Chapter 46 | Lukain
Lukain
With a blank face, I stare down at the hand-written journal Skartovius Ashfen wrote, reading the short passages for the hundredth time this evening. The journal he wrote for me. “His brother,” I whisper.
I’m utterly flabbergasted. Perplexed and worried. Surely this is another one of Skartovius’ tricks. A scheme to make me hate my mother.
Why would Mother never tell me I have a half-brother?
As the words on the page sink into my mind for the umpteenth time, my denial begins to shift. After all, what are Skartovius’ attributes?
He’s arrogant, he’s power-hungry, he’s powerful.
All things he shares with Alacine Mortis.
More than that, most damnably of all, is the ability I’ve now seen them both wield. The ability to shape shadows and twist them to their liking. To shift through the shadows as if they’re gateways to other worlds.
It must be hereditary, I think. Something within their shared bloodline that gives them command over people’s shadows. Something I don’t share in my bloodline with either of them.
My denial morphs into disgust.
This revelation, I see why Lord Ashfen would put it to paper, because I’d never believe it if he told me.
No, the history of his origins and mine were necessary.
I needed to read about the shaping of the Five Ministries and Alacine’s part in it.
I needed to discover truths about Heskel Angul, my father I’ve always looked up to—even in death—and his Silverknight brigade.
His uprising against my kind, and his alleged plot to bring down my mother and the Five Ministries, even in his old age, as a final wound against the blight of humanity: vampires.
These are facts and stories I can confirm directly. I have the means to discover the veracity of the claims Skartovius has put to paper.
And yet, the two words keep playing themselves on my tongue. “My brother.”
If he truly is my half-brother, born a hundred years before me to a human father and turned near his thirtieth year when Alacine was also turned by Kavorin Mortis, then this changes everything.
It explains so much of the rabid vitriol Alacine has toward Skartovius. The utter hate and need to see him fall, because she feared his ambition would match her own. I’ve shared that hate because Mother demanded me to.
“The Sireslayer Skartovius Ashfen murdered your father, the man I love, in cold blood.” Alacine would say those words to me when I was younger.
To think it all stemmed from a betrayal on her part: framing Skartovius for the murder of Kavorin, her wicked husband.
After the gruesome sight of watching the bastard Kavorin defile my mother when I was younger, I was knocked unconscious while the two of them fought.
I didn’t see the battle, so I have no recollection of whether any of this is true or not.
I don’t know who is responsible for Kavorin’s death, only that it was warranted, and I should likely be thanking Skartovius rather than damning him as my mother does.
The more important part to me, and the bigger lie, is what Skar has written about my father’s death: that it was done out of duty, not hatred for Alacine. That Heskel planned on assassinating my mother and me.
I don’t know . . . but I can find out. And I’ll know the truth when I say the words to my mother’s face. She won’t be able to hide such an explosive fact from me. The story of my upbringing. Hidden from vampires because of my illegitimate birth. Born to a Silverknight, the very enemy of vampires.
I’ve always known these things about me.
It is the smaller details, the facts Alacine has woven into her web, indoctrinating me and leading me to believe certain truths, which come as a shock to me now.
I’ve been sitting in the recovery room for an entire evening, ever since we returned to the Intelligence Ward and I found my mother with her new plaything, Jinneth.
Sephania’s mother.
I shudder at the thought of what Alacine might do to Sephania’s mother, knowing what she did to that frail interfolk girl Palacia. How callous and cruel she can be.
Over a century of bloodlust and bloodshed makes monsters of us all.
After reading Skartovius’ history, I know my mother is truly mad. That seems indisputable. But what I must discover is if she has lied about everything I’ve believed my entire life. Two things can be true at once: Alacine can be a hateful lunatic, and she can also love me dearly.
Skartovius as my brother. His framing and ousting from court. The Sireslayer as the crowning jewel of our hate, responsible for my father’s death in cold blood, done out of revenge.
I get up from my bed, tired of sitting here while my thoughts spiral out of control. I need the truth.
