Page 102 of Dragon Slayer

Mehmet’s smile widened. He wiggled his fingers, gemstones catching the light.

Every eye in the room was fixed on them. If he refused the sultan, in front of everyone, after his father had been labeled a betrayer…it wasn’t possible.

But Vlad’s fingers dug bruises into his leg.

The sultan knew. He turned his smile on Vlad. “Like father like son?” he asked in Slavic.

Vlad tensed.

Val clapped his hand down over his brother’s. “Please, no,” he hissed in Romanian. “They’ll kill you, Vlad!”

In the silence that followed, Mehmet leaned forward and braced his palm in the center of the table, the boys in front of him flattening themselves to get out of his way. His fangs elongated, and his eyes flashed. “What will it be, golden one?”

He had no choice. Hostages never had a choice.

Slowly, he pried Vlad’s fingers loose and stood. Walked with head down and face flaming around the table to join the sultan.

Mehmet extended his hand again, and it was warm and rough when Val slipped his own inside it. The rings were a disguise for the hard calluses at the base of each finger, the half-healed lacerations on his palm. Not just a dazzling sultan, but a warrior, too.

Val gulped against his stuttering pulse and looked up at him through his lashes. Mehmet smiled at him again, no fangs this time, but with a brightness that Val didn’t understand. Mehmet looked at him with intent – but he was just a boy, he didn’t recognize it.

“Come along with me, little prince,” the sultan purred, and drew him up alongside so he could hook their arms together. “You can sit and dine with me. Won’t that be an honor?”

“Y-yes, your grace.”

Val twisted back, once, to look over his shoulder at his brother.

Vlad stared down at his empty plate, hands curled into claws on the tabletop, chest heaving. He didn’t lift his face, not once.

~*~

It was a lavish feast, a fitting celebration of an army returned home victorious. Val, seated at Mehmet’s side like an honored guest instead of a hostage, stared down at his fifth course, delicate slices of stuffed quail, seasoned to perfection, and thought of Mircea, dirt-streaked and pale-faced beside his fire. Thought of King Ladislas, his horse cut out from under him, his head taken to the sultan as proof of death.

There would have been a feast in Hungary, if it had been Mehmet’s head on a pike. One man’s butcher was another man’s hero, and so it went, so it had always been.

Val didn’t realize his breathing had gone high and quick until he felt a touch on his leg. A light brush of fingers on his thigh that startled him nearly up off his rug.

When he turned to Mehmet, the sultan laughed quietly, green eyes dancing. “You’re very nervous tonight.”

Val started to deny it, but Mehmet was a vampire; he could sense the truth: Valwasnervous. He was scared, and stressed, and he wanted to go home, and he worried for his family, and he wanted his brother to love him, and he wanted his mother to laugh again–

A warm brush against his cheek startled him back to the moment at hand. Mehmet cupped his jaw, swept his thumb along the tender skin beneath Val’s eye. “Beautiful boys should never look as sad as you do right now.” He shifted forward, leaned in a little closer, breath warm across Val’s face. “What’s the matter, Radu?” Slow, hypnotic sweep of his thumb; low purr of his voice. And he waslookingat Val, gaze fixed on him. Vlad never paid him notice, never stared into his eyes like this, never…

It was on the tip of his tongue.My real name is Val. Call me Val. But he hesitated. Mehmet wasn’t family; he wasn’t even a friend. He was a sultan –the enemysultan – and why was he stroking Val and calling him beautiful? Why was…

“Shh.” Mehmet laid a finger against his lips just before they opened. The ring was warm from his skin. “I asked you a question,” he said, so gently, his smile soft. “Aren’t you going to answer it?”

Val closed his eyes a moment, swallowed. The sounds of the feast around them blurred together, inconsequential. They might hate him, or think nothing of him, or whisper in his ear that he was lovely to look upon, but it was this man here – this boy – who held his fate in his hands. Literally, now, the calluses scraping lightly at Val’s throat as his touch trailed down to fiddle with the collar of his kaftan. Mehmet was at the forefront of all his senses, the heat and scent of him, his intent a low pulsing rhythm that made Val want to fidget in his chair. What did this mean? What did he want? What, what, what. He didn’t understand, and he wanted to howl.

“And still he doesn’t answer,” Mehmet said, lightly mocking. He gave a tug on Val’s collar. “He won’t even look at me.”

Damn it. He wasn’t doing this right.

He opened his eyes and took a deep breath, ready to plead for his family, for Vlad, and Mama, and Father, and Mircea, and the people of Wallachia–

But Mehmet’seyes. They glowed. His hand circled Val’s throat, thumb a gentle, steady presence right in the hollow.

In his panic, grace abandoned him. “Why do you look at me like this?” he blurted, face heating until it must surely catch fire.

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