Page 138 of Dragon Slayer

Cazan had spoken truthfully. The grave was in the churchyard, just as he’d described. Vlad knelt and pressed his ear to the earth; a scattering of delicate grass stems already grew there, covering the freshly tilled patch of dirt. He could detect no heartbeat, no sign of life. He breathed deep and smelled decay and dirt and rot.

He smelled death.

In a shallow, unmarked grave beside it, he dug up a jar full of ashes. He dipped a finger in and set a few specks on his tongue: charred, but still recognizable as heart meat. As his father.

Cicero whined softly, a lupine sound in the back of his throat.

Vlad smoothed the dirt back into the now-empty hole and tucked the jar away in his saddlebag. He gathered his reins. “Where is Mircea?”

~*~

It was a place Vlad recognized, a quiet glen screened from the road by pines and holly bushes. It smelled of fall: of turning leaves, and tree sap, ripening berries…

He refused to acknowledge the last scent. The telling one.

“Your grace,” Cicero said, quiet and careful.

Vlad ignored him. He unslung the shovel from the back of his saddle and began to dig.

Malik had offered to send men with him, to help with the digging. But Vlad had refused. Even Cicero’s gaze on him was almost too much to bear.

So he dug alone. Until, despite the cool of the afternoon, the sweat began to pour down his body, soaking through the layers of confining fabric. He stripped off his kaftan, and his shirt; tied his hair back with a strip of leather. Dug, and dug, growling at Cicero when he tried to help, first with words – “you’re too weak” – and then with only with sounds, deep and desperate in his chest. And then he couldn’t even do that, could only dig, not protesting when Cicero shifted and put his great wolfen forepaws to use, dragging up dirt with his claws.

Vlad’s fingers touched something hard, finally, smoother than rock. “Wait,” he said, and Cicero halted, up to his wolf shoulders in the pit they’d dug.

Hand shaking, Vlad drew out a bone. Human. From the upper arm.

His brother was bones.

He kept digging.

Cicero whined again, and leaned toward Vlad, prodding at him with his large wet nose.

Vlad waved him away. “No. I’m going to do this.”

He dug Mircea up, down to every little knuckle and toe bone, laid him out in the best order he could manage on the length of burlap he’d brought along, intending to use it for a litter if…but no. Mircea was – had been – a half-breed. He hadn’t survived the suffocation.

He wiped the skull clean with a bit of cloth, only to smudge it again when he traced the empty eye sockets with dirt-caked fingertips. “Hello, brother.” He set it down gently, and then sat back on his heels, hands braced on his now-filthy riding leathers.

Cicero came to curl up beside him, leaning into his side, warm, and solid, his fur soft against Vlad’s bare skin.

Vlad smoothed a hand down his head and neck, laced dirty fingers in his ruff.

He had to bury it. The awful, dark, choking bundle of anguish trying to claw its way up his throat. If he let it out, if he acknowledged it – there was no coming back from that. Not ever.

He closed his eyes, and thought of bodies on spikes along a palace wall. Thought of boy princes with burned-out eyes. Thought of the scent of sex on his little brother. The taste of blood; the sound a man made when he died.

Kill them, kill them, kill them all.

“Alright.” He opened his eyes. “Let’s go home.”

~*~

Taking over a palace was, to put it bluntly, a lot of work. He dictated a dozen messages, ones to inform surrounding nobles of said takeover, ones to request audiences, and one he took special joy in: a renunciation of Vladislav and all his prince-killing boyar cronies that he sent off to John Hunyadi. That one beganI will kill your man, you know.

“Quite savage, your grace,” Malik said, voice bland, brows lifting in a way that might have been approving.

“I intend to be the most savage prince any of these fools have ever seen.”

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