Keeper of Enchanted Rooms

But his father didn’t put the horse away. An invisible hand shoved against Silas’s back, drawing him close enough to smell the whiskey wafting off his father like mist off the sea. And when the hand shoved him into the stall, Silas’s nerves lit up, every last one of them, until his blood raced and his skin burned.

“L-Let me get you to bed,” he said.

His father stepped into the stall and closed the door, leaning heavily on it for the stiffness the magic had left in his legs. “Excused me,” he rumbled. “They excused me. For”—he laughed—“drunken behavior.”

Silas peered beyond the stable, praying a servant, his mother, his brother, anyone would come by. “Who excused you?”

“King’s League.”

His stomach plummeted. “You were dismissed?” No wonder he was so drunk. Both of Silas’s parents were members of the King’s League of Magicians. They’d practically been groomed for it from birth.

Oh no. This wasn’t going to be good for him. Silas held his hands up, palms out, as though calming a rabid dog. “Let’s get food in your stomach—”

His father threw the bottle. It collided with Silas’s shoulder. A spell—the same one his father had used to pull him in here—burned in Silas’s blood, begging to be released, but he didn’t use it. It always made his father angrier when he used magic. His father hated that Silas had more magic than he did, thanks to the added pedigree of his mother.

Silas didn’t defend himself when the first fist struck, nor the second. This was habitual, for them. It passed quicker when he took it. Another blow, another. Any moment now, his father would be done, and he’d sneak back inside, find something to nurse the bruises—

The kick to his ribs cracked bone and ripped air from his lungs.

His weakest spell, luck, was not with him today.

Silas slammed into the back wall. This is wrong. His father had never broken a bone before, and—

Dizziness engulfed him. A blow to the head. Silas didn’t remember falling to his knees. His skull radiated pain. Had he been hit with the bottle, or a kinetic pulse?

“Father—” he tried, but a fist hit the side of his mouth, cutting his cheek on his teeth. Silas couldn’t help it; he covered his head. He had to.

“You think you’re better than me?” his father raged, slamming the toe of his shoe into Silas’s hip. “You think you . . . can take my place?”

“No!” Silas cried, fire radiating up his spine. His father stumbled back but shot out a kinetic blast that attempted to crush Silas’s entire body. Blood spilled from his lips. Stars danced across his eyelids. Something snapped and ached.

His father had never hurt him this badly before. Never.

“Please!” Silas begged.

A second magical blast had bile coursing up Silas’s throat. Acid splattered over his shirt.

I’m going to die. I’m going to die.

“I’ll show you—”

Silas’s blood lit white hot.

Kinesis blasted from his body and slammed his father into the stall door. Broke it off its hinges. Sent man and door skidding across the manicured lawn. The horses whinnied and reared in their stalls as Silas’s bloody fingers clambered for a grip. His joints seized with the use of power, but he worked his hands, knuckles popping, and strained to stand. Wheezing, he lifted his head and peered through the sweaty locks covering his eyes.

His father didn’t move.

Limping, holding his middle, Silas crossed the distance between them, the stiffness gradually easing. His father’s chest still rose. His breathing was loud in the quiet night. Had no one heard them? Or did the staff merely not want to hear, knowing they could do nothing to stop the master of the house? They’d never once stepped in to save Silas or his brother.

His father’s hand gripped grass as he lifted his head, eyes finding Silas. “I’ll . . . kill . . . you . . .”

The invisible hand wrapped around Silas’s throat.

Silas didn’t even think. Had he thought, maybe he could have coaxed the spell from his neck. Maybe he could have lulled his father into sleep and passed another day in his shadow. But he didn’t.

His necromancy came from his mother’s side. It seemed eager to serve, to penetrate his drunken father’s skin and mix with his soul. To drain him until the kinetic spell broke and his head thumped back against the ground. But the other spells grew jealous, and they rode along the path, merging with the first, stretching unseen lines between father and son—

Silas woke with his face pressed into the lawn. When had he . . . ? His ribs stung with every breath. The left side of his body, where he’d taken the kinetic blows, burned and pulsed with new bruises. Iron slicked his teeth. Scabs matted his hair.

Beside him, his father still breathed as though drawn into the deepest of slumbers.