Chapter 14
Harper
“The first game is Hammer and Cup,” Lucien says, wiggling his brows.
Alaric, Gareth, and I groan, but Sevrin just looks confused. I nudge Sevrin, getting his attention. “Basically, one of us starts pounding a rhythm on the ground. Everyone else has to match it. If you mess up the rhythm, you take a drink.”
His eyes widen. “Oh, Drink and Vomit. I know it well.”
Well, I don’t like that that’s what he calls it, but Lucien has suggested a game that he wants to use to bring us closer together, and we’re all going to play it. No matter how… vomit-inducing it might be.
Lucien starts out pounding the rhythm on the floor.
Pound, pound, clap, pound, pound, clap, pound, pound, clap.
We all pick up the familiar rhythm with ease, although Sevrin’s brows are drawn together, as if he’s not as familiar with the song as the rest of us.
Slowly, Lucien increases the rhythm until at last Sevrin messes up.
Everyone laughs as he takes a drink, and then we continue.
It’s Gareth’s turn to make a rhythm, and he goes for something more complicated.
Pound, Clap, Pound, Pound, Clap, Pound, Clap, Pound Pound, Clap.
Lucien misses it first, and we all point.
This continues until we’re doing really complicated rhythms, each of us at least three shots in.
Finally, Lucien grins. “Next game!” The sparkle in his eyes makes me a little wary, but the liquor in my belly calms most of my suspicions. “Pass the Gallows!”
I groan, Alaric smiles, Gareth winces, and Sevrin looks confused again.
Leaning toward Sevrin, I explain, “Each of us must tell a story. One detail of the story will be false. If the person who guesses what’s false is wrong, they have to drink. If they get it right, the story teller has to drink.”
Sevrin nods. “I understand.”
“Harper should go first,” Lucien says, lifting a brow.
Fine. Whatever. I can play his game. “There was a farmer’s son who had a thing for me, apparently.
Every day at school he’d pull my hair and call me names.
I’d yell at him every time, but the teacher would just get me into trouble for yelling.
One day, he cut a chunk out of my hair while we were on the playground, so I beat the crap out of him.
I pinned him down and pushed his face into the mud until he was crying.
Afterwards, my teacher dragged me home by my hair, and my parents spanked me with a belt until my ass bled. ”
All of them stare.
“I bet the teacher didn’t get you in trouble for yelling,” Alaric says very matter-of-factly. “Most instructors would figure out who the problem child was and discipline that child.”
“No, I think she fought him, but he beat her up,” Lucien counters, studying my face.
“I don’t think your teacher dragged you home by your hair,” Gareth says, but he doesn’t look very sure of himself.
Sevrin takes the longest to answer before he says, “Your parents never spanked you with a belt. From your stories, they were very kind to you.”
I make sure to leave a very dramatic pause before saying, “Sevrin is right. My mom actually ran after my teacher with a belt, chasing her all the way back to the school house, then made her apologize in front of the class for what she did before cutting a chunk out of her hair. If it’s not clear, my mom isn’t to be messed with. ”
Everyone laughs, and the princes take a drink. It’s nice. I thought they might get mad because Sevrin already knew me best, but spirits stayed high.
“Gareth?” I ask, passing on the story telling responsibility to him.
He thinks for a long moment. “My father worked hard to turn us into powerful warriors. Once, he made us stand in an icy river, and told us we had to remain there. Every time it got to be too much, we’d head for the banks, where soldiers were lined up with whips to whip us back into the water.
Another time, he locked us separately into dark boxes for three days when I was around five years old.
After we successfully completed any of his challenges, we would have a big dinner together as a family and celebrate our achievements. ”
Lucien looks away. “I know which ones are true and which ones aren’t.”
“Me too,” Alaric says, but he won’t make eye contact with anyone else.
Sevrin seems to feel the gravity of the situation and tries to pull them out of their old memories. “Please let it be the icy river and the whips.”
“I’m hoping it’s the dark box,” I say.
Gareth lifts a glass and grins darkly. “You’re both wrong. It was the celebration after. Our father didn’t believe in celebrating anything we accomplished, because it was never good enough.”
I stare at Gareth. “You know that’s sick and wrong, right?”
His brows draw together in confusion. “He was making us into warriors.”
Sevrin looks disturbed. “He could do that without torturing you. Most of our men are warriors, and no one is treated like that.”
