Blood of Two Worlds

Patricia discovered she was her mother's least favorite child at age seven, but she didn't realize she was also technically illegal until the morning a Kraken courier knocked on their door and her hands caught fire. To be fair, the fire didn't happen immediately. First came the knock, sharp and authoritative, the kind of sound that makes entire streets go silent because everyone knows what crimson and silver livery means. Death. Taxes. Or worse, both delivered by creatures who could turn you into ash before you finished screaming. Patricia answered because her father was buried in his study doing physician things, and Jerome was gods-knew-where doing Jerome things, which lately involved coming home smelling like a chemistry experiment gone catastrophically wrong. The courier looked through her like she was a particularly uninteresting piece of furniture. "Patrick of the House of Merchants," he announced, his voice carrying that magical amplification that made her teeth ache and her bones vibrate. "You are summoned to Kraken by order of His Majesty the Phoenix King." Patricia's brain did that thing where it knows something catastrophically bad is happening but hasn't quite caught up with the specifics. Summoned. Kraken. Phoenix King. Each word landed like a separate punch to the chest. "I'll get him," she managed, taking the envelope the courier thrust at her. The seal was embossed with a phoenix rising from flames, rendered in gold leaf that pulsed with residual magic. It was the most beautiful thing she'd ever held, and it felt like holding her own death warrant. Her father emerged from his study with that specific kind of calm that meant he was absolutely terrified. Patrick read the letter three times, which was two times more than necessary unless you were desperately hoping the words would rearrange themselves into something less catastrophic. "They want all of us," he said finally, his voice steady in that way that made Patricia's stomach drop. "The entire family. We have twenty days." "Twenty days for what?" Patricia asked, though she was pretty sure she didn't want to know. "To pack our lives. To learn everything I know about medicine. And then..." Patrick looked at the letter again, as if hoping he'd misread it. "And then I treat the Phoenix King. For whatever's killing him." "And then we come home?" Patricia already knew the answer. "There is no then, sweetheart. We stay. Permanently. As royal physicians." The word permanently hung in the air like a curse. Permanent service in Kraken meant leaving Blashville forever. It meant exposure to magical saturation that could kill humans within days. It meant placing their lives entirely in the hands of creatures whose idea of mercy involved only occasionally eating people who annoyed them. Patricia had read the histories. She knew what happened to humans who crossed into Kraken territory. The best-case scenario involved dying quickly. "Can't you just refuse?" Even as Patricia said it, she knew how monumentally stupid it sounded. "Refusing a royal summons is treason. They'd execute me. Probably all of you too, just to make a point." Patrick sat down heavily, suddenly looking every one of his fifty-three years. "But if I'm going to die anyway, and I am, Patricia, whatever's wrong with the Phoenix King has stumped every magical healer in Cumbishaft for five years, then I'm going to make damn sure my death means something." That's when Patricia's father did the most audaciously insane thing she'd ever witnessed. He drafted a counter-offer to the Phoenix King's summons. Most people, when faced with execution-or-s*****y-with-extra-steps, would have just accepted the s*****y. Patrick, however, had apparently decided that if he was going to die, he was going to die expensive. His counter-offer demanded that in exchange for his life and his family's permanent service, the royal family had to elevate them to upper-class status throughout all of Cumbishaft. Not just in Kraken. Everywhere. With wealth sufficient to rival the second most powerful family in the known world. "They're going to kill us all," Patricia's mother whispered when Patrick explained his plan. She had that look she always got when life reminded her that marrying a physician with delusions of grandeur had been a terrible idea. "They're going to execute us for the insult." "Perhaps," Patrick agreed with infuriating calm. "But I'm the only human physician they've summoned in a thousand years. If they need me that badly, then my life has value. And I'm going to extract every last drop of that value to protect you all." The family waited three days for a response. Three days during which Patricia helped her father organize twenty-five years of medical knowledge into something teachable. Three days during which her brother Jerome suddenly became intensely interested in their father's locked journals, particularly the sections on poisons that mimicked natural death. Three days during which Patricia started noticing that her father looked wrong. Thinner. Grayer. More tired than stress alone could explain. On the third day, the courier returned. The Phoenix King had accepted their terms. Every single one. The contract was laid out on parchment that glowed with binding magic, and it promised them wealth beyond imagination, status that would make them untouchable, and permanent protection. All they had to do was succeed in curing a dying phoenix with a disease that had killed or broken everyone who'd tried to treat it. Patrick cut his palm and pressed his bloody hand to the contract. The blood sank into the paper, the document flashed with golden light, and their fate was sealed. Twenty days. That's all they had to pack up their lives, say goodbye to everything familiar, and prepare for permanent exile in a realm that killed humans for sport. Patricia threw herself into learning her father's craft with the kind of desperate intensity usually reserved for people who know exactly how much time they have left. She memorized herb combinations until she could recite them in her sleep. She practiced surgical techniques on fruits and leather until her hands stopped shaking. She read her father's notes on the Phoenix King's symptoms and realized with cold, creeping certainty that her father was right. This wasn't a disease. This was something darker. Patrick grew visibly weaker as the deadline approached. The stress of preparing his family while knowing his own death was imminent was taking its toll, yes, but there was something else. Something that made Patricia's physician's instincts scream warnings she didn't want to hear. The morning of their scheduled departure arrived with gray skies and heavy silence. Patricia found her father dead in his study. He was slumped over his desk, looking for all the world like he'd fallen asleep while working. His hand still held the pen he'd been using to write notes. A half-finished entry lay beneath his fingers, the ink not quite dry. Patricia touched his shoulder to wake him. His skin was cold. Her scream brought everyone running. Even through her grief, even through the shock and the tears and the impossible reality that her father was gone, Patricia couldn't stop being a physician. She noticed things. Slight discoloration around his lips, a faint blue tinge that shouldn't be there in peaceful death. Unusual rigidity in his limbs, more pronounced than normal rigor mortis. A faint chemical smell that had no business being in a room where someone died peacefully. Her father had been poisoned. But her mind refused to complete the thought, refused to ask the next logical question. By whom? The Franchusten courier appeared that afternoon with news that made their tragedy infinitely worse. The summons still stood. The contract Patrick had signed was magically binding on his bloodline. The family would relocate to Kraken as planned. They were now collectively responsible for treating the Phoenix King. Patricia, the daughter who'd spent twenty days frantically absorbing medical knowledge, the middle child nobody paid attention to, the girl with the unusual amber eyes that her mother hated for reasons she'd never explained, was now the family's primary physician. She was twenty-two years old, her father was hours dead, and she was expected to cure a disease that had killed or broken everyone who'd attempted it. The journey to Kraken took five days by enchanted carriage. On the fifth day, they crossed the border, and Patricia felt something wake up inside her blood. It started as warmth spreading from her chest outward, as if something dormant was responding to the saturated magic. Her heartbeat seemed louder. Colors seemed brighter. And when her youngest sister Liveth asked if she was alright, Patricia looked down at her hands and saw them glowing with golden light. She was either dying, transforming, or discovering something about herself that would get her killed the moment anyone in Kraken noticed. Probably all three. Patricia closed her hands into fists, watching the golden glow fade beneath her skin like embers banking for later, and thought: well, this should be fun.