Page 1 of The Wrath of Ashes
Chapter One
Asha
Crack!
“One.” Vierbalt Tippin, Earl of the Tippin Valley, spoke in acid tones as he raised his scourge again, the beaded tips ready to cut into already-scarred, pale, but likely bleeding, flesh.
Asha learned long ago not to cry. Lightning shot through his veins, pure fire that not only burned him but urged him to strike.
Crack!
“Two!” Vierbalt hissed through his teeth. “I’m waiting for an apology, whelp!”
“I apologize, my lord.” Asha’s voice wavered as the leather straps came down again. “It was impetuous of me to give such impressions.”
Crack!
“Three.” Vierbalt pushed his stringy hair from his gaunt face, blond strands oily from sweat and stress of hard work; the same sweat that stained his doublet that had worn thin in recent years.
Crack!
“Four!” Vierbalt hissed, his way of getting Asha to react, to lash out, to earn more than the five licks he was given. Asha had learned better, though. “You hold your head down in these halls! You are fortunate, boy, that I don’t order you and the maidservant hanged.”
“I apologize, my lord. It was not my intention to inspire such baseless rumors.”
Crack! Crack! Crack! Crack! Crack! Crack!
Snap.
As always, right at his breaking point. Beaded tassels scattered across the room at the height of Asha’s sharp flinch.Vierbalt bleated out in shock and stumbled back, breathing heavily, but Asha did not move, did not whimper or cry. He’d learned long ago to let the callouses and scars of years long past do their work to temper his pain. Though, it appeared in recent months that Vierbalt grew weary of his presence. Weary of the son he didn’t want to claim.
Quickened steps quieted as Vierbalt retreated, either bored or ashamed. It wasn’t the first scourge Vierbalt had broken on him, but hopefully he’d not afford another too soon.
Asha breathed through the pain, letting the searing lines of it absorb into the network of scars already spidering down his back. His teeth filtered the sound, and a soft cry wavered through the ventilation grates.
“Lyss, you alright?” Asha’s hoarse voice cracked, and he gingerly scooted closer.
“Yes. I didn’t mean to get you in such trouble. I apologize. Please forgive me.”
By her voice alone, he could imagine the tears that coated her cheeks. She’d get a few lashes from the matron and a stern warning not to speak out of turn again, a night in the dungeon, and then made to clean the privies for a fortnight.
“If it wasn’t for that, it’d be something else. He controls his temper about as well as he controls his manhood. ’Else I would have been swallowed rather than born.”
“Asha! Please don’t be so dour. The girls would sorely miss you if you weren’t around.” Lyss’s placating tone came out with a tremble.
“They’d not miss me. They’d miss me taking my shirt off.” He said this with no arrogance, only fact. The women made no qualms with his beauty, his fiery-golden hair so much more robust than his father’s yellowed blond or any of his half-brothers, and where his father’s gaunt face made him look sickly, it lent nothing to Asha’s features—shaped as if theywere chiseled from the very whitestone that they mined from their mountains. Statues made from the stone were the glory of empires, but as war ravaged their country, people didn’t spend on such luxuries. And without that money, House Tippin’s coffers grew lighter by the day.
It was hard to imagine Asha being his spawn by any stretch. But he was one of the few he acknowledged as a bastard.
She hummed with disapproval but did not argue the fact. “Don’t I know it. They’ll be giving me awful troubles for your back this time.”
“They’ll get over it. I’ll make an effort for you. Perhaps I’ll go engage them for tea sometime to make up for the lack of my person to ogle. But, forgetting the unpleasantries, I have to know. What was it you said that made Earl Vierbalt so ill?”
“The girls was chattin’ about trying to lure you into an engagement of sorts—”
“Getting one of them with child, I presume?” Asha snorted. “’Twould have to slip and fall into their skirts by accident.”
Asha loved children, but the whole process of making them seemed…too involved.
