At Speculative Chic, we feature a lot of authors who share everything from their favorite things to the inspiration for their work. But why not also share their fiction? Welcome to Fiction Friday, where you’ll be able to sample the fiction of a variety of authors, including those who write at Speculative Chic! Today, we’re featuring our very own Kendra Merritt, whose name you may recognize from her monthly columns here at Speculative Chic. Kendra is also the author of the Mark of the Least series, which takes fairy tales and folklore and tells those stories from a very different point of view. Her latest, After the Darkness, is available now (and if you’re lucky, you might even get it for free!). Want a sample? Keep reading for more!
About the Book
After the Dark (2020)
Written by: Kendra Merritt
Genre: YA Fantasy
Pages: 155
Series: Mark of the Least
Publisher: Blue Fyre Press
Magic destroyed the world…but her power might be the key to protecting what’s left.
It has been ten months since the Darkness lifted and the eclipse that toppled civilization ended. The mighty Vemiir Empire that once stretched from coast to coast, now lies in ruins. Aurelia’s family is all she has left. They surround her with love, they fight to protect her, but they do not understand her. No one does. No one but another magi would. And as far as she knows, she might be the last of those.
Magic was the downfall of the Empire, but magic is all Aurelia has to offer in this new world. A magic that her family fears and misunderstands. All she can do is hide it, bury it, and forget it and everything she went through to earn it. But the world is dangerous now, as well as full of possibilities. And Aurelia can’t help the feeling that magic not only has a place in it—it could be the key to learning how to survive, to grow, and to thrive in a world that’s been made completely new.
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Catch Up on the Series
After the Dark Excerpt
Chapter One
It has been two hundred and ninety-six days since the Darkness lifted. The mighty Vemiir Empire that once stretched from coast to coast, across the great northern mountains, and bridged the channel to the south now lies in ruins. The great towers of Leu’aline lie scattered across the plain.
Like every other constant in my life, it crumbled to dust. My family, the only thing I have left, surrounds me with their love and their misunderstanding acceptance. They shelter and care for me, but they do not understand me. They do not know what I went through. What I lost when the Empire fell. No one does. No one but another magi would. And as far as I know, I might be the last of those.
Months ago, I found this journal in the ruins of my home, and now I think I finally have the courage to write about what has happened. Do I imagine someone in the far future will read my smudged and illegible account? That seems like the same hubris that condemned all of civilization. But at this point, I can do nothing else. I am good for nothing but to set pen to paper and tell my story to what little remains of the world.
I set down the stick of sharpened charcoal and stretched my fingers. It had been months since I’d made them do anything so tedious as write. We hadn’t been encouraged to record our thoughts or trials in the Forge. Retrospection wasn’t necessary for Tempering.
“Aurelia,” my sister, Claudia, said. “Come sit by the fire and stir this pot. It’s going to stick otherwise.”
I rose and tucked the book and my makeshift pen into the threadbare satchel at my waist. Our shelter for the night had once been a sprawling country villa with orchards and outbuildings. Now, barely two stones stood on top of one another, and we sat in what was left of the kitchen, waist-high walls keeping the dark at bay while the roof opened onto the sky.
Claudia took my elbow and ushered me to a seat on the stone block beside the fire, which crackled in what had once been the hearth. I wanted to snap that I wasn’t an invalid, but I didn’t have the energy after weeks of constant travel. And if I snapped at Claudia, I would have to find ways to rage against all of my family because she wasn’t the only one to treat me like glass. Or even the worst one.
Fine lines of power drifted from the verdant greenery around us, flowing almost like water. Claudia puttered around the pot as if they didn’t exist while I squinted and tried to see around the wisps of light. At least they were starting to gather in little pools and streams. When the power had first appeared, the wisps had been so ubiquitous they’d looked like a blanket of blinding energy covering the world.
Claudia knelt beside the fire and fed it more wood—pieces of furniture this time, an elegant chair with whorls and curling leaves carved into the surface, now dry and cracked from lying in the sun for most of a year.
Claudia was the best at this mundane skill. I could light the fire with a thought and keep it burning through the night with hardly anything to feed it, but I couldn’t stand the way my family looked at me when I did so, with that mixture of horror and awe and now and then a little pity.
Before the Darkness, they’d sent me off to the Forge with hope and laughter and so much love. But everything had changed, and this thing they had all wished for now made them jumpy.
A footstep thudded on the cracked flagstones beyond our shelter, and Claudia reached for her short sword, propped unsheathed beside the fire.
