Page 141 of Dragon Slayer

He knew a sudden, visceral urge to leap over the desk and attack the janissary with hands and fangs, to taste human blood.

He said, coldly, “No, it was not. Anythingelse?”

Malik hesitated, and for a moment, his face showed doubt. He smoothed it quickly away and said, “Shall I lodge in the barracks with the men?”

“No. There’s a captain’s suite at the end of the hallway. Take it.” Vlad waved toward the door.

Finally, the man bowed and took his leave.

“Does he know what you are?” Eira asked.

“I’m beginning to suspect that he does.” He frowned to himself. “I haven’t told him, but someone back in Edirne might have. God knows what Murat is up to.”

~*~

Though his body was exhausted, Vlad’s mind was too awake to seek his bed. That was what he told himself; in truth, as he yawned into his shoulder, he knew that what he dreaded most was going back to his old room. Lying on the old pillows, staring up at the old ceiling, and knowing that this wasn’t the homecoming he’d dreamed of. Everything was different; almost everyone was dead. He needed to be strong, as unbendable as the steel Murat had claimed him to be, and he didn’t think he could slide beneath his old furs and blankets and manage.

“He’s already opened his vein,” Eira said, nudging one of the blood cups toward him. “Don’t let it go to waste.”

He scowled at her, but her responding look was implacable.

He drained the cup in one swallow, and the blood hit his stomach like the richest wine. He’d forgotten wolf blood, the way it fizzed, the way it tasted like every kind of delicious fruit all at once, and something darker, and richer, too.

Breathless, he said, “Happy?”

“No. And I don’t suspect I will be for a long time.” She turned back to the list in front of her. It was nonsense, all of it was; Vladislav was a raging idiot. “You should get some rest.”

Vlad sighed and pushed the journal in front of him to the side, massaging his tired eyes with fingers that still bore traces of grave dirt caked beneath the nails. “It’s been hours,” he said, “and you haven’t asked about him yet.”

“Asked about who?” But she sat up stiff and straight in her chair, tension stealing through her. Her eyes moved back and forth, too quick; she was no longer reading, but fighting to keep her breaths even, chest hitching unsteadily.

Vlad thought it would be a kindness to allow her this evasion. To say that she was right, and kiss her head, and go off to sleep in his boyhood bed, searching for traces of his brother’s scent in the pillows.

But savage did not mean lenient. If he intended to do the impossible, to hold this palace, this principality, to earn its eventual independence from the Ottomans, then he had to learn to live as a hard man. Compromise only begat more compromise; he could not shrink from the unpleasant just to spare tears – no one had spared his tears, nor Val’s.

He did soften his voice, though. “You know who I mean, Mother. Val. I had thought you’d ask about him right away.” A thought dawned. “Or have you been keeping contact with him yourself?”

She took a trembling breath in through her mouth. Shook her head. “No. He – it’s been some time since he came to see me. I had wondered…” She turned to him, unshed tears glittering like jewels in her blue eyes. “You do not smell of him.”

“I hadn’t much contact with him before my departure. Our paths within the palace diverged some months ago.” Two years, to be precise. His brother had been the plaything of that serpent fortwo years.

She blinked against the tears, gaze narrowing. “What does that mean, Vlad?”

He resisted the urge to fidget. Savage or not, she was still his mother, and her gaze could still stop a cavalry charge when she wanted it to. “Valerian is…better liked at court than me.”

“And yet here you sit, free and at the command of your own troops. What aren’t you telling me? What are–” Her eyes went wide. “Oh, gods. Something he said to me, the last time I saw him, he…” Fresh tears welled. “Vlad, what has…?”

His chest ached. “Murat’s son, Mehmet, the true sultan. He took a liking to Val. He has…a taste for boys.”

Eira sagged forward on a deep exhale, as if the words had driven all the air from her lungs.

“Val had no choice. To refuse him–”

“Would have meant death,” she murmured.

“I know him to be cruel. I can’t imagine that he is kind. But Val is alive. Dripping with jewels.” He smiled, bitter and brittle. “He makes quite the mistress.”

She groaned, bending forward, hands pressed to her middle as if she might be sick. “Oh, my baby. My sweet little baby.” Tears rolled down her cheeks, and pattered down onto the parchment below. “He asked me – oh, gods, he asked me if I’d ever been forced. If a man had ever…I tried to ask him what he meant, to ask if he was well. But he turned to smoke.”

Vlad watched her cry, helpless. It didn’t matter how many guards he’d slaughtered, how many gatemen; how many furious messages he’d dictated and sent. None of that rage mattered if his little brother had been raped for two years.

“Mother.” He laid a hand on her shoulder, and she leaned into it, though she didn’t look at him. “Mother, I’ll get him back, I swear to you. And I’ll take Mehmet’s head from his shoulders myself. He willpayfor what he’s done. I promise you.”

She reached to cover his hand with her own. “I know, I know.” Sniffed hard. “But there’s no undoing what’s already been done.” She lifted her wet face, eyes red, lashes spiked. “You can kill all you like, but that will never heal your brother’s wounds.” She touched her own chest. “They don’t make a salve for those kinds of hurts.”

“Then what would you have me do?” he whispered.

“Kill anyway. Kill all of them. That’s all youcando.”

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