On Rageron, his differences had been noticed but accepted. His large size and mismatched eyes were remarked on but not mocked. But here on Tranq Prime things were different. The word “hybrid” was a curse, and his mixed heritage was looked upon with disgust and loathing. The Primes wanted no one with impure blood anywhere near them, and they were quick to let him know it.
Going to the learning house, where all the children were taught until their early teens, was a nightmare which he got through mainly by not speaking to anyone except for his friend, Sylvan. Sylvan, who was the only one who didn’t look down on Merrick or call him names or hate him for being different. But now even Sylvan was gone. His mother had died tragically and his father, a Kindred warrior like Merrick’s had been, had moved off-planet, taking Merrick’s one and only friend with him.
Merrick missed his friend horribly, but it had been years since Sylvan left, and it was clear he wasn’t coming back. So he’d learned to turn a deaf ear to the jeers and insults. He was larger than all of his classmates and could have beaten any of them easily in a fight, but his mother had begged him to be careful. Fighting was grounds for dismissal, and if he was cast out of the learning house, it would give Jonquil a reason to cast them out of his domicile. She never said this out loud but Merrick knew it was true. Jonquil didn’t like him any more than the other pure blooded Primes, even if he was supposed to be Merrick’s “second father,” a term of affection Merrick would rather die than use.
There was another reason he didn’t fight, but it was buried inside him, buried so deeply he was almost afraid to think about it. His mother had mentioned it once in a roundabout way, but that had been long ago.
“It’s dangerous for someone like you to fight,” she had said, rubbing his back as she tried to soothe him after a bad day at the learning house. A day like any other, when he was cursed at and spit on for being different. For being himself.
“You mean a hybrid—a half-breed,” Merrick had said bitterly. “It’s dangerous for a half-breed to fight. They never called me that on Rageron, Mamam. Why did you bring us here where everyone hates me just for being different?”
She sighed and he saw a troubled look in her lovely green eyes, which made him regret his words—but only a little. “Oh Merrick, you know why.” She rubbed his back. “The tribal wars and the plagues…I feared for you. Feared for us both, without your father to watch over us.”
“Shuura and Tongs were there,” Merrick said stubbornly. “At least they would have taken me on my coming of age hunt, which is more than Jonquil will do. It shames me, Mamam, that I have not yet killed a vranna.”
“Killing…violence…” She shook her head sadly. “Don’t be in such a hurry to grow up, my son. Being an adult is a difficult, ugly business sometimes.”
“You can’t keep me young forever,” Merrick growled. “Look at me, Mamam—I’m as tall as some of the Prime males already and I’m sure I’ll be as big as Father was soon. Yet I still have the status of a child. Since you forbid me to fight, I need to spill first blood if I am ever to be accepted at the learning house.”
“All right.” She nodded reluctantly. “I’ll speak to Jonquil about it again. But you must keep your temper, Merrick—no matter how the others tease you at learning house. You must stay in control of yourself at all times.”
Merrick couldn’t control his frustration. “But why, Mamam? You don’t know the things they say to me, the things they do. Why can’t I teach one of them a lesson, just once?”
“Because…” She’d hesitated, her green eyes troubled. “Because, Merrick, sometimes when someone like you—when a hybrid—starts fighting, they can’t stop. Do you understand?”
Slowly, Merrick had nodded. He didn’t think about it much, but he knew it was there—a deep, untapped well of violence that lived just under the surface of his soul. If I fought them, he told himself, thinking of the bullies at school, the ones that jeered at him and called him “half-breed scum” and “Kindred dog.” If I let myself go, even once, I wouldn’t stop until they were all dead. Every last one of them.
It was a horrible thing to realize about himself. Horrible, but true. He could feel the cold curtain of hatred—the killing frost, as he thought of it to himself—wanting to come over him sometimes. It hung over him like a cloud, waiting to descend when he was having an especially bad day and the other students wouldn’t leave him alone, but somehow he always managed to stave it off. In the past, he’d done that by talking to Sylvan. But now that his friend was gone, he had no outlet. Lately Merrick had felt the rage growing inside him, getting deeper and hotter, like an angry flame licking at the edges of his soul, hungry to consume him. But if he let the fire burn too brightly, he knew the killing frost would not be far behind.