“Are you going to gut me, sis?” a voice said, and my brother, Max, poked his head over the broken wall that sheltered our fire. He grinned and sat on the stone to swing his legs over into our campsite.
Claudia scowled. “Could you be any louder? We heard you coming a mile away.”
“But did you hear me?”
Claudia and I both jumped and then laughed as Papa stepped out from behind us. The light of our fire glinted off his silver hair, turning it gold. He wore the simple leather of a foot soldier. His parade uniform had crumbled to dust along with the rest of the Empire, but I would always think of him in the gold and red, like an angel in the temple of the Allfather.
He let his hand rest on my shoulder, and I sat up straighter.
“What did you find?” Claudia asked. She had coiled her long blonde hair around her head and somehow gotten it to stay. The ladies of Leu’aline had used magic to keep their hair in place. Before the Darkness had taken that from us as well. I had to remember to ask her how she did it. I could only braid my dark hair and tie it off with a spare piece of leather.
Papa and Max emptied out their sacks as Claudia and I marveled over their treasures.
Dried, wrinkled apples came out first and Claudia cried out and snatched them. “They’re perfect.” She swept in to kiss Papa on the cheek. “Thank you.” Then she hunched over the pot with her knife and tossed chunks of fruit into our cook pot.
I winced. I didn’t really like the way everything went into one pot and came out looking like something from the wrong side of Leu’aline’s cuisine district. But beggars couldn’t be choosers, and what we scavenged went further when it was boiled.
Max produced a sack of grain which went over almost as well. Claudia had once been the quartermaster for an entire division of the legion, and she often joked that cooking for our family was nearly the same thing.
Papa sat beside me, and I tried to smile at him. He looked so much older than when I’d left home, older even than when he’d pulled me out of the pit in the Forge. It wasn’t that long ago that his hair had been the same color as Max’s and mine. The first and last of his children, we’d been the only ones to inherit the darker shade.
“I found you something special,” he told me.
My smile turned real. How many times had Papa come home from a campaign and said those same words to me?
He reached into his sack, like a street magician, and pulled out a gown the color of sunflowers.
My mouth dropped open in appreciation, and I reached to touch the soft fabric. It didn’t fall apart at my touch.
“Where did you find this? How is it still intact?”
“I think we were in the old servants’ hall. One of them must have had a penchant for permanent things. Or a father who was a legionnaire.”
I snorted ruefully. “Not every legionnaire’s daughter learned to make clothing the hard way.” I certainly hadn’t. Mine had all been held together by magic. Just like almost everyone else in the Empire.
“Take it,” he said. “The rest of us are comfortable in uniforms. But I know you’re not.”
I let the fabric slide over my hands, a decadent luxury I hadn’t known how much I missed. Mixed feelings crept up my throat. The uniform they’d found me fit just fine, but I hadn’t earned it like the rest of my family. Even Mamma had been a legionnaire when she was younger. I’d been set aside for the Forge, so I’d never served.
But donning a different set of clothing when my entire family wore the branded leather would just make me stand out more. They’d only have to look at me to remember our differences. If they ever forgot them at all.
Still, Papa gazed at me, eyes crinkled with fondness and soft with regret, and I wanted so much to erase the latter. Nothing that had happened had been his fault.
So, I gathered up the folds of fabric and limped off into the ruins of the house to find some place private to change.
By the time I returned, the rest of the Naminarus family had gotten back from foraging. It was a good thing the villa’s kitchen had been so large. It was the only place all of us could rest in the same space.
Mamma joined Claudia at the cook pot, her fair hair cut so short it curled around her ears. They argued over the best way to make the stew go further, adding some flour, using a little of our precious dried meat, maybe a little more water. Papa had taken charge of the boys and oversaw their efforts to erect a canvas roof over a corner of the kitchen. Max laughed while the twins, Quintes and Valens, struggled with the supports to hold the canvas in place. Decima was supposed to be on mending duty tonight, but the pile of uniforms lay forgotten beside her as she sharpened the two short swords she normally wore strapped to her back. My aunts argued about the arrangement of bed rolls while my little cousin scampered between their feet. And Granmamma had appropriated the only intact stool, presiding over it all with a fierce grin.
I loved the chaos so much it hurt. It was good to see everyone with a smile or a joke on their lips. We’d spent too many weeks walking, too many months searching for food, water, and a place to rest. The villa was the first place we’d felt safe in a long time.
Every single one of them looked up when I stepped into the firelight, and they shouted greetings.
“Aurelia!”
“Aurelia, you look beautiful,” Mamma said. “Yellow suits you.”
“Hey, Papa, would you find me one, too, next time?” Decima said.
