Chapter 23 Death of a Family
DEATH OF A FAMILY
“What?” I asked, utterly shocked. My body pressed back into the seat at the confession, my heart slamming against my ribs.
“You… you killed him?” I stammered.
He nodded once, the admission firm but filled with something raw beneath the surface.
“Yes,” he stated unapologetically, and I couldn’t look away.
“But I thought you said the darkness… that it… that it consumed him… that it …” I let my assumption trail off when I saw his jaw tighten, his expression unreadable. Yet when his words came, it was edged with something that almost sounded like pain.
“The darkness did consume him. Which meant that in the end, he left me no choice.” He looked up at me then, his eyes haunted, a storm of memory and fury swirling within them.
“He was not the man my brothers pretend to remember. He was a tyrant. He ruled through cruelty and fear. And when the time came to pass down the dagger, as it was clear to everyone his mind was not what it once was, he refused, even though I was the rightful heir.”
“No… There must be more.” The words escaped before I could stop them, though I could already see it written in his face… There was more. Something terrible. Something he didn’t want to give life to by saying it aloud.
He took a slow step toward me, his voice measured, each word heavy, like shards of glass breaking the quiet.
“My father saw the darkness in me long before I did. He said I was born wrong, that my shadow was too strong, that the demon he bargained with had cursed me before I ever drew breath.”
“But that doesn’t make sense if you had already been born before he made the bargain,” I pointed out, shaking my head.
“You’re right, but by the end, very little made sense in my father’s mind.
He grew paranoid, convinced that those closest to him wanted to steal his power…
That they already had. He became obsessed with the idea that the demon had begun making new bargains with us, granting us enough strength to destroy him and take possession of the dagger.
” He moved closer as he spoke, until he was standing just in front of me.
I could see the anguish tightening his jaw, the pain flickering in his eyes. It was raw, haunted.
“Is that when he refused to hand over the dagger?” I asked gently, desperate to keep him talking, to see this story through to the bitter end.
“My brothers were away at the time,” he said after a moment,
“They didn’t see how far he had fallen. They didn’t witness the worst of it…
They only saw what they wanted to. But my mother and I…
” His voice faltered, the memory pulling at him.
He shook his head, as if trying to banish the ghosts of that day.
Without thinking, I reached out, but he was quicker.
His hand lifted first, the backs of his fingers brushing softly along my cheek.
The touch startled me. It was tender, almost worshipful, as though he were the one trying to comfort me.
He held my gaze a moment longer, something unspoken passing between us, before he stepped back and turned toward the fire. The faint glow caught his profile as he continued.
“The Fondatori began to demand answers,” he said, his voice low and steady again.
“They suspected his mind was unravelling, and they could not allow someone unstable to hold a seat at their table.” This certainly made sense, as it would have been like having a mentally disturbed king running the country and putting his people at risk.
“So, they were putting pressure on him to pass the dagger to his son?” I guessed, and he nodded once.
“He saw it as a conspiracy against him. He was close to declaring war on the founding families themselves, on the Fondatori. And had he done so…” He exhaled, rubbing a hand over his face.
“It would have been catastrophic. Each seat at that table commands armies, loyalty, and entire bloodlines. The devastation would have consumed both vampires and humans alike.”
“So, you had no choice,” I said softly.
The words hung there like judgment, and he winced, his expression tightening as if each syllable drew him back to the moment he had tried so hard to bury.
The silence that followed was deafening.
I didn’t know what to say. My mind spun with the horror of his predicament, but also with the flicker of something else… Something that felt far too close to understanding, as I thought about my own cruel father.
He turned away from me then, his voice quiet, almost broken.
“Your mother… What about her?” I asked, but this was when he seemed to have hit his limit.
“Just leave it alone, Nessa.” He implored, but I wanted it all.
“Tell me… What about your mother, Vas… what happened?” He winced, as if this was the part he hated to relive the most.
