Chapter 27: Diary of Spiro Altan Konstantin: Entry 1 (2)

Her son wanted me gone. He had always wanted me gone. In my first life, he preferred watching me starve in the manor because it allowed him to enjoy the process. In this life, I planted a better idea in his head.

If I remained, I was an eyesore.

If I died inside the manor, there would be questions.

But if I disappeared as damaged goods in a faraway place no one in the North cared to visit, then his mother could weep prettily and claim grief had stolen me from them.

The Lorillis Desert was perfect.

It was distant and highly dangerous. It was the most convenient place to get rid of unwanted baggage.

My stepmother agreed more quickly than expected. She always refused nothing her son demanded, which explained far too much about the creature he became. There had never been any need for a demon to take him over. Some people were born prepared for the role.

The only surprise was her brief, insulting flash of cleverness.

Before the slave trader took me away, she ordered me to drink a memory-wiping potion.

I recognized the scent at once.

In my first life, her son had bragged about using the same potion on a maid who had seen something she should not have. He had laughed while describing how she forgot her own name.

So, I drank. Or rather, I pretended to.

A starving child with bruised hands and dull eyes made for an excellent actor when everyone around him had already decided he was broken.

I kept the potion beneath my tongue until the adults were busy arguing over my price. Then I turned my head and spat it into the hem of my sleeve.

Five gold.

That was what the rightful heir of Boleoti was worth.

Five gold and a command to send me east.

Even now, the number amused me.

Had I not been half-dead at the time, I might have felt insulted.

The slave trader was not stupid. Fear of the Boleoti name made him cautious, so he did not march me away in chains with the rest of his goods. Instead, he arranged a small merchant caravan bound for Sonomi, quiet enough to avoid attention and ordinary enough to pass beneath questions.

No one from the North went east unless wealth or desperation dragged them there.

In my case, both did.

The world changed slowly at first.

Snow thinned into frost. Frost gave way to dry grass. Dry grass surrendered to cracked earth and winds that carried grit between the teeth.

The further we traveled, the more the sky widened, until it felt as if the heavens had peeled themselves open and left us exposed beneath them.

I said nothing and just listened to the complaints of the men and beasts around me.

A child sold for five gold was not expected to have opinions.

I told myself to endure for I had endured worse.

But I had forgotten one important thing.

My mind remembered eighteen years yet my body was only eight.

Eight, and starved, wounded, and carrying the remains of a memory potion badly spat out and poorly survived.

When the sandstorm came, the caravan panicked.

It rose from the horizon like a wall built by an angry god. One moment the world was brown and gold, the next it was roaring. Sand struck the caravan hard enough to make the horses scream. Men shouted orders that vanished before they reached anyone useful. The cloths snapped and the wood groaned.

Someone cursed the East, cursed the trader while others prayed to the gods.

We found shelter near a newly formed oasis.

For a moment, everyone thought we were fortunate.

Then the griffins came.

I had heard of the aura beasts of Lorillis.

Everyone had at some point. People had a rare fascination about the East and its denizens.

Griffins were the sort of monsters northern tutors described with great confidence because they had never met one. They, according to my lessons, possessed the bodies of lions, the wings and talons of eagles, and the territorial te mper of insulted kings.

My tutors failed to mention the sound.

That shriek carved straight through the bones.

The first man died before he finished drawing his sword.

After that, the caravan ceased being a caravan and became meat trying to run in several directions at once.

I knew no one would protect me. So I protected myself.

The most expensive goods were packed in the central cart. Boleoti diamonds and crystals, wrapped in cloth and sealed in barrels, worth more than every living person around them. Greedy men might abandon a child. They would not abandon profit until the last possible moment.

I crawled inside one of the barrels beneath rolls of dyed fabric and held my breath.

For a long time, there was only chaos.

Screams that mixed with the winds caused by powerful wings. Wood splintering and hooves striking stone followed by the wet crunch of talons finding flesh. Then, slowly, the noise thinned.

