The humid summer air clung to Jaerius' skin like a second, ill-fitting layer as he navigated the crowded living room, a tray of sweating glasses balanced precariously in his bony hands. Laughter, loud and alien, erupted from a cluster of his uncle's business associates, their faces flushed with cheap whiskey and self-importance. He was seventeen, all sharp angles and protruding joints, a scarecrow in a hand-me-down polo shirt that hung from his narrow frame. Tomorrow was his birthday, a fact known only to him, a secret he carried like the faded bruise on his ribcage from last week's 'disciplinary lesson' from his cousin, Marcus.
"More ice, boy! Don't just stand there gawking!" his uncle, Borin, barked without even looking at him, his jowly face turned towards the television where a game of some kind blared. Jaerius flinched, the glasses clinking softly as he scurried back toward the kitchen, his sneakers squeaking on the linoleum.
His aunt, Tara, was there, arranging canapés on a porcelain platter with surgical precision. She didn't look at him either, but her presence was a cold pressure in the room. "Try not to embarrass us further, Jaerius. You're already a stain on this gathering. Your mother's blood, I suppose. Always so… needy."
The words were a familiar poison, but tonight they bit deeper. He'd spent his life in the shadow of a ghost—his mother, Alexandria. He knew fragments, whispers he'd stolen over the years. She was a sorceress of immense power, in a realm of spells and wonders. She and his father had left him here, with Borin and Tara, for his 'safety'. That was the official story. But safety felt an awful lot like servitude. He was their errand boy, their live-in maid, their verbal punching bag. He was the cuckoo in the nest, tolerated only for the meager government checks that came in his name, which Borin promptly pocketed.
The tray empty, he slipped out the back door, seeking a moment of respite in the relative quiet of the overgrown backyard. The air was thick with the scent of grilling meat and citronella candles. He leaned against the rough bark of the old oak tree, hidden from view, and let out a shuddering breath, the tension in his shoulders a constant, aching companion.
That's when he heard them. Their voices, sharp and clear, carried from the other side of the thick hydrangea bush. His uncle Borin and his great-aunt Agnes, a woman whose face was a roadmap of bitterness.
"—still can't believe you've kept him this long, Borin," Agnes was saying, her voice a dry rustle. "A constant reminder of her."
"The money was good at the start," Borin grunted, the sound of ice clinking in his glass. "And Tara… well, you know how she felt about Alexandria. This was her idea, really. A sort of… poetic justice."
Jaerius froze, his blood turning to ice in his veins.
"Poetic justice?" Agnes cackled. "Using the son as a household slave because you couldn't stand the mother? It's barbaric, even for you two. Alexandria abandoned him, yes, but this…"
"Abandoned him?" Borin snorted. "Is that the story Tara's peddling now? Alexandria didn't abandon him. She was forced to flee back to her own world; the Regents were closing in. She begged us, begged us to protect him, to keep him safe and hidden until she could return. She left a small fortune in enchanted gold. Tara took one look at that boy, saw Alexandria's eyes staring back, and saw her chance. We took the gold, sealed it away, and decided the boy would work off his 'debt' for room and board. A permanent servant. Tara's personal project of humiliation. She's hated Alexandria since they were girls."
The world tilted. The sounds of the party faded into a dull, roaring static in Jaerius' ears. Abandoned? No. He was stolen. His parents hadn't left him; they'd been torn from him. The 'safety' of this house was a prison. The disdain wasn't for his weakness, but for his very existence, a proxy for his mother. The love he'd secretly, foolishly hoped was buried under their harshness was a lie. It was pure, unadulterated malice.
A cold, sharp fury began to burn in his chest, so intense it felt like a physical thing, a shard of ice and fire lodged behind his sternum. All those years of cowering, of flinching, of taking their insults and their blows. All while they sat on a fortune that was rightfully his, a fortune left by a mother who loved him. The powerlessness he'd felt his whole life evaporated, replaced by a rage so profound it was crystalline in its clarity.
He didn't think. He moved.
He pushed through the back door, the chatter and music of the party now an obscene noise. His vision had tunneled, focusing solely on his aunt Tara, who was now holding court by the fireplace, a tight, false smile on her face as she recounted some fabricated story about her charity work.
He walked straight up to her, ignoring the startled looks from the guests around her. The tray he'd been carrying clattered to the floor, sending glass shards and melting ice skittering across the Persian rug.
Silence fell.