“I am not sure exactly what happened that night between them…How it started…he had changed so much towards her in the months leading up to that night.” His voice cracked, rough and low.
I wanted to say something… Anything, but all I could do was sit there, watching him drown in the memory, my heart breaking under the weight of it.
Because as monstrous as his confession was…
I could almost understand it. But then, when he continued with his silence, one that thickened the air to an almost suffocating degree, I forced myself to ask,
“He tried to kill her, didn’t he?”
“Yes,” Vas hissed, his voice a low growl edged in grief.
“I walked in and he… he deserved to die!” The force of his words struck the air like a storm. Shadows rippled across his face, his darkness answering his anger before he could rein it in.
“Oh god… I’m so sorry, Vas,” I whispered. His back was hunched, one hand braced against the mantel as though it was the only thing keeping him upright. The muscles in his shoulders flexed beneath his bare skin, tense with a century’s worth of rage.
“I heard them fighting…” he began, quieter now.
“…I heard her crying. My mother never cried. When I went in, he had her backed against the wall, dagger in hand. She was bleeding. He had already struck her once, and when he saw me… something changed in his eyes. It was hatred, not for what I had done, but for what I was. He called me a cursed thing, said the goddess had damned me, even before I drew my first breath.” He took a sharp breath, his hand curling into a fist.
“He turned the dagger on me. I don’t remember the moment it happened… the first strike, the second or all that came after it. I just remembered the scream, then… nothing. All I know is that something inside me broke loose. And when I came back to myself… he was dead.”
His voice cracked, rough with the sound of a memory that had never healed.
“That was the moment it passed to me… The darkness. It left him and found me… Found my brothers… His final curse. As for my mother, she must have dropped to the floor. She was barely breathing. I tried to… but the blood… There was too much of it and I was… not myself.” The words settled over me like ash.
I didn’t breathe for what felt like forever.
My chest tightened until it hurt and I could take it no more, forcing myself to fill my lungs.
I could see it in my mind as he spoke, the blood, the horror, the child that still lived somewhere inside him watching it all unfold. And something inside me ached for him in a way that went beyond sympathy. It was grief, and I shared it with him.
“Vas…” I whispered, his name trembling out of me like a prayer. He didn’t look at me, his eyes locked somewhere far away, maybe back in that room, standing over his mother’s body.
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered again, softer this time, as if anything louder might break him completely.
“You were trying to protect her.”
He turned his head slightly at that, not fully meeting my gaze, as though her ghost still stood between us. The shadows that always seemed to follow him shifted with his every breath, restless, alive, and aching for release.
“You didn’t fail her,” I said, barely more than a whisper.
“You were just a boy who lost everything in one night.”
For the first time since he began his confession, he truly looked at me. And in those midnight-blue eyes, I saw both the man and the monster… and the unbearable weight of both.
But I knew there was more, and we had come too far to stop now. So, I asked softly, compassionately,
“What happened next?” He closed his eyes, as though seeing it unfold again.
“That’s when I heard them. My brothers. They had just returned from their travels.
They walked in to find me covered in blood, our father lying dead at my feet, and the darkness crawling across the floor like smoke.
They didn’t see him attack her. They didn’t see that I tried to save her life. They only saw what I had become.”
He turned then, his eyes meeting mine, wild, haunted, and painfully beautiful in their torment.
“They tried to kill me,” he said, each word heavy with betrayal.
“They didn’t ask questions. They didn’t listen. They only saw the monster in me and decided to end it.” I swallowed hard, the air tight in my chest.
“And they used the dagger?” I asked, though even as the words left me, a strange certainty rippled through me as if I already knew the answer.
A memory stirred, unbidden. The first time I’d touched that cursed blade, I’d felt something…
something alive. A pulse. A whisper. As though it had recognized me or tried to show me something I wasn’t meant to see.
“They did,” he murmured, his voice barely more than breath. Yet if he wondered how I knew, he didn’t say, no doubt too far deep into replaying his painful history.