Page 86 of Dragon Slayer

The heir yelled and went to his knees. His arm hung at an unnatural angle. He braced the knuckles of his other hand down in the sawdust, sword hilt still gripped in his fist.

Vlad paced around him. “You were turned,” he said, “and I was born. That’s a very big difference,your grace.”

When Mehmet lifted his head…he was smiling. Teeth stained red with blood where he’d bit his tongue. “Wouldn’t you like to know who turned me?” he asked, his laughter pained, tight. “It’s a fascinating story.”

“Not interested.” Vlad lifted his sword.

Shouts now, from the onlookers, finally. Because this was him raising arms against an opponent who’d fallen. Dimly, a voice in the back of his head warned him what would happen if he struck the prince while he was down. He’d be flogged. Probably killed.

Did he care?

No.

But…

The long game, George had said.Patience. Because one day they would send him home as their trained dog, and–

It was a moment of hesitation, and that was all Mehmet needed.

He pushed up onto one knee, and brought his sword with him.

Vlad parried, shoved him away, kicked him in the ribs –

“Stop,” someone was saying behind him, over and over, an angry adult voice.

Mehmet tried to run him through, sun winking off the sharp edge of his sword.

Vlad avoided the stab, but he tripped, and went down hard on one elbow.

Mehmet made a triumphant sound, and Vlad kicked him again, in the hand this time. Fingers broke with a little snap. Mehmet snarled, an animal sound of mixed fury and pain, and then, suddenly, neither of them was armed, and they were grappling in the dirt like beasts. Fangs, and claws and struggling lungs, and hate, hate, hate.

Vlad felt blunt nails rake his skin, and hard heels kick at his belly, and he didn’t care, because he just wanted to kill this boy. The rank smell of another vampire, a rival, filled his sinuses and hehatedhim.

“Damn you, stop it!” A hand latched onto the back of Vlad’s collar; he was aware that it was George, and that he was about to be pulled away from his opponent.

Vlad found Mehmet’s throat and bit him.

This was a mistake. Because when the blood filled his mouth – oily, putrid, wrong – he realized, immediately, who had turned this boy.

Vlad went limp and let George drag him backward, opening his lips, letting the blood run out, down his chin, his throat. Spitting it, wanting it off his tongue.

Mehmet – bloody, and filthy, and winded, face pale with shock – laughed at him, eyes glazed. “Do you see now?” he taunted, wheezing. “Do you understand, Vlad? Your uncle sends his regards.”

It was Romulus.

Romulus had turned the sultan’s heir.

~*~

They stripped off his kaftan and shirt and had him press his hands flat to a wall. A janissary did the caning, because his arms were stronger. Vlad bit his tongue, and the insides of his cheeks, but he did not scream.

He pissed blood for the next twenty-four hours, but he didn’t weep over it.

They took him to a cramped room with a sloppy pallet. He wasn’t to be allowed to sleep alongside his brother anymore, who, they told him, was being moved to one of the pavilions that housed the other hostages. But he didn’t fret.

As his bruises faded, and the marks healed, Vlad could only think of the foul taste of a rival’s blood in his mouth, flavored with the blood his uncle had pressed to his tongue with a single pricked fingertip, so that he might know it in the future.

So that he’d know it in this inevitable moment, Vlad now knew.

---