The screams turned to a gurgle. While the desperate prayers turned into silence.

The griffins continued to shriek outside, circling, feeding, fighting over what remained.

I stayed hidden.

Still, the potion seemed to have had a greater effect on me than I expected. I had forgotten so important.

I was no longer eighteen. It couldn’t last that long being starved, beaten and drugged badly enough that even spitting out the potion had not spared it from all of its effects.

Fear, hunger, wounds, and the pressure of crouching in the dark pressed down until something inside me cracked open.

My mana woke first, then aura started surging in next.

In my first life, they had awakened separately.

Mana came when I was eleven. Aura followed a year later, and by then I had enough control to keep one power from tearing the other apart.

I knew my existence would have been considered unusual, perhaps even impossible by stricter scholars, but controlled impossibility was still survival.

This was nothing close to being controlled.

This was like two storms trapped inside a fragile glass cup.

Mana froze through my veins while aura burned beneath my skin. They collided in my chest and spread outward in violent, hungry pulses. I bit into my sleeve to stop myself from screaming, but pain had no manners. It climbed my throat anyway.

I felt like I was going to die. Again.

The thought made me furious. I was not afraid of death.

It made me furious, instead.

I had crawled back from death only to be killed inside a barrel like spoiled merchandise?

I had escaped Boleoti Manor, survived my stepmother’s scheme, crossed half the continent, and endured griffins just to explode in the desert before I could ruin a single demon’s plan?

No, absolutely not.

Unfortunately, resolve was not a cure.

Then the barrel broke. Or perhaps someone broke it.

The next things that happened are scattered in my hazy brain.

I felt the brightness of light against my eyelids.

I heard voices, one was irritated and elegant while the other sounded amused and strange.

I felt hands touching my forehead and smelt blood.

I felt something burning into me. But it was a far cry from the pain my mana and aura was causing me.

Then it all faded into nothing though I was too far out to realize when.

I woke up in a tent with three people near me.

The old man looked like a servant only because he chose to. Every instinct I possessed screamed that he was dangerous.

His posture was too perfect and his eyes were too calm. He looked like a butler, perhaps, but the sort that could cut a man down before tea cooled.

The purple-eyed man was worse. He smiled too much. It was a kind or a cruel smile either. He smiled like the world was a toy he had just remembered how to use. Like a detached observer watching a show.

And then there was him.

Skandar Aleksandr Konstantin.

Grand Duke of Sonomi.

The King of the Desert.

The man I had prayed for before dying.

I stared at him like an idiot. I knew what he looked like because knowing other nobles was part of an heir’s education.

He introduced himself very politely.

Too politely, considering I had apparently been found dying in a barrel.

"We were waiting for the sandstorm to pass when we came across the ruins of the merchant caravan you were in," he said. "We rescued you from there."

He looked younger than I expected.

Too beautiful too.

That feels strange to write, but it is the truth. Even in my first life, I heard rumors about his appearance, but rumors are usually cheap, exaggerated things. In his case, they failed from lack of imagination.

I have also seen a glimpse of a portrait but even that seemed to do him injustice.

He introduced himself calmly and told me they had found me in the caravan ruins.

I should have told him everything.

I wanted to.

For one dangerous moment, the truth climbed up my throat.

I am Leonard Boleoti.

My father has been taken by a demon.

The empire is crawling with them.

I died once.

I came back.

Please help me.

But then the purple-eyed man spoke.

He explained my awakening, the clashing mana and aura in my body. The seal that they had to do in order to save my life.

And the blood that became the catalyst of it.

He said the Grand Duke’s blood now ran in my veins.

He said, technically, the Grand Duke had become my father.

I could not think.

A father.

That word has teeth that bit into me rather painfully.

It bites into places one thinks have already scarred over.

I looked at the Grand Duke, and he did not look disgusted. He did not look regretful. He looked troubled, perhaps. Resigned, certainly. But not unwilling in the way I expected.

That frightened me more than rejection would have.

So I lied.