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KADE SINCLAIR PULLED the hood of his dark red cloak up to shield himself from the nearly ever-present rain as he left the Magic Guildhall. The weather was always gloomy in Nox. No matter what season it was, rain was typical. In winter, snow and sleet took its place, but the rain always came back in the spring.
It had been a few weeks since he’d been told by Xiara Evora that he was half warlock and he was still in shock. He’d been taught to hide his power ever since he’d been a little boy. His foster parents had been a human witch and wizard. They’d known he was half fae, but they hadn’t cared. His foster mother couldn’t have children and they’d treated him like the son they’d never had. Both had been elderly when he’d been placed in their care. They’d died a few years ago and he still missed them every day.
Kade’s foster parents had taught him everything they knew about magic, but he’d outstripped them by the time he was seven. His purple eyes and uncanny good looks made it impossible for him to pretend to be human. None of the kids in their neighborhood had wanted to play with him and the fairy children snubbed him because he was a half breed. He’d grown up feeling alone and ostracized and nothing had changed with adulthood. He didn’t fit in anywhere and he would never truly be accepted.
A low-ranking member of the Magic Guild, Kade pretended to be as weak in power as the rest of the guildmembers. In truth, he was stronger than even their recently deceased Guild Master had been. He held in a shiver at the memory of the night he’d encountered Xiara Evora in Guild Master Hahn’s mansion. The Guardian of Nox had come running when she’d sensed dangerous spells being cast. Kade knew she wouldn’t be able to withstand the crazed warlock’s spells, so he’d created a shield for her. He could have incapacitated the old warlock himself, but his instincts told him to hide the fact that he was far stronger than he appeared.
Ms. Evora had seemed strangely familiar to him, as if they’d met before. He’d seen her from a distance, but it had been the first time he’d been close enough to speak to her. He usually stayed away from the Night Cursed beings. They were strange and unsettling. Xiara had been far more alert than he’d expected from one of her kind. She wasn’t weak and diminished like the skeleton work crews and carriage drivers. Her executions were broadcast to the populace by Lord Dallinar. Kade had learned how to block the images when he’d been a child so he didn’t have to witness the deaths. The fairy lord had grown more sporadic about broadcasting the executions during the past couple of years. Either he was losing interest, or his rumored alcoholism was to blame.
Kade shifted the package he was holding beneath his arm into a more secure position, then took off at a fast walk. Many of the low-level guildmembers were used as couriers. They carried packages and letters to magic users all throughout the Fae District and the City Square. There weren’t enough carriages to ferry them all backwards and forwards, so they had to walk. It would take hours just to walk to his destination, then head home. Or at least it would for his fellow guildmembers. Kade could teleport as easily as breathing, but he rarely did. He didn’t want to come to the notice of the Immortal Triumvirate. He’d seen too many of his kind vanish, never to be seen again once they’d revealed that they weren’t weak and drained of magic.
The house he had to deliver the package to was in the affluent area of the elven suburbs. Kade kept up a steady fast walk and reached it in four hours. He knocked on the door and handed the package to a young elf, then was rewarded with the door being slammed shut in his face. No words were exchanged, but that wasn’t unusual. Full blood fae saw him as a peasant because he was mixed with human, or so they assumed.
Now that his task was done, Kade had the rest of the night to himself. He’d only had one package to deliver this time and he had several hours to kill. He didn’t feel like going home yet. Instead, he let his feet carry him on a random path towards the suburbs where the fairies lived.
His house was on the fringes of where the witches and wizards dwelled. He lived on the divide between the fairies and the humans, which reflected his heritage aptly. He still remembered the night when a house had been magically chosen for him. He’d been on his way home from the Magic Guild a couple of nights after his foster mother had passed away when a carriage had pulled up next to him. The skeleton had clicked its teeth at him and jerked its bony thumb over its shoulder to motion for him to climb in. Kade had been curious and had done as the walking corpse requested.
The carriage had taken him to the house a few blocks away from where his foster parents had lived. His foster father had died several months before his foster mother, so he’d inherited it, or so he’d thought. An image appeared on the door when he approached it. It was a magic user wearing a hooded cloak. The door opened when he touched it and he figured it was his new home.
When Kade had checked his old house the following night, it had been empty of life and devoid of furniture. The images on the door were gone and it looked sad and abandoned. His new house had been fully furnished and he always had plenty of food and beverages in his fridge and cupboards.
Kade’s feet deviated from their path before he could reach the large stone houses where the fairies lived and he ended up in a graveyard. He’d found it when he’d been about five years old and he didn’t know why he kept coming back here. Something kept drawing him to a grave that didn’t have a headstone. As always, he stood next to it and stared down at the ground as if his eyes could penetrate the soil to whatever lay beneath.
“I wish I knew who you were,” he said. “I wish I knew who I was,” he added bitterly. His foster parents had told him someone had left him on their doorstep when he’d been only a couple of hours old. There hadn’t been a note or anything to indicate who his parents were. His mother was a fairy, that much he knew. He didn’t have pointed ears like an elf and his purple eyes were unusual even for the fae.
Kade Sinclair stood in the rain until the chill seeped into his bones, then he teleported home. He didn’t need to worry about anyone seeing him. He was the only one who visited the graveyard where the unidentified bodies had been interred.
