The Warden’s Son Book 1:
Child of Vanris

by Nikki McCormack

At five years old, Kasiel was found with the pointed ends of his ears cut off. Despite that brutal start, he’s lived twelve peaceful years with the man who took him in. Keeping his hair long over his mutilated ears helps him hide the fact that he is Vanrian, a child of the enemy. 

Everything changes when mercenaries arrive hunting for Kasiel. The last people he expects to come to his rescue are Vanrian soldiers, one of whom claims to be his spirit brother, whatever that means. They plan to take him across the war zone to deliver him to his real father, a man whose name strikes terror in his enemies.

With his secret exposed, Kasiel can’t return to his old home. This is his chance to find out who he was supposed to be. It means traveling to a foreign land where they have unusual psychic abilities he may share. It also means leaving behind everything he’s ever cared about. If he is to survive, he will need to learn their language and culture and earn his place in their society. 

Meanwhile, the man who cut Kasiel’s ears will do anything to keep him out of his true father’s hands, even if it means killing him.

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Information:

Title: Child of Vanris, The Warden’s Son Book One
Author: Nikki McCormack
Cover Art: Robert Crescenzio
Publisher: Elysium Books
Genre: Epic Fantasy
Length: 400 pages
Release Date: January 2024
ISBN: 978-1-7367938-8-6

Excerpt from Child of Vanris: The Warden’s Son Book One

by Nikki McCormack

Copyright © 2024 by Nikki McCormack. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Publisher.

CHAPTER ONE

Kasiel glanced at the scroll as he picked it up. Notes about telepathy. Or no, this one was mind control. All theoretical, of course. It belonged in the Psychic Disciplines section either way, not on the floor of the study.

Was that a tiny smear of anso nut butter on the corner?

Kasiel chuckled to himself as he wiped at the smudge with a cloth before adding it to the stack of books and scrolls he was carrying. Most he had found strewn haphazardly across the tables in Professor Edmund Danovan’s cluttered study. A few, like this one, had migrated to the floor. He wandered through and collected them occasionally. It helped to keep him busy and assuaged his fear that one of the untended candles Edmund left burning might catch a page and set the entire building ablaze.

To Kasiel’s right, the door to Edmund’s laboratory opened enough for the professor to pop his head out. Dark hair hung unkempt around a face that had acquired a webwork of faint age lines in recent years. Despite the shadows under his hazel eyes that attested to a lack of sleep, an inexhaustible determination shone through in his intense regard.

“I thought I heard my careful organization being disrupted again.” A hint of a smile tugged at his lips, mostly hidden by a mustache that needed trimming.

Kasiel grinned as he flipped another book closed and picked it up from the table. “You caught me.”

“Well, lad, if you can tear away from this no doubt enthralling task you’ve assigned yourself, there are some things I’d like you to go get for me.”

Someday, Edmund would cease referring to him as “lad.” At least Kasiel hoped he would. He would be seventeen in a matter of days, after all. Although, since Edmund had raised him from the age of five, he should probably count himself lucky that he had graduated up from “child” to “lad” somewhere along the way.

Kasiel shifted the load of books to his left arm. “Village or forest?”

Edmund poked an arm out through the opening, a scrawled list in his hand. “Village this time.”

Kasiel skimmed the items. A package from the leatherworker’s shop. Another from the blacksmith. Ingredients for Edmund’s favorite tea from the herbalist. Something from the bakery. Not the usual stops, aside from the herbalist, which was an almost weekly trip. Still, anything that gave him an excuse to visit with the smith’s daughter, Danica, was worth the excursion by itself.

He met Edmund’s eyes. “What is all—”

“Oh, and could you spare me a few drops of your blood before you go? Leave it on the table there.” He turned his hand so Kasiel could see the small vial he was holding behind the list. “The knife over there should do. I cleaned it this morning.”

Kasiel took the list and the vial. “Consider it done.”

“You’re a good lad, Kasiel,” Edmund said in his typical, faintly mystified tone before vanishing behind the door again.

The professor said that often. Exactly that way.

“You’re a good lad, Kasiel.”

He always sounded mildly surprised, as if there were a reason Kasiel should not be a good lad. Kasiel assumed it was due to his lineage. He was Vanrian. A child of the enemy in a war being waged nearly a thousand miles to the north. So far away that the people of Fernwallow rarely gave it a thought. Some days, he could shrug it off. Today it left him with a nagging unease as he hastily stored the books and scrolls he had gathered in their proper places on overcrowded shelves. When he finished, he pricked a finger with the dagger and squeezed several drops of blood into the vial. After sealing it and setting it on the table nearest the laboratory door, he left the workshop and sauntered out along a stone path through the garden.

