Bonds of Blood, page 1
BONDS OF BLOOD
NAZRI NOOR
BONDS OF BLOOD
Copyright © 2023 Nazri Noor
nazrinoor.com
Cover art by Christian Bentulan
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All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any form whatsoever without express written permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations in critical articles or reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Acknowledgments
Also by Nazri Noor
About the Author
1
Laughter tumbled across the sun-filled verandah, as warm as the afternoon itself. My friends and I had cobbled together a lovely spread for tea, a way to welcome my mother home to the Wispwood. A fun little party, just another in a long chain of parties we’d thrown.
A strong, warm hand closed around my hip. Even at what was supposed to be a family-friendly occasion, my prince of flowers couldn’t keep his damn hands to himself. Sylvain nuzzled the corner of my neck, whispering an innocent question that still sent thrills of pleasure down my spine.
“More sweets for my sweet?”
I gulped. He was talking about the petit fours, or that vanilla-laced black tea that I really liked, the stuff with the lavender and citrus oil. Or maybe he was talking about something dirty after all, trying to get me to crack in front of my own mother. Sylvain getting slutty around my buddies was one thing, but this was too awkward for me.
“Maybe later,” I said, laughing nervously, swatting his hand away.
Prince Sylvain of the Autumn Court grinned as he relented. “You be sure to let me know as soon as you’re feeling hungry, Lochlann Wilde. I’m always happy to help fill you up.”
“Sylvain,” I hissed under my breath. “Not here. Behave.”
But I didn’t hiss it softly enough. From the head of the table, she shook her head and laughed, gazing at me with love in her eyes. The guest of honor. My mother. Marina Wilde, alive and well in the Wispwell all along. I had my mom back. I had my freaking mom back!
Also, I was half undine.
Plenty of things to process, honestly. Lots of things to talk about, to catch up on. How things had gone for me at the Wispwood, for example, how I had actual friends, a proper support group. That stuff was easy enough to convey simply by introducing my mother to all the friends in question.
We talked about the song in the Wispwell, how it took me forever to figure out that it was my mother reaching out from the depths. We talked about the headmasters and how they never once suspected that something — or someone — was asleep in its healing waters. Well, Headmaster Shivers had some suspicions, but Headmaster Shivers was special.
We did not, however, talk about Baylor Wilde. Not yet, at least.
So we discussed everything instead, but especially the foods she’d missed. Her memory was in the process of slowly returning, but my undine mother still remembered enough to give me a solid list. I jumped at the chance to nurture and pamper her, for once. So did the kitchen imps, bless them, thrilled by the challenge of feeding an undine, Cutler most of all.
I loved that we were getting to reconnect while restoring her strength all at once. The imps brought her all sorts of broths, a variety of fruity sorbets, and an international assortment of beverages fit for quenching even the deepest of thirsts. Luckily, liquid diets weren’t actually a requirement for undines, merely my mother’s preference. I wasn’t quite ready to give up solid food myself.
Cutler had tried to offer her a selection of spicy cocktails and soups. Inspired by the prime hells, of course, flavored with exotic peppers and spices, their bases made from strange, rare tomatoes in bizarre and sometimes very suggestive shapes. But Mom preferred to get her fluids in other ways. That included teas, naturally, which was how our tea party even happened in the first place.
Namirah sat closest to my mother, plying her with drinks and desserts. She poured her more and more cups of Earl Grey and oolong as they chatted away, tipping them out of teapots enchanted to always stay at the right temperature. No surprise that they got along, too, a shapeshifter sitting next to an elemental being who could, indeed, change the shape of her watery body with ease.
I liked to imagine that they were trading tips about the art and science of turning their bodies into other forms. The truth was that Namirah was also a delight to sit with at high tea. Trust the English to know all about tea. But trust the alchemist to brew them better than anybody, which was why Bruna was put in charge of preparing everything, not that she had any complaints.
She worked like a whirlwind, sprinkling pinches of loose-leaf teas into perfect blends in their various diffusers, throwing in bits of dried fruit, anise, cinnamon, the works. The woman could make a mean cocktail. It stood to reason that Bru was fantastic at brewing tea, too. I could only drink so much, but I had no doubt that she was blowing my mother’s mind with her tea mixes.
Sylvain had found himself an interesting game to play with Ember, our new fire sprite friend freshly transplanted from the Oriel of Fire. Somehow my sweet fae prince had smuggled a bag of marshmallows into our tea party. Ember was voluntarily roasting them over his lovely head of flaming hair. The scent of caramelized sugar wafted across the table, interlaced with their laughter.
Adorable, really, seeing his face scrunch up as he redirected all power in his tiny body toward his head. Satchel clearly found it adorable, too. My pixie familiar watched lovingly as his tiny boyfriend held each fluffy confection over his head, grunting with effort as he toasted another perfect marshmallow.
That was when I noticed how Satchel kept throwing curious looks at Marina Wilde, glancing immediately away each time their eyes nearly met. It turned out that Satchel and my mom had never actually met. The same had applied to Satchel and me, which was part of the surprise when I inherited him as my familiar.