So I rise and strap on my father’s sword with a sigh. I can’t go anywhere these days without being armed. I’ve failed to mention to Alacine I recovered the saber, and she hasn’t seemed to notice. She’s been too preoccupied with Sephania’s mother in her torture room.
The dungeon is not far from where I’m staying. Alacine wanted to keep a close eye on me after I returned from Manor Marquin wounded and without Sephania, again.
Strangely, she did not scold me this time. She did not reprimand me for my failure, saying instead, “Her mother will be just as useful as she is.”
“Does Jinneth have the Loreblood Sephania does?” I asked last evening after we had both returned here.
“Even better.” Alacine grinned at me, waving a thin container Jinneth had on her person at the time of her capture. “She has a vial of it. Tainted with silver, at the moment. I will siphon the silver out and we will have pure Loreblood soon, my little sapling.”
She told these things to me while I rested from my chest wound. It didn’t take long to heal because of the shallowness of the piercing, due to the book protecting me.
Now, I feel sprightly. Invigorated and furious.
I storm down the hall to the torture room and can already hear the whimpers coming from inside. I push my way in, and the scent of blood and burning flesh reaches my nose instantly. It’s a horrid mix.
I’m greeted with a ghastly sight: Alacine has her back to me, staring over the rotund woman chained to a table, staring tearfully at the dank ceiling. My mother tosses something with a thud into a bloody bucket next to her, and I inhale sharply when I stand over it.
Jinneth’s left hand, severed at the wrist.
The whimpering coming from the large woman is muted from shock. The burning smell is the cauterizing of her wrist, to create a stump so she won’t bleed out. Her body twitches on the table, hardly able to process what Alacine has done to her.
“Mother, what in all that’s Damned is going on here?”
She glances over her shoulder, snorting at the bucket I’m staring down into. “She won’t be needing both of those to finish the tasks I’ve given her. One hand will suffice, sapling.”
I blink wordlessly, trying to formulate coherent thoughts. This is Sephania’s mother! My body screams at me to react. And my mother is torturing her, as she tortures everyone.
Perhaps it’s the weak human heart in me. The half-blood aspect of my dhampirism. But I feel a surge of sympathy and guilt at what I’m seeing.
“I plan to take a leg tomorrow,” Alacine says cheerily. “She won’t need both of those, either. Won’t be doing a lot of standing or running, you see? Only sitting is necessary for the alchemical work.”
“You’ll drive her mad, Mother. She’ll be useless to you dead.”
“Nonsense. I’ll not kill her, dear boy. Where’s the fun in that?”
Baffled, I run a hand through my hair. “So you’re doing this torture . . . for sport? What is the purpose? Has she not told you the information you desire?”
“No, no, there isn’t any information I need from her. The whereabouts of her daughter would be useful, but I’m well past that, little sapling. I’m doing it for the enjoyment of doing it, of course.”
I can’t stop blinking in shock, the way she’s talking.
It’s like whatever happened in the Firehold truly broke her.
How I wish I could go down there and see if my old friends are all right.
Antones most of all, if he’s still breathing.
Rirth, the short bastard. Culiar, too, the lanky prick.
Even the women, Imis, Aelin, Helget—well, Helget was taken as broodstock, but what about the others?
There’s a sudden itch inside me, and I realize something. Mother sent me to Manor Marquin and took the Firehold herself so I wouldn’t be reunited with my Grimsons.
I wince at the thought, wondering if it could be true.
“Skartovius Ashfen is my brother,” I blurt out.
Alacine’s shoulders stiffen. She tries to play it off, not bothering to turn to face me because she’s so busy plying her gruesome trade to Jinneth. And this coming from a man who once killed a youngling because he simply asked me a question.
There’s a reason I’ve always hated fullblood vampires: It’s because Alacine taught me to. They were the reason I lived my life in hiding, and why I was seen as inferior to their kind.