The garden was well-maintained despite the unceasing efforts of the forest to reclaim that patch of land. Kasiel had trained some persistent vines up and over one section of the arbor. They now cast shade on a selection of plants that preferred a darker, cooler environment. Elsewhere, a consistent regimen of trimming and redirection kept wild vegetation from overshadowing the more sun-loving herbs and vegetables.

Pausing next to a collection of nightshades, he plucked two ripe peppers, then entered the main house through the side door into the kitchen. He dropped the peppers by the sink and snatched a bag of coins from a table in the next room before heading down the hall to his bedroom. It was the tidiest room in the house, even though such cleanliness didn’t come naturally to him. His obsession with trying to achieve it was a defensive response to living with Edmund, whose idea of organization was setting anything literally anywhere and later asking Kasiel to find it for him.

He reached for a dark gray cowl folded on a table by his bed. His hand stopped a few inches from it. A drop of ruby blood had gathered on his fingertip where he pricked it with the knife. He brought the finger up before his eyes, staring at the glistening drop.

Research.

For as long as he could remember, Edmund had been collecting occasional samples of his blood for research. The professor never allowed Kasiel in his laboratory and had never fully explained what he was researching. The best he got was some mumbled justification involving trying to understand and prevent an illness Kasiel might be susceptible to because of his race. Edmund had found him one rainy night on the outskirts of Daco, almost a hundred miles south of the Vanrian border. A five-year-old child lying in the muddy water at the bottom of a ditch, near dead from exposure. Though most would have killed Kasiel simply for being what he was, the professor had taken him in.

Kasiel turned to the mirror hung on one wall, sliding jaw-length straight red hair behind one ear. He traced a finger over the scar that formed the upper edge of his ear.

Vanrians were easy to identify on sight, so Edmund told him, because of their slightly elongated ears that tapered to a fine point. When Edmund found him, someone had recently cut the pointed tops of Kasiel’s ears off. The mutilation left them shaped more like the ears of any southerner, except the upper edges didn’t curl over. Instead, they ended abruptly in ugly, white scars.

Because of the war, the three southern kingdoms that made up the Pandrean Alliance banned the Vanrian people from entering their territories. But in Fernwallow, no one paid much attention. The village was a quaint melting pot of Alliance races. That was why Edmund raised him here. But no matter how different the people here might look from one another, they all had those naturally rounded ears. Kasiel might pass for being southern born at a glance, but his scarred ears wouldn’t fool anyone under closer scrutiny. He would never be the same as them.

With a sinking sensation in his chest, he brought his hair forward to cover his ear again and absently sucked the drop of blood from his finger. When the wound appeared disinclined to continue bleeding, he pulled on the cowl and left the house.

Edmund warned him repeatedly over the years to keep his lineage secret. His hair was long enough to hide his shortened ears, but the hood of the cowl made certain of it.

What would the villagers do if they knew he was Vanrian?

Kasiel preferred to think they wouldn’t do anything at this point. He grew up here. This was his home. But Edmund apparently believed otherwise, and that made him reluctant to get too close to anyone. These people would never be his family. Except for Danica. One day, he would tell her. She was the one person he knew would never reject him.

Fernwallow was a fifteen-minute walk from their house. The dense evergreen forest that embraced their home dwindled and gave way to an open field bordering the village. His boots slipped and squelched along the wagon tracks, made muddy by spring rains. A few modest houses, one with a pigsty alongside it, and a communal storage barn marked the edge of the village.

A couple of locals called out greetings as he passed.

“Hey, Kas!”

“Afternoon, Kas!”

He waved politely in return, all the while searching for a particular face, his unfortunate ears tuned to the sound of a particular voice.

The leatherworker was across from the smithy. Kasiel went there first, pausing out front to glance at the building on the other side of the street. Someone ducked out of the window of the smith’s shop. He cracked a knowing smile, a thrill of anticipation surging through him as he turned and entered the leather shop.

“If it isn’t Kas Danovan. I was expecting your father today.”

Kasiel shifted his hood back a fraction and offered a nod to the leatherworker standing on the other side of the counter. “Afternoon, Barden. Edmund’s busy with his research.”

“No surprises there, I suppose.” Barden stepped back from the counter, bending over to dig around for something behind it.