"You lying bitch," Jaerius said, his voice low and trembling, not with fear, but with a seismic fury. "You told me they abandoned me."
Tara's smile vanished, replaced by a mask of cold fury. "Jaerius, you will go to your room this instant. You are making a scene."
"They didn't leave me," he continued, his voice rising, cutting through the stunned silence. "My mother left gold. She left me with you for protection. And you… you stole it. You made me your slave. All because you hated her."
The color drained from Tara's face. The carefully constructed facade of the benevolent aunt crumbled, revealing the vicious woman beneath. "How dare you!" she hissed. "You ungrateful little wretch! After everything we've done for you—"
"What have you done?" he roared, tears of rage now streaming down his face, mingling with the sweat. "Given me your leftovers? Let me sleep in a storage room? Beaten me when I looked at you wrong? You're a thief and a monster!"
That's when a meaty hand clamped down on his shoulder, spinning him around. Marcus, his cousin, loomed over him. At twenty-two, Marcus was everything Jaerius wasn't—broad, muscular, his face a permanent sneer of brutish confidence.
"Talking to my mother like that, you little freak?" Marcus growled.
The rage in Jaerius was a living thing. He swung, a wild, pathetic punch that Marcus caught easily, his fist enveloping Jaerius's entire hand.
"Bad move," Marcus smirked.
What followed was not a fight. It was a systematic dismantling. Marcus's first punch drove the air from Jaerius's lungs, doubling him over. The second, a brutal uppercut, snapped his head back, his vision exploding in stars of white-hot pain. He crumpled to the floor, and the blows kept coming. A kick to his ribs that he felt crack. A stomp on his thigh that sent agony lancing up his spine. The party guests watched, some in horror, most with a detached, morbid curiosity. No one moved to help him. He was just the loser cousin, getting what he deserved.
He curled into a ball, trying to protect his head, the taste of copper filling his mouth. Through a haze of pain, he saw Tara watching, her expression one of cold satisfaction.
"Enough, Marcus. Don't damage the merchandise too badly," she said coolly. "Throw him in the basement. He can cool off down there."
Marcus grabbed a handful of Jaerius's hair and dragged him, limp and broken, through the crowd, down the hall, and to the door under the stairs. He fumbled with the lock, yanked it open, and with a final, contemptuous heave, threw Jaerius down the steep, wooden steps into the pitch-black cellar.
Jaerius landed in a heap on the cold, concrete floor, the impact jarring his already-screaming injuries. The door slammed shut above him, the lock clicking into place with a sound of terrible finality. The raucous noise of the party became a muffled, distant thrum.
Darkness. Complete and utter.
For a long time, he didn't move. He just lay there, breathing in the damp, dusty air, each inhalation a sharp stab in his chest. The physical pain was a symphony of aches, but it was nothing compared to the raw, gaping wound in his soul. The truth was a cancer, eating him from the inside out. He wasn't unwanted by his parents; he was betrayed by his family. He wasn't a burden; he was a victim.
Tears came then, hot and silent at first, then escalating into ragged, body-wracking sobs. He curled into a tighter ball, his knees pulled to his chest, his face pressed against the grimy floor. He cried for the mother who loved him. He cried for the years stolen, for the boy he could have been—confident, powerful, loved. He cried for the sheer, overwhelming injustice of it all.
But as the tears began to subside, leaving his face slick and salty, the anger returned. It didn't burn hot and wild like before. This was different. This was a cold, deep, subterranean river of hate, flowing through the core of him, solidifying his shattered pieces into something new, something harder.
He pushed himself up, wincing as his ribs protested. He sat in the absolute blackness, his back against a stack of old newspapers. He could feel it now, a faint, almost imperceptible thrumming in the air. It was always there, he realized, a background hum he'd attributed to the house's plumbing or electrical wiring. But now, isolated in the dark, he could feel it resonating with something inside him. It was a pull, a call. It was coming from a corner of the basement, behind a stack of his uncle's forgotten golf clubs.
His mother's blood. The sorceress's son.
He wasn't powerless.
A grim, determined smile touched his cracked lips. They thought they'd thrown away a broken toy.
Every insult, every blow, every moment of degradation would be returned to them a thousandfold. He would find his mother's gold. He would find his way to her world. And he would burn this pathetic, mundane house and everyone in it to the fucking ground.
He closed his eyes in the darkness, no longer seeing the oppressive black but envisioning the flames.