Mirth, part one: Chapter One, Part One

This #TeaserTuesday excerpt is from my current WIP, the second draft of the Mirth duology, part 1. In early December 2023, I came up with an idea for what I thought would be a fun Why Choose palate cleanser set in the Conduit World – yes, apparently all the series set in the Conduit World are going to be Why Choose.

I had every intent of dashing off a fun, quick standalone book.

Well, ahem, the ‘standalone’ is now a duology. And the first book is now 100K (and counting).

So yeah, palate cleanser it may be, this is not, apparently, a short story. I haven’t set a release date yet, because I’m thinking about releasing both books back-to-back (maybe thirty days apart?). I need to get book 2 written and confirm the editor’s schedule for two books in a row before I get the preorder for Mirth 1 up. And yes, duologies traditionally end on a cliffhanger.

The Mirth duology series is set in a secondary world that shares many common traits with our own. The divergences in language, governing bodies and countries, technology, and geography are all intentional choices by the author.

[overall] Content warnings: language, death of a family member/grief, and sexual situations.

Anything in [brackets] is still being developed/decided/not quite the right word, etc.

MIRTH

“A chosen mate matching event,” I echo stupidity, swaying slightly on my bare feet. “For me.”

“You’re welcome to add names to the invitation list,” my father says, getting as pissy as he will allow himself to be even when dealing with his least favorite child.

I remember to shut my mouth at least. Gaping like a fish in his presence hasn’t been tolerated since I was two. I don’t, however, manage to uncurl my hands from the fists clenched at my sides. My perfectly French-manicured nails dig into my perfectly soft and creamy skin. I’m moments away from drawing my own blood.

Not because I’m a shifter. I might be one of the most privileged people on the planet but even I’m not lucky enough to be able to manifest claws to rend my way through the centuries of royal history suffocatingly stuffed alongside me in my father’s study.

“Add names …” I finally say through clenched teeth, scanning the leather-bound tomes and dark wood shelves spanning easily twelve feet up to the ludicrously landscape-painted ceiling. I could take two steps to the fucking window and see one of the most breathtaking mountain views in the entire world. That landscape has weathered the centuries without a constant need for weekly dusting and a special fucking varnish that only a fabricator mage is skilled enough to apply.

I’m struggling to hold onto the moment.

To hold the energy, the practically useless essence, within me. If I self-destruct here maybe I will finally do something significant with all the untapped power that resides under my skin. Maybe I’ll wipe this castle off the side of the mountain and significantly improve the vista.

Of course, that would also slaughter dozens of innocent people, and not doing so is the primary reason I hold my essence so tightly. So tightly, I barely have access to my lesser abilities. Barely have any significance in the —

My nails bite into my skin.

A chosen mate matching event.

It’s not … it’s only been five months, seventeen days, and … I glance at the ostentatious grandfather clock to my left. It towers next to the heavy dark wood door. Five months, seventeen days, and eight hours, since … since …

My father clears his throat, almost gently.

My father is not gentle. Fair-minded? Yes. Forthright? Yes. Focused, precise, and epically-powerful? Yes. Gentle? No.

I want him to yell.

I want him to break, as I’m breaking. As I’ve been breaking for almost six months.

He summoned me. I’ve been holed up in my apartments in London barely surfacing most days. But he summoned and I’m here. And I thought …

My brother’s ashes sit in a pristinely white marble urn on the mantel over the unlit fireplace just offset from my father’s huge burnished gold oak antique desk. But that’s not the prestigious placement it seems to be.

Armin wouldn’t have wanted to be trapped inside a —  

I stuff my hands in the pockets of the sweatpants that I snuck out of Armin’s rooms. Not that either of us has lived at my father’s seat of power in years. The school’s logo is emblazoned across the ass. From the depths of the pockets, I grasp my abandoned earbuds in my palms. And, for a moment, I consider pulling them out, shoving them in my ears, and blasting all the thoughts out of the forefront of my mind.

Which is my go-to response to practically anything requiring any engagement from me these days. That and audiobooks. There is nothing like an unhinged thriller to remind me how ridiculously cloistered and — 

“Mirth …” my father sighs.

I flinch at being so named, only just checking stumbling back from it.

He pinches his lips so tightly that they go white against his tanned skin. Under that tan, he’s just as naturally pale as I am. He’s just been skiing. And apparently, it’s been sunny enough to lightly streak his hair as well. Normally it’s as dark as my own. And why wouldn’t he ski? He resides in a castle in the middle of the fucking Alps and owns everything as far as an essence-enhanced eye can see.

His Royal Highness, Chancellor Bastian Wilhelm, hereditary emperor of the United European Nation, leader of the World Council. One of the most powerful awry in the world.

It’s not as if his eldest son, his fucking beloved heir with whom he shared the same epically powerful abilities, is dead.