Barden was one of the original founders of Fernwallow. His darkly tanned skin matched much of the leather hanging on the walls. Kasiel liked the way his eyes crinkled when he smiled. Within those deep lines was etched the story of a happy life. He was one of a handful who referred to Edmund as Kasiel’s father, even though they looked nothing alike. Edmund never corrected them, so Kasiel didn’t either. In fact, he rather liked it. Edmund was the only father figure he had ever known. It was nice to imagine it was real now and then. That he could be a young man like any other, rather than the product of a hated race whose people he didn’t remember. That he could go about each day without worrying that his ears might expose his shameful truth.

“I’ve got a special package for you today.” Barden lifted a parcel wrapped in woven hemp and set it on the counter. He held up a hand when Kasiel opened his pouch of coins. “No need for that. Edmund paid for this in advance.”

Kasiel pulled the string to close the bag. He gestured to the package. “What is it?”

Barden’s grin had a distinct edge of conspiracy to it. “You’ll have to ask Edmund when you get home, won’t you?” He leaned to one side, peering past Kasiel, and pushed the package across the counter. “I’d love to catch up, but it looks like someone’s waiting for you.”

Another jolt of eager anticipation shot through Kasiel. He glanced over his shoulder in time to see someone stepping away from the leather shop window. A flash of dark skin and darker hair. Grabbing the package, he blurted a quick thank you, glancing at his reflection in the window on the way out. Thin. Pale. Not the most impressive specimen, but maybe that didn’t matter.

Kasiel shoved open the door. When he closed it behind him, he found the blacksmith’s daughter, Danica, standing alongside the shop. A sheen of sweat drying on the mahogany skin of her face and muscular arms told him she had been working the forge with her father moments ago. She wore her long black hair woven into myriad small braids, all pulled together into a thick mass that she tied back to keep it away from the fires.

She held a wrapped bundle up between them. “Father said you’d be coming for this.”

Kasiel struggled not to stare at her lips.

She had kissed him unexpectedly a few weeks ago. His first kiss. Most likely hers as well. He had expected her lips to feel soft and warm. What he hadn’t expected was the way it affected all of him, waking up every nerve from the top of his head to his fingers and toes. They had been friends most of his life. A companionship born of necessity, as the only two around their age in the village, which developed into a genuine bond over time. The kiss hadn’t really changed their friendship in theory, but it had left him with an awkward craving to explore beyond that.

What if she didn’t want to kiss him again? Had it merely been a moment of curiosity for her, now satisfied? He had yet to muster up the courage to ask.

“I …” His gaze dropped to the long, thin bundle she held, skipping intentionally past her lips and the curves of her chest. With the kiss fresh in his mind again, he couldn’t think of anything to say to her. “Thanks.”

“Don’t be like that.” She stomped one foot in a manner that reminded him distinctly of an impatient foal.

The gesture made a crack in the shell of his insecurity. He breathed a soft laugh, making himself meet her dark, warm eyes. “Like what?”

“You’re usually so easygoing, but you’ve been distant around me ever since …” She paused, biting at her lower lip. “Well, you know.”

The uneasy shifting of her feet told him she felt at least as awkward about it as he did. A realization that emboldened him enough to ignore the giddy flutter in his stomach and take a step closer. “Since?”

She arched a brow, lips pressing together as though he had annoyed her, but a smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. She copied his step forward, lowering the bundle to her side, and stared into his eyes.

“I see I’m going to have to jog your memory.” Her gaze sank to his lips.

Danica once told him how much she loved the rich red of his hair. This felt like the right moment to remind her of that, especially since there was no breeze to potentially expose his ears. He pulled back his hood and leaned a little closer, captivated by the hopeful sparkle in her eyes. Were they going to kiss? Here in the street where anyone, her father included, might see them?

Someone shoved Kasiel’s shoulder, spinning him away from Danica, then grabbed the front of his shirt and slammed him back into the wall of the leather shop. The impact knocked the breath out of him. His head bounced painfully against the wood siding.

“What do we have here?” The stocky stranger brought his nose close to Kasiel’s, his breath coming out hot and foul from somewhere within his overgrown beard and mustache.

Straining to get his breath back, Kasiel turned to the side to escape that awful stink. Blackness started closing in around the edges of his vision. It wasn’t the creeping black of approaching unconsciousness, but more like the threat of something dangerous—something powerful—moving through him.

A blond woman with a thick scar running down one cheek grabbed a handful of Kasiel’s hair and yanked it back, peering at the side of his head.

“His ears are round,” she snapped.

The man holding him shifted back a few inches, using his free hand to press Kasiel’s head against the wall as he peered at the exposed ear. “Nah. Look.” He grabbed Kasiel’s ear, yanking painfully at it with calloused fingers. “It’s been cut. Long time ago, looks like.”