Grand Summoner Baylor Wilde liked to keep his life compartmentalized, apparently. Keep the familiar separate from the family, his own twisted idea of work-life balance.
“Satchel,” I whispered, leaning closer. “Hey, Satchel. I think my mom would love one of Ember’s marshmallows. She could use some solid food.”
“Solid food?” He frowned at me over his shoulder, suspicious. “But it’s like a block of sugar. That’s what you always tell me.”
“Come on. As a treat. She’s eating plenty healthy, otherwise. She might like it.”
And she might like you, too, I had to stop myself from saying.
He was obviously itching to flit around her head like a buzzing fly, ask her a billion questions, about elementals, about Baylor, about everything. He just needed to take this one tiny step. He sighed dramatically, shoulders heaving as he went up to collect the next marshmallow. Ember handed it over, but not before planting a quick smooch on his cheek.
Satchel blushed, rubbed at the spot, then fluttered lazily up to offer it to Marina Wilde, gasping and exclaiming as he struggled to balance the sticky marshmallow in his hands. “Ouch. Hot. Dang it. Ouch.” My mother saw him approaching, clapped her hands in delight, and eagerly accepted.
Not even fifteen minutes later he was perched on her shoulder, squawking and chattering like a parrot. She passed him bits of cake, the two of them tittering as they snuck glances at me. My jaw clenched, but really, it was fine. I could take the hit. If it meant that my mom and my familiar were going to get along swimmingly, then I was okay with them gossiping about me.
My mom and my familiar, two concepts that couldn’t have existed in the same space, and shouldn’t have. That alone should have blown my mind. For years I thought Mom was dead, and I didn’t even know that Satchel existed. And to have them both, and my friends, and my guardians, and my boyfriend, and so much more?
I was the luckiest guy in the Wispwood. I was the luckiest guy in the world.
Satchel shoved another bit of cake into his gullet, the corners of his mouth smeared with frosting. Sputtering and laughing, he leaned into my mother’s ear, whispering another stupid secret. She snorted, laughed, and cut him another perfect cube of cake, another cracker for the traitorous little parrot.
And I watched, smiling, as my family continued to grow.
Over by the lattices where the vines of the gardens climbed and thrived, I caught a glimmer of something flashing among the foliage. It wasn’t unusual to see all sorts of shiny objects throughout the grounds at the Wispwood, especially in the botanical gardens. A tiny compass dangling from a gardening imp’s backpack, maybe, or the polished bell hanging from the collar of someone’s cat familiar.
But the glint had come from a pair of glasses, a particular set that had stared down upon me over my many years at the academy and beyond. It was Dr. Euclidea Fang, my mentor and former professor, arms crossed as she leaned against one of the intricately carved wooden beams at the farthest end of the verandah.
I could tell that she wasn’t looking at me specifically, despite the glimmer of sunlight on the lenses of her glasses. There was a faint, almost distant smile on her lips as she watched the festivities. It was clear enough that she was happy for me. But it didn’t feel right, leaving her out of the fun.
I excused myself from the table and went over to invite her. I nearly laughed when Dr. Fang’s posture immediately straightened, her features rearranging as she discarded her smile, as if she didn’t want me seeing anything resembling a happy expression on her face.
Cold and calculating were only two of the words I used to lovingly describe my summoning mentor. She was cruel sometimes, too, but often just to prove a point in the classroom. I’d known her long enough to remember that there was a good heart waiting under that sadistic and super-intelligent woman’s hard, glassy exterior.
“Dr. Fang, would you care to join us? There’s plenty to eat and drink.” I scratched the back of my head, gazing sheepishly over my shoulder at the party. “To be honest, I think we ordered too much.”
The smile returned easily to her face as she adjusted her glasses. “Oh, that’s very kind of you, Lochlann. But this appears to be an occasion for your friends and family. I wouldn’t want to intrude.”
She flinched when I reached for her arm and encircled my fingers around her wrist. “Nonsense. You’re as good as family to me. Don’t laugh. It’s true. Come on.”
“Well,” she barked. “If you insist.” All pretense melted away. She smiled gratefully, no longer protesting as I pulled her back toward the tea party.
Still, there was a sort of bitter sweetness to Dr. Fang’s arrival. It meant that she was killing time, milling around the castle while waiting for the meeting that the headmasters had arranged. It was supposed to include both me and my mother. So many questions yet unanswered about the Wispwell, about why Marina Wilde had been sleeping in its waters for so long.
“We can talk about all that other stuff later,” I told Euclidea. She nodded in understanding, as if she was privy to all my thoughts.
“Later,” she said. “There will be time for all that later.”
I smiled as I handed her a clean cup and gestured at the many, many steaming pots of tea she could sample. As Euclidea heaped little sandwiches onto her plate, chuckled and chatted with the others, I quietly hoped that no one would say anything about unicorns.
