Broken

Epilogue: Part 1

Twenty seven years later

I had a duty to fulfill.

It was something that I had always been told. I was created to carry on the family name and to do my duty. As the years passed and I grew older the duty would change but the main thing that didn't was for me to carry on the family name. Now that I was twenty five my father was now adamant about it. He told me how he was going to find me a suitable, pureblood Orrian woman of good standing and high social ranking.

It was my duty as Kher LehnSon's only heir. I must continue on the traditional family practice. I had to carry on the name.

Except I had always had this niggling doubt in my head that my duty wasn't exactly to do as my father decreed. It had started with the Soul Maker and when she had given me my medallion.

I had expected something of distinguished importance that was befitting my family name but instead I had been given tarnished copper disk. It had blotches of blue green over old copper. It had been disappointing for me and my father. However when my father had left the Soul Maker's room and I had moved to follow, the wizened old woman grabbed my wrist, halting my process.

"You will be given a choice in this life, Keen LehnSon. Do what your father decrees is your duty. Follow in the dark footsteps of your family and lead your blood line in the darkness that will swallow you whole." She cackled loudly. "Or you can forge yourself a new path, create a new destiny and join your brothers and sisters in the light."

I had been confused because I had no siblings but when I went to ask her she had pushed me out the door and closed it quickly behind me.

That is when the doubt that surfaced but I shoved it all down and away. I did everything my father asked of me. I trained to be a soldier, gathered several medals on my two tours of duties against the Kengans. I had gone to the school of his choice and learned everything he dictated I should plus several that he could not control. Such as learning English and about humans.

My father hated them.

He had told me over and over again that they weren't to be trusted. That they had poisoned the Oria council against my grandfather and had him banished to the outer realms never to return. I had never seen anyone look so livid and cold before. When I had been a child it scared me. Now, I simply grew wary. Sometimes there seemed to be a glimmer of madness in my father's eyes that matched the cold glint in my mother's.

My childhood had been cold and I had always felt it was lacking. I had been well aware of those children whose parents would wrap them in their arms and press kisses to their cheeks. It made me wonder about more for me until my mother would yank me away, hissing about half-breeds and humans. So I would scowl at the children and their parents, hoping the hate would some how warm my mother and father up to me.

It never worked.

So I spent my life doing my duty, listening to my father, following in footsteps that had been set out before me. However that doubt always crawled back up, whispering about how uneven the steps were, how dark the path was. I would shove it away again and again but that little voice would always come back, whispering about how there was more. Such tantalizing whispers about how there was something greater for me out there. A faint chance at the warmth of love that I had craved as a child.

It was hard to ignore the voice as a child but I found it easier as I had grown, even though the doubt itself made me feel like I was wearing a mask my father had painted for me. It was a mask because underneath everything he taught me was a slight doubt and a disbelief that it wasn't true or right. As much as I tried to force it on, the mask never quite fit right. It rubbed me the wrong way no matter how many times I had tried to believe it didn't.