Page 53 of Until the End of Ever
I wanted to kick him. As he was too far, I just stomped my foot like a bratty seven-year-old. “Out with it. Or out of my room!”
“All right, all right.” Holding his hands up in surrender, Lucian commandeered the side of the bed, sitting, and then lying back on it.
With his huge frame filling it, it didn’t look all that humongous all of a sudden.
“But you’re going to listen, and then, you’re going to ask whatever question comes to mind, rather than run it over inyour big, beautiful brain until you come up with a theory such assurely he must be dating Kore.”
“A fair assumption,” I argued.
“All the same. I’d rather no assumptions were made on this matter.”
Slowly, I nodded in agreement.
“My grandfather was single for a literal two thousand years. Then he found someone who could touch him, and he proposed on that basis. Rejected by her family for powers beyond her control from a young age, and from her ancestral linage for not being a full-blooded, flesh-hungry monster, my grandmother wanted nothing more than a family—and to settle in a place she could call home. From what my mother told me of it, they were a happy match.”
I wondered what all that had to do with whoever that Thea was, but it was too fascinating to not listen, so I just leaned back against the wardrobe.
“You never met her?”
Lucian shook his head. “She was murdered in the vale seven years before I was born. You know the date. Everyone in the city does. You call it the Great Massacre.”
My eyes widened. “What?”
Everyone knew about the Great Massacre, the night when Cassius Regis lost his mind and murdered hundreds of people.
His wife, Lucian’s grandmother—Cassiopea’s mother—was killed too?
“I’m sure up on the surface, the history isn’t taught that way. But when, at the start of the Age of Blood, we opened the doors to millions of paranormal creatures fleeing humans from all over the world, we weren’t prepared for it. In the vale, we’ve always been self-sufficient. The earth provides what we need. We’ve hunted and farmed what we required. But the requirementswent from a quarter million people to millions overnight. We had to switch gears.”
As he paused, I eagerly asked, “Switch gears how?”
“We’d never revealed our existence to the world before. What would have been the point? But we needed more food, and we had resources to trade for it. Gold, yes, but also skills. The Age of Blood, after paranormal creatures revealed their existence to humans, was a mess in a lot of different ways. Humans rejected sups, yes—and they certainly did their best to hunt those weak enough to defend themselves. But there was also the flip side. Powerful creatures taking advantage, enslaving, murdering for sport. That’s why the protector level of the Guard was founded in the first place. We were guns for hire. And our price in exchange for it was food, and resources to extend our own range.”
I was wide awake. All of that was news to me. I wanted a notebook. I wanted history books to cross-reference each point. And I’d be damned if I stopped him from saying more.
“My mother was the one who prayed to Pan, singing to him in the temple of Dionysus. And he came to help. But even with the god of nature on our side, it took a good decade for the fields around the vale to produce enough to feed the expanding city. Particularly since, with so many likeminded creatures suddenly in the same place, when they used to live in different countries, thousands of miles away, there were many children, fast. So seven years after the doors were opened? Everything was rationed.”
We were back to the time of the massacre. I leaned in, no longer even caring about an unknown girl’s name.
“It must have been a struggle for valers to see the splendor of our house, the gold and silver and diamonds we wore, while going hungry at night. My grandmother used to volunteer at the old Healing House, next to the Hall of Truce. It’s ashes today. She just walked a few feet, from the house to the Hall, to returnhome. And she was dragged off the streets and murdered.” His eyes flashed in the darkness again. “Cassius responded in kind.”
I sucked in a breath.
From the moment I’d met the even-tempered, sensible, fun, and well, kind man who’d raised Lucian, I’d struggled to reconcile him with the monster of legends. But this made sense. I would have gladly bathed in blood too, if someone had killed a person I cared about.
“It’s ridiculous that this isn’t taught in school.”
“Oh, I’m sure it is. A filtered version, in any case. Night Academy does teach it in grade five, I think—to twelve-year-olds.” Lucian straightened up. “I was sixteen when I asked Cassius about the massacre. He was honest from the get-go. He did not intend to stop at the seven hundred odd who died. He would have taken the life of every man and woman of age in the vale, leaving only the children, to be raised by the rest of us—and watched in case they revealed themselves to be problematic. He wanted his family protected, and the new bloods were a threat.”
I had to be honest. “I…don’t blame him?”
“Nor do I. Which brings us back to Thea.”
I had no clue how it could bring us back to anything. “How?”
Lucian shrugged. “Cassius may not have loved Mira, my grandmother. Their union was an arrangement on both sides. But he cared a great deal for her. And he wished to protect his daughter, his family. That was what made him ruthless. Monstrous. And such instincts are too dangerous in a being of his power. I do not blame Cassius, and I can also see that in the same situation, I’d be the exact same monster. The difference? No one would stop me.”
A shiver danced around my skin at the confession. It was deeply disturbing. Wicked, even.Evil. But each word was like a flick directly to my clit.
