Author's Note: The first, and hopefully the last thing I'll write for Inheritance. As is the way of things, I was more interested in Morzan and Selena (and Brom too, I guess) than any of the living characters.
The bug bit, so I scratched the (ridiculously angsty) itch. Feel free to tell me what you think.
He opened his eyes for the first time—the baby—and they were black as night.
The father gave him a name from his fey, exotic culture that he had left long ago; a rare moment of nostalgia.
The boy's eyes were black, like the father's right eye (his left was a fixed, pale glazed blue, and could see nothing).
Murtagh—wormwood—bitter black poison.
And to think that the mother had wanted to name him for an iris!
She could not love her son as she thought she should have, because she choked on the bitterness of that name. That, and the way her dreams withered like cut irises under a black-and-blue gaze; a flash of white teeth from a man who smiled at her torment.
It then was small wonder that their child was mostly silent, and the mother watched her own flesh and blood turn rancid. She loved and hated them both.
When he drank, the father was even less restrained, stranger than before, the hot-tempered man. Drinking to his own immortality, paranoia crept and nagged at him—what if somebody used the child as a weakness against him? Worse, what if the boy grew to supplant him? Ever since he was born, the moon had been too distant...
The red blade revolved once as it sparkled through the air and struck its target.
Morzan laughed and toasted himself; his half-mad dragon. They were immortal, they were now invulnerable. What use had he for an heir?
As the healers cauterized and stitched the gaping, oozing wound across that small white back, the mother finally felt all the things a mother should feel: horror and pity and rage, determination that it should never happen again. Her hand drifted to her belly, where she could already sense a slight curve, a small secret, but a small part of her wished that the bleeding, mutilated thing on the table would just set her free...and die.
The next day, she left without warning for her home in the North. There was no way she would let the child of her sandy-haired, blue-eyed lover grow up in this hellish nest of beautiful raven-haired monsters.
The Red Rider took out the anger of his loss on his heir. There were no more physical scars, but the boy's emotions grew somewhat warped, and he never trusted again.
She really did try to love him, even if she could no longer feel anything but fear and revulsion for his father. And she never meant to leave her second son forever, but she had heard that the devil with the mismatched eyes had been slain by none other than her true love. Maybe someday, his memory would be erased, and she could start over again.
Maybe it didn't have to be so hard.
But even though the silent boy's eyes both matched, he was indifferent to her, and, she thought, afraid, possessed by strange moods and twisted dreams. He looked just like his father even as he warmed up to her once again.
Every day she saw him, her health deteriorated rapidly, and she pined for the sandy-haired, brown-eyed son she had left with her brother, the one who looked and acted like babies should.
She had named him Eragon because he was hope and unity, even as she was torn in half by war. And Murtagh—innocent though he was—his existence put bitterness in her mouth, bile in her heart, and it seemed like every touch of his small hand crept up to her throat and wrapped an inexorable poison vine to strangle her slowly...
...Selena choked to death.