Quintes squinted at her. “What do you need a dress for? It’d be like wrapping a scarf around an ax handle.”
Decima, who wore her hair even shorter than Mamma and compared her own nose to a knife edge, threw a chunk of rock at Quintes.
I rolled my eyes and picked my way across the kitchen to sit at Granmamma’s feet. I eased my left leg along the ground, stretching the sore muscles. Mamma spared a warm smile for me, but she remained at the cook pot with Claudia so she could oversee the distribution of bowls and cups. We’d found enough in the ruins of the kitchen that everyone could have their own. A new and appreciated luxury since we’d been sharing three bowls between the twelve of us since we’d left Leu’aline.
I dug into my sludgy stew as everyone else settled on the flagstones, ignoring how it tasted and the fact that dried apples floated alongside beans and oats. It would make my stomach stop moaning, and that was all that mattered.
Decima took her bowl with her to stand watch outside the circle of firelight.
“This is nice.” I used my spoon to indicate the villa. “Almost…almost like home.” It was a dangerous sentiment for everyone, but the barest sliver of contentment had wormed its way into my mind and infected everything else.
Mamma reached over to pat my knee like she understood what I was trying to say. “It is nice to finally be sitting still.”
“We could stay here,” Aunt Iulia said, watching her boy play with two spoons he’d found in the wreckage. “It’s secure enough, and we could forage in the orchard and glean from the fields until winter.”
Max shook his head, his overlong hair falling in his eyes. “It might look nice, but where are the walls? The watchtowers?” he said. “I don’t like how open the fields are.” He was a soldier first, but he’d served with the legion’s engineers long enough to have a good eye for building.
“But those same fields could feed us,” Aunt Priscilla said. “Couldn’t we grow new crops?” She’d trained recruits in sword and bow work. Farming was completely new, but at least she was willing to learn.
Claudia said, “Yes” at the same time Max said, “We should move on.”
Quintes surveyed the ruins with his nose wrinkled. “We could try to reach Icthein,” he said. “At the very least, there will be fishing. And winter should be milder there.”
Papa’s lips thinned. “Without magic for the supports, Icthein will have fallen into the sea by now. If any of the city remains, it will not be a safe haven but a death trap.”
I lowered my gaze as if I were to blame for the magic failing and an entire city sliding into the waves. Granmamma placed her gnarled hand on my head.
No one questioned Papa’s declaration. Granmamma had been a legionnaire longer, but she’d retired too many years ago. Her knowledge would be skewed by time and the expansion of the Empire.
But Papa had spent forty years spear-heading that expansion and knew the Empire better than anyone. He’d helped conquer the northern province above the mountains where there was nothing but ice and barbarians and two other provinces after that.
“What about Alta’ine?” Claudia said. “It’s defensible, and its fields were large enough they can’t possibly be picked over by now.”
Even Papa stopped to consider her suggestion. But finally, he shook his head. “It’s still the remains of a city. Those who survived the fall will be living in its ruins, and we are too few to carve out a place among them.” Papa stood and turned to survey the villa and the night surrounding it. Everyone waited, eyes on him.
“This is a good place,” he said. “Better than any we’ve found so far. We can make it defensible.” He met Max’s gaze. “And I don’t like how close winter is getting. We’ll stay here.”
“We’ll make it work, then,” Mamma said.
A collective sigh moved through my family, even from the ones who had been arguing. Even if anyone wanted to disagree, we were too tired. Magi had once moved armies from the mountains in the east to the west coast in a matter of hours. I don’t think any of us had had a proper sense of the immensity of the Empire until we’d tried walking across it.
Or I should say former Empire. We’d given up on finding any of our society intact after so long. With so many of our councilors kept alive by magic, I doubted any of them had lived through the Darkness. Without them, only people like Papa would care to keep the world together.
The whistle of a night bird pierced the dark, and every member of my family straightened. It was a well-rehearsed signal from Decima.
Papa flowed to his feet, his hand resting comfortably on his hilt while the rest drew their weapons and moved into defensive positions around the fire. Even Granmamma stood, drawing a short, curved bow from the shadows beside her seat.
I drew my own knife, but Papa’s hand slashed through the air to point toward the middle of the group. My shoulders jerked, but I followed his orders. As a legionnaire’s daughter, I could defend myself, but I didn’t have the training the rest of my family had, so I was lumped in with my little cousin.
With Decima’s warning, it seemed like we had forever to prepare before they attacked. Almost twenty fighters surged over the walls into the firelight, their surprise telling us clearly that they’d thought to take us unaware.