“Which means he is your son,” I add. My body tenses when she carries on what she’s doing like I said nothing.
“What nonsense are you babbling about, son?”
“Don’t lie to me, Mother. We have to talk!”
She spins, a wicked snarl on her face, fangs bared. Stabbing a bloody knife toward me, which still hangs with flayed flesh, she says, “Don’t speak about things you know nothing about, boy!”
Then she turns back around in a huff.
I’ve been told my entire life not to question things. Even Skartovius told me to shut my mouth when I was speaking about what I didn’t know. Alacine is no different, and they’re truly related in that sense.
Now, the burden becomes too much to hold.
“Skartovius told me he killed my father because Heskel was planning a coup against us. Is that true, Mother?”
“No.”
Lies. I can see through them with her nonchalance. She can’t even face me because . . .
She’s scared. Like the end of the journal said she would be.
I’ve learned a truth she’s worked more than fifty years to hide from me. All in a matter of an evening, her web of lies is unfurling, spinning out of control, and she can’t even look me in the eyes.
Because she’s scared of her firstborn son, as she always has been.
It must be why she hates him. Why she hates what he represents: change in Olhav. Change in the Five Ministries and her leadership role. He is an existential threat, and with Sephania at his side, they might just be able to pull off their revolution.
And it terrifies Alacine Mortis.
Skartovius Ashfen combines the most duplicitous parts of Alacine Mortis and the most ambitious parts. But he also has something she doesn’t, likely gotten from his long-dead human father: courage.
Courage to face his enemies head-on and never back down. My half-brother lived his life in obscurity until he crawled out of it and began his court. He took his deserved nobleblood mantle even after he had been framed, and he didn’t need a fake alias like Overseer Verant to do it.
I’ve been looking up to the wrong person this entire time.
Alacine has no idea how overwhelmed I’ve become in the past few minutes.
How my entire worldview has shifted because of her lack of caring, her lack of an explanation.
She’s kept her back to me the entire time, fueling my rage.
Only turning to ridicule, scoff, or chastise me for being a foolish young pup.
No more, I think. My mind screams the word. No more.
“I wish you could have been better, Mother. I truly wish you could have explained things to me, the way Skartovius Ashfen has. My half-brother.”
“Skartovius is a liar, son. You cannot listen to—”
My father’s silver saber cuts her words off as it sinks into her back, grinding against her spine.
With a gasp, Alacine Mortis spins, knocking the blade out of my hand. The most horrifying visage imaginable ignites across her face, even as her skin flares with fire.
As an ancient vampiress, Alacine Mortis does not simply burst into a fireball when I stab silver to her flesh. No, it curdles and coils her skin, bubbling and oozing with blistering boils and smoke as she tries to fight off the invasion with the power of her blood alone.
But even the Spymistress of Olhav is not powerful enough to ward off the effects of a silver sword for long.
As she faces me, clawing at me with a weak swipe, she opens her mouth to speak. Only black smoke comes out, her wordless sounds a wheeze and cough. The green veins of her neck turn black, spiderwebbing up to her chin, crawling across her face, even as her eyes blacken and swirl with inky smoke.
The veins consume her face completely, until I can no longer see the rictus rage on my mother’s face, and her hand falls from my arm.
She lets out a final croak of resistance past her weathered, ashen lips—
And then goes up like a fucking torch.
The heat of her screeching, withering body forces me back three steps, to the doorway of the dungeon.
My eyes bulge as I watch my mother burn.
Then she collapses, her skin dissolving to show a bleached skeleton beneath that topples to the ground in a clattering heap. It leaves behind a small soot-coated badge I’ve never seen before, in between her rib bones.
She might have been a menace to everyone around her, but Alacine Mortis’ skeleton looks just like everyone else’s: frail, thin, and easily breakable.
My jaw drops open and my mind whirls. For a moment, I wonder what I’ve just done—what I’ve gotten myself into.
With a murmur passing my lips, I say, “I wish your web of lies stopped at me, your son, you black widow.”