Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
Draven jerked to a halt in the center of his father’s office when he heard the click of the door.
He straightened his spine and rolled his shoulders back, bracing himself.
His father stopped right in front of him, hands clasped behind his back while a flat line stretched his lips. “Do you seek to embarrass me?”
“No, Father.”
“Do you seek to embarrass House Dalmar?”
“No.”
“Then perhaps you do not respect me? Do not respect your title—your duties as heir to this Great House?”
Draven dropped his eyes. “Of course not.”
His father took two long strides and gripped Draven’s jaw, jerking his face up toward him. “Do not look away from me, showing what you feel so blatantly. It is weak.” The grip pinching Draven’s skin together tightened. “It’s about time you started learning how to be a man.”
For some reason, the words made Draven exceptionally angry. “And are you going to teach me?”
Tynan’s eyes narrowed. “Care to elaborate?”
Draven jerked out of his father’s grip. “Nothing,” he grumbled.
Tynan grunted, clasping his hands behind his back once more. “Now I know I am right in believing you need more discipline. You are careless and immature—two qualities a Dalmar has no business possessing.”
“Father, I—”
Before Draven could finish his sentence, his cheek suddenly caught fire as his father struck him.
“You needn’t speak further,” he chided. “You’ve already done enough.” Without breaking his cold gaze from Draven, his father unbuckled his belt and slowly tugged it free. “Why were you visiting that courtesan?”
At Draven’s notable silence, his father brought the belt down on him.
“Answer me, boy.”
Draven did no such thing. He was smart enough to know that his silence—though still bound to result in his father’s wrath—was far better than answering with the truth. And Draven didn’t stand a chance if he attempted to lie. His father would see right through him.
So he chose silence.
In the face of a noiseless room, pain had never screamed so loudly.
The leather cracked against his skin again and again. Welts were already forming, red and angry. Yet Draven’s lips remained closed, his resolve unbreakable in that moment. He wasn’t sure how much time had passed before his father stopped, assessing him as if under a different lens.
He hummed. “I’ll hand it to you—your resolve to remain silent is admirable. You have made a decision, and you are holding to it. A trait I can respect.” He took a step forward, his shadow looming over Draven like a warning. “I’m curious to see how long that resolve can last.”
His father gripped a fistful of Draven’s tunic, and he yanked his body up toward him. As he did, the sea glass pendant around his neck shifted from beneath the fabric, catching the light. “Oh, and what is this?”
Draven wanted to scream at him, demanding he not touch it. His mother had just gifted it to him this morning as a birthday present, after she attended to the wounds his father painted on his body.
“I have something for you, my sweet,” she had said, setting down the bloodied cloth she had used to tidy up Draven’s busted lip. She had placed a small folded slip of fabric in Draven’s hands.
He had peeled back the fabric eagerly. Yet when he saw the shining sea foam pendant wrapped in wire, strung onto a leather cord, his eagerness had given way to awe
“I spent hours searching the markets for just the right piece,” his mother had said.
Draven had held the pendant up to the light, noting how the sea glass turned almost translucent, realizing it matched the peculiarities of his eyes to an almost impossible degree, like one came from the other.
The pendant even had a gradient of subtle blue washing into the green.
But what had truly impressed him was the tiny scratch near its center, much like the small fissure branching from his left pupil.
He had closed his fingers around it, feeling the full weight of the seemingly weightless thing. “I love it,” he had said, bringing it near his chest. “Thank you.”
His mother had lovingly swiped her fingers across his cheek and said, “I hope when you wear this pendant, you remember that you are my son, and I am so proud of you.”
He hadn’t had words after that, so his mother had simply smiled at him, reaching tenderly for the item clutched tightly in Draven’s hand, fastening the cord around his neck. “There,” she had mused, pulling back to look it over. “It’s perfect.”
It was a glimmer of sun after a stormy morning, and Draven carried the warmth of it deep in his bones. He had to, if he didn’t want to succumb to the cold.
Draven put every ounce of indifference he could into answering his father’s question, not wanting him to focus on the pendant a moment longer. “It was a gift from mother.”
His father examined it. “It matches your eyes,” he said, a slight curl in his lip as distaste coated his features. “I don’t want to see this paltry thing around your neck again. You are to get rid of it.”
Then, without warning, he launched his fist into Draven’s cheekbone with merciless force. It sent Draven’s skull rattling and stars bursting to life behind his eyes. Draven, both equally accustomed yet unaccustomed to such sharp pain, cried out from the impact.
“No,” his father said, his voice far too cool and polished for what he was doing. “Do not show weakness. Do not show your pain.”
Another blow to his face.
Draven held his cries inside him, just as his father demanded.
“It remains in your eyes.” His father jerked Draven up so that they were at eye-level. Draven couldn’t find a hint of warmth inside that man’s gaze. “Expressions are a weakness that will have you buried beneath others’ savagery. Do not wear them.”
This time, his father’s knuckles made impact with Draven’s temple, and his vision flickered as a result.
For a moment, Draven wondered if this was perhaps it for him. If his father would truly be the death of him after all. Until a star that was not a fabrication of his throbbing senses appeared, casting out the darkness.
“Stop it. Stop!” Draven’s mother charged for his father, immediately reaching for his drawn-back arm. She wrapped her hands around it in an attempt to halt his father’s movements.
Though his father could have easily pressed forward, he instead sighed and dropped his fist. “Lealla, you must let me discipline the boy how I see fit.”
