Page 90 of Dragon Slayer

The top of his head swirled up into mist.

Cicero pulled his hand back, expression oddly unguarded; caught out with dismay. “Apologies, your grace.” He’d been trying to lay a steadying hand on his head. To comfort him.

Fenrir, as Mother’s wolf, had always been affectionate and familiar with him and Vlad. But Cicero, as Father’s, trusted confidante and battle consultant, had always seemed cool and removed; Val had sensed that he didn’t care about the plight of boys.

But he’d been wrong. This sudden show of caring brought tears to his eyes. He blinked them away and did his best to control his voice. “Cicero, do you think Romulus’s plan was to have Father removed so that he could take Tîrgoviste for his own?”

“I suspect not,” he said, grimly. “If he was going to move against us, he would have done so in the early days, before Mircea was officially installed, while there was chaos. And also.” Here he looked pained. “I think Wallachia is too small for his great ambition. If you’d waited this many centuries to make your move, would you settle for one vassal state? Or would you want the whole empire?”

It made horrifying sense.

“You’re right,” Mircea said. He looked at his cup, as if willing it to refill itself. “You are absolutely right.”

Something tugged at Val’s guts. His edges thinned.

He made a noise in his throat, and the others looked at him.

“My body,” he said. “I have to go back. Someone’s–”

And then he was gone, spinning away through the stars, opening his eyes to his dark room in the palace at Edirne.

A figure stood over him, limned in faint silver by the moonlight beyond the window bars. Val couldn’t make out the face, but he didn’t need to; he could smell that it was Mehmet.

Dread boiled up in his stomach, cold and fast. He swallowed the urge to retch. He clutched at the bedclothes, caught between fleeing and pulling them over his head. Where would he run if he even tried to? He didn’t think it was possible to run away from a prince in his own palace.

“Shh,” Mehmet murmured, and sank down on the edge of his pallet. The moonlight caught the white of bandages on his healing shoulder. Carved a line down his face: deep-set eye, high cheekbone, strong jaw losing the last of its puppy fat to manhood. His mother was Greek, all the rumors said; he looked it now. “It’s alright, little one. Don’t be frightened.”

Frightenedwasn’t the word for it. Every sense he possessed told him to get as far away from him as possible – as far away from his pulsing energy as possible. Even when he smiled, teeth gleaming, Val read a threat into it. No, he wasterrified.

“What were you dreaming of just now?” Mehmet asked. “Your lips were moving. And your brows were unhappy.” He leaned forward – Val held his breath and pressed back into the pillow – and touched the space between them, the little worried groove there. “Was it a nightmare?”

“Y-yes.”

Mehmet pulled back with a murmured sound of sympathy. He rested his hand on the edge of the feather mattress, right beside Val’s knee. “I have nightmares, too. The slaves tell me I shout in my sleep sometimes.”

Val’s heartbeat tapped out a rhythm in his fingertips, his throat; he felt it pound in his temples.

“Radu.” His voice was hesitant in a way Val had never heard before. Heavy and introspective. “You…you know what I am. Don’t you? Because you’re the same thing.”

Val held still.

“I can smell that you are. I can almost – I can almosttasteit.” He inhaled deeply. “That’s been the strangest part of all this, the way everything is so intense. Your brother said that the two of you were born, and not turned. Is that so?”

He didn’t want to answer, but he didn’t think he had a choice. “Yes.”

“So that means both of your parents are vampires? My.” He smiled again. “That’s incredible. Your father is Remus isn’t he? Brother to the first king of Rome?”

“I…I don’t think I’m supposed to talk about that.”

When Mehmet laughed, it was a boy’s laugh. “You’re darling. What a sweet boy.” He moved his hand, so it covered Val’s knee; his tiny knee, the cap of which could have fit twice over in the heir’s cupped palm. It burned warm through the covers. “Your loyalty to your family is an admirable trait, Radu. But perhaps misplaced here. It was your uncle who turned me. Surely Vlad told you this?” He cocked his head, lifted a single brow.

Val nodded.

“Doesn’t that make us family, after a fashion?”

“I…don’t know.”

“Well, I think it does. My father is my father, but isn’t Romulus a sort of second father? The one who sired me into a new sort of life?”

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