Gareth seems troubled. “But it was the only way…”
“He meant well,” Alaric continues, with a small laugh.
Lucien leans away. “It doesn’t matter, it’s done now. Have your drinks, and we’ll go onto the next story.”
Sevrin and I take our drinks, but there isn’t merriment in it. Gareth's story gave a peek into their lives, and it wasn’t a pretty peek. The things that were done to these boys in the name of making them warriors is disgusting.
“When we have sons,” Sevrin begins quietly. “I will not allow that kind of treatment toward them.”
“They’ll be Dravari princes,” Gareth says defensively.
Sevrin shrugs. “They’ll also be princes of the Hollowborn. And we do not allow cruelty.”
“Hollowborns don’t allow cruelty?” Lucien repeats with a huff.
Sevrin cocks his head. “Have you ever heard it rumored that we torture your people in battle? Take prisoners? Target your women and children?”
There’s a painful silence for a really long moment before Lucien says, “No, but–”
“But your people have done all of those things to our people.”
“Yes, but–”
“Calling us cruel is easy, because it’s a label that scares people, but there’s no evidence to back that up. Yes, we’ve been at war with you. We kill your kind, but we’re not needlessly evil.”
The implication being that we are. The three princes don’t look offended though, they look troubled, and I don’t blame them. I don’t know a ton about the wars between my people and the Hollowborns, but I’d never imagined we were the ones to be doing dark things.
“What’s more,” Sevrin begins, “my people have never been the ones to end the treaties between our people.”
“Bullshit,” Lucien says, and now he’s mad.
Sevrin gives him a look. “How did the last treaty end?”
He opens his mouth, closes it, and looks at Alaric.
Alaric speaks. “No one really knows. The information about the treaties, and those times in history, aren’t widely talked about.”
“Why not? I’m certain you guys have been taught every detail about every battle we’ve fought with you, so why haven’t you been taught about the times of peace?”
Alaric and Lucien look at Gareth. The dark-haired man straightens. “It wasn’t necessary for our training.”
“Well,” Sevrin stretches out the word, “let me tell you about some unnecessary history. Your rider, Rowena Thalor, and her dragon, Morrath, brought about the last time of peace between the Hollowborns and the Dravari. She came to the conclusion that we weren’t all that different from each other and that the war between us was pointless.
Our king, Varyn Ossaleon, worked out a peace agreement, much like the one we made, that allowed the Hollowborn to use some of your lands in exchange for some of our resources.
We built up a small town on the coast that began to thrive.
Once we built our town and worked the lands, your people came in and killed everyone living there and gave the town and lands to their own people. ”
Alaric bristles. “I’m sure your people did something to instigate–”
“No.” Sevrin looks even more frightening with his bone painting.
“We did not break the peace treaty. Rowena Thalor fought with her own king about what he’d done and actively spoke up against how wrong it was.
Our people continued working with her in the shadows until she died ‘unexpectedly.’ If the story is to be believed, her dragon then went crazy and attacked the Dravari, so they had to kill him. ”
“That’s impossible,” Lucien says. “We would never kill a dragon.”
“And yet, you did.”
“I don’t believe any of this,” Gareth says, scoffing and taking a drink.
“Ask your father to see your history books. You may be surprised how much different our history is than you think.” Sevrin looks at me, and I give him a small smile. “But onto the game.”
“I’ll go next,” Alaric says, but he sounds uncertain.
“This isn’t as grand a story as the rest of you have, but my father threw me a birthday party when I turned five where I got a fine sword, which made me push myself even harder.
I trained all day afterwards in the pouring rain, then got so sick I nearly died.
Every day I dragged myself to training until I collapsed, which angered my father because he felt I was being weak.
The healer had to tell my father that if he forced me to keep training, I would die.
That was the longest amount of time I got to rest in my life. ”
Again, Sevrin looks troubled. “I hope that it’s that your father was angered.”
I stare. “It was that he threw you a birthday party, wasn’t it?”
Gareth finally laughs. “I remember that. My dad called him ‘the weakling’ for like five years after that.”
Lucien grins. “Remember how he got an actor to pretend to be Alaric, collapsing out in the training yard? The actor was weeping and falling and sagging on people at the ball.”
“Your father did that?” I ask, shocked, even though I probably shouldn’t be.
Alaric shrugs. “It was his sense of humor.”
“I don’t find that funny at all,” Sevrin says sternly.