If they’d come to our group with sheathed weapons asking for help or to share our fire, my father would have done his best to meet their needs. But this way…
Papa drew his sword as the first came over the wall, and he ran the man through with little preamble. Then the rest of my family moved.
I loved watching them. It could have been a court dance the way they turned and spun and kept track of one another. My three brothers spread out and overwhelmed the enemy one at a time. Claudia charged headfirst into the fray while Decima flanked our attackers and whirled in to take three of them before they even knew she was there. Beside me, Granmamma took careful aim to cover each of them.
Papa engaged a large man who wore the remains of his clothes tied around his waist. As soon as he was distracted and overextended, Mamma dove in with her knife. My parents worked as a team in all aspects of their life, not just hearth and home.
We were unstoppable. Nothing would threaten us.
Then ten more came out of the dark carrying swords and pikes stamped with the crest of the legion and that was too many.
This was the largest cohesive group we’d seen out in the wilds of the fallen Empire. And they swarmed over my family.
I cried out as Max went down and Claudia took a blow to the head. Papa spun to look, and his enemy took that moment to grab Mamma.
Bile stung my throat. I wasn’t a warrior, but I could see the turn of battle as easily as any general. In a moment, we would be lost.
The light glowing at the edges of my vision snapped into lines and flowed in spirals, centering on me.
The man standing over Claudia raised a club studded with bits of glass, ready to bring it down on my sister.
With a wordless scream, I drew the lines of power in, gathering it as a ball of burning light only I could see. Then I flung it out into the enemy, and it roared through flesh and bone.
The man clutched his bleeding chest, grasping for the weapon that had stabbed him. His fingers found nothing but blood, and he fell heavily to the dirty flagstones.
One by one, they toppled. Ten of them. Magi before me had slaughtered whole divisions, but only those that had been trained in battle managed that kind of power.
I sagged under the weight of my ineptitude, falling to my hands and knees.
The rest of our attackers stopped and stared at their fellows, the marks of death seeping into their makeshift, threadbare clothing. My family scrambled to regroup in the lull. They fell back to form a tight circle around me, dragging the still forms of Max and Claudia with them. Mamma stomped on her captor’s instep and twisted away from him.
The man let her go and his eyes swept over my slumped form, looking for the telltale blue, but my clothing had been left behind in Leu’aline.
“Magi.” He spat the word as if it tasted like ash. He and his men still hesitated like they were trying to decide whether to kill me or flee.
I climbed back to my feet and tried to look like I could do whatever I’d done again.
The man’s lip curled. “Magic scum.” He spat on the ground and pointed his sword at Papa. “We kill every magic user we find. It’s no less than they deserve.”
“That’s funny, considering you tried to kill us before you saw me.” My voice came out steady even though my hands still trembled with fatigue.
The man sneered and addressed my father as if even looking at me would contaminate him. “We’ll be back with three times this number to take care of her.” He raised his chin and stalked off into the night, taking his brigands with him.
“Do you think they have that many?” Quintes asked as Mamma and Priscilla knelt to check Max and Claudia.
“It’s more than we’ve seen working together anywhere else,” Granmamma said.
“We’re not risking it,” Papa said. “Even if they don’t have the numbers, they can tell anyone they meet they’ve seen a magi. We’ll have to fight anyone who wants to take their anger out on a magic-user. Our best bet is to disappear from this place. Pack up.”
No one complained, even though ten minutes ago we’d decided this would be our new home. The villa had seemed so perfect.
“I just—” I said, but I didn’t know what to finish it with.
Papa spared me a smile and a touch on my hand, but that didn’t change the fact that we were fleeing because of me.
My jaw clenched, and my fingers curled into fists at my sides. Standing in the center of their circle, letting them defend me had made me feel fragile. Like they thought I needed protecting. But that wasn’t it.
I was dangerous. A weapon, cocked and ready to go off, and the moment I did, I’d bring my whole family down with me.
The only way to stay safe was to bury the weapon as deep as possible and guard it against anyone who might set it off.
About the Author
Books have been Kendra Merritt’s escape for as long as she can remember. She used to hide fantasy novels behind her government textbook in high school, and she wrote most of her first novel during a semester of college algebra.
Older and wiser now (but just as nerdy) Kendra writes retellings of fairytales with main characters who have disabilities. If she isn’t writing, she’s reading, and if she isn’t reading, she’s playing video games. She is the author of By Wingéd Chair, the first in the Mark of the Least series.
Kendra lives in Denver with her very tall husband, their book loving progeny, and a lazy black monster masquerading as a service dog.
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