Chapter 57
The ancient vampire pulls another empty page onto the desk, readying his quill to finish his tale. He has no need to preamble with a timeline for this page—the events running roughshod through his mind are recent enough to convey on paper without chronology.
The ones who were there will remember.
The Silverknight threat to Olhav ended more than twenty years ago. Though the fire was put out, the embers remained, smoldering just under the soil, waiting for a fresh wind to breathe new life into them.
Kavorin Mortis, adulterous, corrupt nobleblood, leader of the Intelligence Ward with its gang of unruly spies, and husband to a defiled wife, was dead. Killed by her hand.
Alacine placed the blame on her firstborn son, who only fought with Kavorin to save her and her second son, the half-blood Lukain.
Fearing retaliation from the remaining Five Ministries, the firstborn son fled Olhav for a time. He was betrayed, but as a vampire turned more than a hundred years before, he had no means to quantify or understand his feelings.
So the years of brooding began. Living alone in quiet contemplation, while planning his revenge against his own mother who failed him.
Alacine believed he had become too ambitious and threatened her rise as the replacement of her husband in the Intelligence Ward.
Even the son’s thralls and close allies knew not where he went.
His location during this bleak time is not important for the subject of this writing.
The firstborn son heard the news in passing, though he didn’t know what to believe being so far removed from the court of vampires in the mountain city. He learned Alacine had married her Silverknight lover in secret, Heskel Angul.
Even as the firstborn son wallowed in obscurity and negligence, Alacine prospered.
She became the lauded Spymistress of Olhav and struck terror into the black hearts of all who opposed her.
Her second son, though still forced to live in secrecy alongside the petulant humans in Nuhav, was given a lauded position and made a name for himself as an underground leader of sorts.
He poured decades of his life living this lie—that he was no more special than the slavefighters and broodstock he lorded over.
The firstborn son continued reviling his mother, having no emotional tools to forgive her for betraying him.
And so it was, after years of contemplation, the firstborn son decided to harm Alacine Mortis where she would feel it most and expect it least. He wanted her to feel what he felt.
He would go after the aging human she loved.
He always found it odd the man never agreed to being turned, when promised with immortality and a life alongside his vampiress lover. Perhaps Heskel didn’t want to be a bloodthrall to anyone, least of all the kind of monster he had fought all his life.
Love has a strange way of working. It evokes contradictions in us all. How did this man, Heskel Angul the Silverknight captain, go from slaying vampires to loving them?
Well, the firstborn son would find out.
And, as he would come to learn . . . it was all a lie.
The son left his hideout and returned to the city he once called home. He located Heskel Angul on the outskirts of the city, living a quaint life in the countryside away from the bustle of Olhav.
He barged into the man’s dwelling, expecting resistance, but found none: just an old, decrepit man still clinging to life and a failed rebellion left behind.
Except it wasn’t a failed rebellion left behind, the son learned.
All the years away, all the years wondering why Heskel never turned at Alacine’s urging, it was because Heskel Angul had awoken that sizzling ember and turned it into a seed of righteousness to his lifelong cause.
Heskel never planned to give Alacine Mortis a pleasant life. He planned to get close to her, kill her, and slay as many vampire bastards as he could get his hands on before death curled its cold fingers around his aching heart.
The Silverknight general had never let go his beliefs. He had simply hidden them, licked his wounds, and nurtured his hate for vampire kind. Now, wedded to the greatest enemy of all, he was so close to realizing his final dream and meeting his Truehearts on the other side.
Heskel would go out in a ball of fire, formed from the smoldering embers of his youthful rebellion.
This was all learned by the firstborn son by the parchments, plans, and schemes laying around Heskel’s dwelling. When he burst in to slay Heskel in order to hurt Alacine, he had never considered that Heskel planned to hurt Alacine himself.
In an abrupt turnaround, the firstborn son of Alacine Mortis had a new reason to kill Heskel. It was no longer vengeance, but preservation. He could not simply allow this ancient human to kill his mother, half-brother, and all the others of the vampiric courts of Olhav.
This man wanted death to all vampires, and in the end he was only met with death himself, on the edge of the firstborn’s blade.
The son emerged in Olhav triumphant. He raised his own army of sycophants and followers. He promised great change in the community of Olhav—a different way of doing things.
Meanwhile, Alacine was hurt immeasurably with Heskel’s death. With her firstborn son becoming a powerful, popular nobleblood in his own right, with a court of his own, she could not directly move against him.
As she had feared, her son’s ambitions had come to fruition. He was no longer a nuisance, but an adversary.
And it’s been that way ever since.
It should be obvious by this point, dear reader, who this firstborn son is.
He is the Sireslayer: killer of his own father, co-killer of Alacine’s husband who begot numerous bastards with other women, and killer of Lukain’s father Heskel.
He is the same vampire who saved your life from Alacine’s cruel vampiric husband, only to be tossed aside the moment it was convenient for her.
He slayed your father, Lukain, not out of a sense of hate over you, but out of a sense of duty to his kind.
And yes, he stole your father’s silver sword, to use as a symbol of what the Silverknights so nearly succeeded in doing: eradicating the world of vampires, dhampir, and anyone associated with the monsters from the silver mines . . . including Heskel’s own son.
You.
There is the truth. Your mother is a liar, Lukain, and has twisted your mind with a varnished truth.
She called your half-brother a killer, when she herself murdered her husband to be free of his bloodbond over her.
She filled your mind with the idea your brother was an ambitious monster, wicked and self-interested, when she herself was the monster all along.
Always plotting. Always scheming. Always rising to the next level of the Five Ministries.
For over one hundred fifty years, Alacine Mortis has been this way.
And now the tide has turned, and for the first time, she is scared.
If you don’t believe me or this story I’ve penned . . . then why don’t you ask your mother for the simple truth?
The ancient vampire sits back from his desk, pleased with his work. With a great sigh, he straightens out his back, hearing the pleasant groans and cracking of his bones, and folds all the pages into a small leather-bound notebook.
Then he realizes he’s forgotten something. Muttering to himself, he flips to the final page once more.
In elegant script, he signs his work—
Alacine’s firstborn son, your brother, Skartovius Ashfen.