2
I glanced around at the glowing faces of the headmasters, their skin tinted in the light of enchanted lumps of amber, of bioluminescent plants. We sat around a great oak table, carved from the stump of an ancient tree, perhaps one of the original sentinels of the Wispwood.
This was the same chamber where we had that first meeting about my mother, not long after she emerged from the Wispwell. With their faces bathed in eldritch light, the headmasters looked more severe and more powerful than ever. And meanwhile, I shifted from one butt cheek to the other, unable to think of anything apart from a desperate need to pee.
I turned to my right, inspecting my mother’s face. How was she doing this? She must have downed what amounted to four buckets of water over afternoon tea — drinks and soups and desserts of all sorts. Maybe it was part of her undine constitution. All that liquid was certainly ending up somewhere. How come it wasn’t working the same for me?
Just another question to ask, in addition to all the others that the headmasters had in store for her.
Dr. Fang looked around the chamber. “I guess we’re all here,” she announced.
It was just the six of us: me, Euclidea, Marina, and the headmasters. Sylvain had politely declined to nag me about being excluded, knowing that this was primarily a conversation about my mother.
“Thank you for meeting with us today,” said Headmaster Cornelius Butterworth, the oldest of the three leaders of the Wispwood. And also the warmest, at least going by appearance. Cornelius was considered the most approachable of the headmasters, but he brought little of that warmth to the chamber. This must have been more serious than I thought.
“Yes, indeed. Thank you for coming to meet us.”
The second voice belonged to Headmaster Belladonna Praxis, sharp and severe, like the thorns of a rose, or the barbs of an iron gate. Belladonna was cold where Cornelius was hot, but none could be colder than the third headmaster. Not in terms of their temperament, in fact, but the very temperature and consistency of their body.
Headmaster Shivers couldn’t help it. They were, after all, a gaseous clump in humanoid form.
Clouds of indistinct vapor twisted within the empty cowl of their hooded robe, hands clasped before them as they sat in silence. They were covered in clothing from head to toe, invisible fingers kept safe inside a pair of embroidered silk gloves, unseen feet stepping solidly in a pair of matching boots. I couldn’t tell where Shivers was looking, but I knew they were listening intently.
“Is something the matter?” my mother asked. “I must confess, I’m getting a little nervous. Everyone looks so serious today.”
I nodded in agreement, but said nothing. The shift in tone had been so abrupt. The lightness and cheer of the tea party felt so far behind us, as if it had taken place several days ago.
Cornelius Butterworth shook his head. “Oh, no. Not at all, Marina. We did not mean to alarm you.” He waved a hand around himself. “There’s something about this chamber that impresses a sort of gravity about everything. The same old magic that made this place also infuses it with a darker atmosphere, if you will. I do apologize, but this is the most secure location available to us in the Wispwood.”
Headmaster Belladonna leaned forward. “Cornelius is correct. We do not mean to upset you, though we do have some questions. Have you remembered, for example, how it was that you ended up inside the well in the first place?”
I felt my hand creeping toward my mother, as if to offer her support, but I saw no signs of doubt or fear on her face. Instead she wore the neutral expression of someone who simply didn’t remember. Her memories were returning, but it was going to take time. Time and plenty of rest.
Mom shook her head. “All I can tell you is that I felt safe in there, as though it was the best place for me to be. There was something about the warmth of it, the soothing quiet. Why, it reminds one of the womb. I’m sure that it’s difficult to believe, but I assure you that it was a most comforting environment. I remember at least that I was hesitant to leave. It was so lovely in there.” Her fingers fell across the back of my hand, pressing and squeezing. “But it’s even lovelier out here.”
I squeezed her hand back, grinning. The cold atmosphere of the headmasters’ secret chamber could do nothing to suppress my smile.
“Oh, I believe you,” said the rasping, breezy voice of Headmaster Shivers. “I was born there, after all. I too remember little of my time in the Wispwell. I only know that it was the safest of places for me. At times I wonder how it might feel to plunge once more into its depths.” The headmaster sat back, a plume of mist leaving the opening in their cowl. “But surely attempting to return will do me no good. Would it do good for a child to return to the womb of its mother?”
Headmaster Belladonna’s eyes flew wide open. “I imagine that it would only be accomplished with the greatest of difficulty.”
Dr. Fang covered her mouth to smother a little snort. I did the same, but I only laughed because she started it. Luckily, Belladonna only had dagger-eyes for the good doctor. Right. Serious business. Dr. Fang cleared her throat, nodded, and placed her hands on the table.
“Yes, thank you for telling us what you remember, Marina. This is the first that we’ve been able to speak to you in this capacity, and I do hope that this hasn’t been too taxing in terms of your recovery.”
Again my mother shook her head. “Not at all. Everyone here at the Wispwood has been exceptionally kind to me. Although one thing does come to mind.” She pressed her finger against her bottom lip in thought, then pulled it away again, eyes focusing on the far wall. “I wonder if I was away from my lake for too long.”