 I grab onto the anger that flashes through me, warming me finally from within, at his lack of obvious grief. Such bright and utterly vicious ire is a completely uncharacteristic emotion for me. And with it, the bottomless well of useless essence I usually keep smothered deeply within my core, within my soul, sleepily uncurls. I struggle to get it under control so I can function, and speak, through the onslaught.

But then — finally — I’m unhinging my jaw and spitting vitriol in his direction. “Add names? To the list of assholes that you want to line up? To fuck and breed me?”

The cut crystal tumbler in my father’s hand cracks but doesn’t shatter. And not because his grip tightened. I’ve managed to get his own power to slip its own leash.

But I don’t feel any relief. I, in fact, feel even more helpless, even more out of control, now that I’ve triggered him so easily.

Standing to my father’s right, as she always is when he calls me in for one of his delightful chats, Eleanor plucks the glass from his hand before it spills a drop. Anne, on his left, instantly replaces it with her barely sipped-from, amber-liquid-filled, tumbler.

Apparently, it’s more important to make sure that nary a single drop of mage-brewed whisky hits the thousand-fucking-year-old oak desk than it is to —

“It’s time,” my father says, deliberately setting down his replacement drink instead of throwing it back.

Maybe he has the urge to drink and drink and lose himself just for a little while? Lose himself for just long enough to forget why I’ve been called home? To forget why he’s suddenly demanding that I find a match?

My brother — my father’s true heir, true in all the ways that truly mattered in this world — is dead.

All that power. All that … love and comfort, just snuffed out, stripped away by a fucking avalanche. An [epic], even unprecedented, event, yes. But what telekinetic dies while skiing, so remotely or not?

“Six months is all I get?” I say, the circumstances of my beloved brother’s death pinging around in my head along with all the unanswered questions. No, not unanswered. All the unsatisfactorily resolved questions.

The bright anger drains from me, leaving my voice sounding weak, pathetic, even to my own ears. If I could just hold on to that anger, if I could just focus it, I might be able to use it to drag myself from this abyss of grief. “Not even six months.”

My father scrubs his hand across his face in an uncharacteristic display of vivid emotion, then compounding that oddly human-like behavior he reaches up for Anne’s hand. The light blond, dark amber-eyed, tanned shifter instantly closes the slight space, slipping her bejeweled fingers into his open palm. They just hold each other lightly. Eleanor, a pale-skinned combat-grade mage with her long medium brown hair uncharacteristically loose around her shoulders, settles her hand on his shoulder.

Their combined gazes settle on me. Three against one. Pure pity etched across Anne’s face. Eleanor’s strain shows in the deepening lines across her brow and on the edges of her remarkable sky-blue eyes.

My father … my father looks … I haven’t actually shared the same space with him for over a month. We’ve barely exchanged a half dozen words since Armin’s death. He hasn’t shaved. He’s lost weight, enough for it to show in his face. The gray is deepening at his temples. But power, so much power, undeniable and everlasting, radiates from him, from his eyes. As it always does.

The violet eyes that also match my own.

Anchored on either side by his chosen mates or not, I’m looking at His Royal Highness, Chancellor Bastian Wilhelm, emperor of the European Nation and head of the World Council.

I can count the number of times he’s just been Bast in my presence on a single hand and not use my thumb — a nickname I heard murmured by Anne in an intimate moment many, many years ago.

And then I put it all together.

The abrupt, but formal, summons from my loft in London where I’ve been holed up to my father’s literal seat to power.

The informal gathering in his study.

They’d all been drinking even before I’d been escorted by a castle guard from my rooms.

The chosen mate matching event.

Only six months …

I sway, lightheaded as the realization sweeps through me viscerally. I step sideways, then practically drop into the chair that had been offered — and refused — when I entered. I always need to be on my feet for these conversations, for any conversation with my father in which I’m the sole focus. An exceedingly rare event. Even more so after my awry nature truly exerted itself at age fifteen and it became clear it wasn’t … manageable. Armin usually mitigated as much as he could between my father and me.

I’m never able to actually run, flee, of course, but I’m always primed to do so.

Even that possibility is about to be stripped from me.

And it’s not that I’m not ready.

It’s that I’m incapable.

“You’re true blooded,” my father says. “You will need multiple mates to hold the intersection point. We can find ways around the other duties if you cannot manage them as well.”

Duties. All the things that he trained Armin to do, to eventually take over. Over a decade of training just to stand at our father’s side. All the things I don’t have the intelligence, or the fortitude, or the power to —

My father clears his throat. “When the time comes.”

When the time comes.

To hold the intersection point.

– Mirth, part one (Conduit World), chapter one, part one

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FYI. Awry (Conduit 1) is the first book set in the Conduit World. It is now available in eBook, paperback, and audiobook. [In case you haven’t had a chance to pick it up yet 😉 ].