The Red Rider - the tale of the other rider, the first son of Selena; mirror storyline avec missing pieces. MxN.

THE RED RIDER

Prologue, Inheritance

I was told that Selena loved Morzan deeply. That she was able to look past his faults, his cruelty and anger. That when he asked her to join him, she did not hesitate to leave everything behind.

Love at first glimpse, she was said to have called it. Certainly, his handsome features yet unmarked by the countless battles he would fight turned the tides in his favor.

I was assured that he loved her, too. Was someone like Morzan capable of feeling love?

Her easy nature proved a respite from the violent drama of the Forsworn. However, she soon proved to be more than a simple farm girl—she must have been to keep his attentions—for she soon grew to have just as malevolent a reputation as he. Where Morzan was sanguine and hotblooded, she was cold as ice.

Or perhaps that's what drew them together in the time when nothing seemed too large for them to conquer—not Riders, not Dragons, nothing save for me.

I was the chink in his armor, the flaw in their plan, the thorn in her side.

She was fiercely loyal and he promised her the world. They were inseparable, traveling for years through thick and thin, until evidence of his affection started to show.

He spirited her off to his holdfast. Of course, nothing could be concealed from Galbatorix, but she was forbidden from divulging her condition to anyone more.

From the moment I was conceived, I was shunned, hidden out of an abundance of shame, though they called it caution. Truthfully, Morzan disliked me for being his failing and as well as hers. As a Rider and one of the Forsworn, he considered himself beyond the petty temptations of the fairer sex. I was little more than proof of his weakness.

The only heirlooms I received from my father were injury and insult. He oft turned to violence and drink, the latter usually after the former. Father though he was, I was no favorite of his.

But for her, I would prove to be a fatal flaw.

Morzan knew the dangers of children and the changes he saw in Selena angered him. He kept me from her because, in his eyes, motherhood weakened a woman; it made them soft.

And as his power waxed, his love waned.

She had become indispensable to the cause and to him, so he used me to control her. I was taken from her bosom at a young age and passed on to a wet nurse.

Did she rise one day, purged of the love that had once driven every breath? Or had the fate of her firstborn turned her sweetest joy to bitter ashes in her mouth? Perhaps she even rejoiced when Brom cut Morzan in two.

She took care to play the part of the doting consort, but it was apparent something in her had changed.

-x-

Then one day, like mist, she vanished. And I was left, longing for a mother who's face I could scarcely remember, left to be raised among young nobles of the King's court, a place like a viper's nest where malice dogged every word.

Morzan grew disconsolate and furious in her absence, inconsolably shocked that his loyal Hand might bite back.

My charge was given over to his squire, a young swordsman named Tornac. He was stark contrast to Morzan and Selena at every turn, I questioned even to this day how he found himself in their service.

Suddenly and without prelude, she returned, stealing into the castle by her swain's absence while her two paramours battled each other leagues away.

She was unrecognizable, weighed down by the weight of a thousand sins she carried with her, and in time it was clear she was not long for this world. When they took me to her, the very sight of my face would reduce her to tears while some days she did not know me at all.

And then one day, she was carried away, and I was left with the uncertain memories of a mother I had never known, to whom I'd been nothing but a burden and a death knell. To whom I brought sadness, and from whose milk, I tasted nothing but pain and neglect.

Little did I know she had died, dragged down into death's grasp by the anchor of the knowledge that she could not save me, too.

But how could I have avoided my future?

As the son of a Forsworn; within arm's swing of Galbatorix; against the backdrop of a revolution; and an uprising between the Riders and the chaos rendered by their enemies—I was a victim of fate, and had been since the day I was born.

This was my inheritance.