“This is not discipline,” his mother chided. “This is just plain cruelty.”
His father glanced at Draven, then let him go. He stood and turned toward his mother. “We have discussed this already. The boy must learn to be exceptional. As heir to this house and bearer to a magic that will supersede even my own someday, he must learn to be strong.”
“And you teach him that by making him feel weak? Hopeless?” His mother fixed his father in her gaze. “Tell me where the logic is in that.”
His father released a measured sigh, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Careful, woman. You test my patience.”
“And you test mine! Treating me with such coldness is one thing, but your own son? Your own flesh and blo—”
The echoing slap stole the air from Draven’s lungs like a noose.
He rose and charged toward his father without another thought.
But his mother stopped him with an extended hand and a shake of her head.
She did not even touch the red mark blossoming over her cheek.
Instead, she held his father’s stare as he watched her.
“You’ve gone too far this time,” she whispered, low and sharp.
Draven’s father rolled his eyes. “Please,” he said through a scoff.
“I mean it,” she replied, fury quietly lining her unwavering eyes. She lowered her voice and shook her head at him. “I don’t even recognize you anymore.”
His father arched a perfectly groomed brow. “Did you ever truly recognize me in the first place?”
“There was a time I thought I did,” she answered. “But now I’m not so sure.”
“Don’t misplace your frustrations on me. I’ve never hid who I am—what I expect. In fact, perhaps my only mistake was crediting you with thinking you understood that.”
She watched him for a long, silent moment before dropping her voice into a whisper harboring the melodies of heartbreak and regret. “Did you know today was your son’s birthday?”
His father tilted his head, his nose wrinkling. “Why is that relevant?”
Draven wasn’t sure why his father’s answer struck him just as painfully as the blows he had just endured. It wasn’t like he expected any differently of him.
His mother’s lips thinned and she huffed a hollow laugh. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For making my decision so easy.”
She walked past him and toward Draven, sweeping a tender thumb across his angry cheek.
Then, silently, she extended her hand out to him and smiled.
And though Draven knew that smile was perhaps the only fake thing about his mother, when he placed his hand in hers, some of the pain in his chest faded, if only a little.
“Where are you going?” his father asked diplomatically as they walked past him.
“Somewhere you can’t ruin him any longer.”
The stars were strung overhead as a sea of darkness washed over the world like a looming promise.
Draven and his mother were sprawled out on a blanket beneath his mother’s favorite tree—a rare species that Draven always forgot the name of. Though he could never forget the stunning silver and lilac blossoms that bloomed from its branches.
Draven’s mother had just finished telling him the Rivarian version of an old story about the goddess of cunning, Saffi.
Now, she hummed a folk song while stroking his hair.
He wasn’t sure if she was aware, but that was always what she did when she was most troubled.
For a long while, Draven thought it was simply because she believed he was in need of her touch.
It wasn’t until about two years ago he realized it was her in need of the touch—in need of him.
Draven finally voiced the thought that had been haunting him the past few hours. “Mother?”
“Yes?”
He paused, his eyes fixed on the stars in hopes they would give him strength. “What if I become like him? I have his blood in my veins.”
His mother’s hold on him tightened, and she pressed a kiss to the top of his head. “You could never be like him. Not in a million lifetimes.”
Draven dropped his voice. “You don't know that.”
“I do,” she said with such surety, Draven almost believed her. Almost.
“I have his darkness,” Draven murmured, the sound a bruised and beaten thing. “I feel it whispering to me sometimes, demanding I be like him.”
His mother was silent for a long moment.
Until finally, she pointed a finger up to the sky, at a star that burned the brightest of them all.
“Do you see that star, Draven? You are just like it. It does not let the darkness dim its shine—it burns brighter because of it. And you?” His mother wrapped both arms around him and squeezed.
“You burn so brightly, my son. That darkness in your veins is just a backdrop for all your glorious light.”
Draven wanted to believe her. Gods, how he wanted what she was saying to be true. Yet the fact remained…
He wasn’t sure it was.
Silence floated in the air for a long time before his mother spoke again. “Draven…”
The shift in her tone had Draven snapping his eyes toward her, alert. “Yes?”
“Would you want to go away for a while? Away from Tylderon? From your father?”
The question was more complicated than Draven realized as he pondered its answer. Because he did want time away from his father. From this place. But he didn’t want to leave his brothers behind, either.
“Can Finlay and Kiran come with me?” When he glanced up at his mother, her eyes were rounded in a way that sank Draven’s heart.
“No,” she murmured. “They cannot.”
Draven’s brows pinched together as he considered the question.
He did not want to leave his brothers behind—this much he was certain of.
But he was also certain he needed distance from his father for a while.
And more than anything else, he was positive his mother needed it, too.
For sadness was beginning to cling to her like a shadow, and while his mother said the stars burn brighter because of the darkness encasing them, the darkness trailing her was swallowing her whole.
It did nothing to help her shine; it dulled her into something almost unrecognizable, as if a sharp knife had cut a slit into her brightness, and all the light was slowly oozing away, leaving her to wither drip by bleeding drip.
Yet he knew she would not go without him.
Draven swallowed against the sudden lump in his throat and steeled his resolve. “I think I would very much like to go away with you.”
The hitch in his mother’s breathing as she squeezed him against her chest did not go unnoticed by him. “Then consider it done.”