused him to lose control. There was also remnants of elf magic by the tree that impaled him. I’m sorry, but I don’t think the accident was what killed him.”

  My mind froze at that. I figured it wasn’t a true accident, so that meant he had been murdered, but I thought he had been run off the road, and the part with the tree was just an awful fluke. It never occurred to me that someone had deliberately run him through with the tree. That, somehow, made it even more horrifying to me. My father and I had our differences, but he was still my father. I knew, in his own way, he loved me, and I had loved him. Travis and David rubbed my back harder.

  “I am sorry. I considered your father my friend, and it greatly disturbs me that his
life ended that way. Especially since he could have prevented it, had he not walked away from his powers. However, it is even more urgent now that you learn to protect yourself. I believe that since your father turned them down, they are going to try to force you to take the throne, whether you want to or not. They have already found you, and taken you once. Travis told me what happened while they had you. They can use what they took to find you again, and force you to do their bidding.”

  Fuck. The word was long and drawn out in my head. “How do we stop them?” David asked while my brain was still stuck on cussing.

  “We don’t. We teach her to protect herself.” Kait’s reply was very upfront.

  “Fuck them, and fuck the fucking fuckers that think they can do this to me. When can we start?” I had stood up and my hands were bunched in fists at my sides.

  Kait chuckled. “Soon. I need to know your skill set in physical fighting first.”

  Travis spoke up. “I have a gym that we can use. It’s got a padded floor, and is set up for fight training.” Surprised, I glanced at him. He turned red and shrugged. “It’s part of my training for following in my father’s footsteps. We can’t depend on bodyguards all the time.”

  I guess that was true. You wouldn’t want them following you into the bathroom. I tried to hide my giggle at my thought, but it came out as kind of a snorting laugh. They all gave me weird looks as I waved my hand at them. There was no way I was going to explain that thought.

  Still giving me the side-eye, Travis went on. “We can go there now, if you want.”

  Sibhre stood up. “Since I am no longer needed, I will take my leave. Good luck, Evalia, and please, call me if you need me.” I nodded at her, and she bowed to Travis and Kaitsja, and left the room.

  Janelle stood up, and said, “I’ll pack up lunch. We can take it with us and eat it later. I agree with Evalia, the sooner we begin, the better off we are.” She quickly strode from the room.