Chapter 24 | Skartovius
Skartovius
I have a moment to myself, which is a blessing. Being around Lukain Pierken for so many days, while holding onto my weighty secret, has frayed my patience and threshold for tolerance.
It’s my own fault. I had ample opportunity to spill my lies to him while we were on our mission to convene with Liolen Sesk.
I could have told my half-brother I killed his father in cold blood two decades ago, rather than what he believes, which is that Heskel Angul was planning on killing Lukain and our mother, Alacine, the vile vampiress he claimed to love.
He did love her. He wasn’t planning an assassination attempt. I killed him anyway, because my rage at being dismissed by my mother and thrown to the wolves—having to live years in secrecy as an outcast—was too great to ignore. So I hit her where I knew it would hurt.
I still haven’t told Lukain the truth. He believes the lie I wrote to him.
I walk the dim corridors of the Firehold slowly, feeling naked without my cloak. I used it as a defense mechanism against Aramastun’s assassins aboveground, but getting rid of the red cape with the gold trim served a higher purpose.
Now I’m an outcast again, cast aside by nobleblood society, I have no need for the regal finery.
No need to paint a larger target on my back to Aramastun Wyvox than the one I’m already sporting.
It had to go, and the fact it went in an impressive flurry that ended a foul-blood’s life only makes it better.
People stare at me as I walk the gloomy halls. They look at me with wide-eyed terror, or curiosity, always giving me a wide berth because I’m imposing and I’m a fucking vampire. They don’t know me, but they know what I am.
There’s a constant pinging of water droplets trickling from overhead through the porous stone ceiling. It drives me mad. I can’t believe Sephania could live in a place like this, and for so long!
I suppose she had little choice. This is where the slave-fighters for my illustrious shadowgalas came from, for the most part, I muse, licking my lips. No wonder they fought so ferociously for their freedom. The Damned can have me before I get caught living my life down here.
Past the narrow halls, in the wider eating areas and workshops, I catch smatterings of conversation as I pass an open archway. It seems Lukain’s appearance is causing quite the kerfuffle.
“Can you believe he’s returned? That’s your old master, isn’t it?” a small shaggy-headed boy asks. “Is he a ghost?”
“No, you idiot,” replies a taller girl.
“Is he . . . deader than he already was?”
“I hardly know the bastard. He was on his way out when I got here. How should I know?”
The boy ponders. “Well, I mean, does a half-vampire who dies and comes back become a full vampire?”
“It doesn’t work that way, Besho. Will you stop bothering me?”
I huff a laugh at their back-and-forth, continuing on my lonely adventure past their room.
Sephania is busy commiserating their losses with the Chained Sisters, Vallan and Garroway are moping for failing her, and Lukain has wandered off with an old man I recognize from some of the shadowgalas. The newest leader whose name I keep forgetting.
I let out a tuneless hum as I hear swords clanging.
Naturally, I gravitate toward the sound, and come to an open door leading into some type of sparring room.
A bevy of boys and girls are haphazardly swinging swords with a young man at the front going through patterns to teach them.
This looks like a young group, but I’m impressed with their diligence.
In fact, looking around . . . I find myself impressed with a whole lot here. Despite the fixings being subpar and quite dingy and nasty, the people seem . . . content. Happy, even, if it’s to be believed. They eat together, fight together, work together.
Lukain did all this, I think as I continue on. He set the foundation, at the very least.
It’s a thought that keeps coming back to me—when I see girls at an underground river, working with fabric, or a mixed group scavenging for fungi in the fuzzy corners of the hold, and deciding which ones are poisonous or not, or the ladies and their interfolk comrades hammering away at tanned hides. The thought keeps coming back to me.
Lukain did all this.
While I was living a life of splendor as a nobleblood in Manor Marquin, with white-robed servants at my beck and call, a coven of hungry vampires to do my bidding, Lukain Pierken was down here struggling and fighting in squalor.
He turned an indigent, rancid place into a home. It’s quite human of him, I must say, but the ambition is clearly there. Perhaps we’re truly brothers after all, if ambition is the only thing we share. Maybe we’re more alike than I thought.
Of course, we could never be equal. He was born from a blasphemous Silverknight, an original sinner who sought the end of the Damned and all the demonic vampires I call family.
I was born from a noble father and a noble mother. Raised for a life in court, whereas Lukain was raised on the streets because of his twisted bloodline.
It isn’t my fault, but it’s the way it is. The way of life in Olhav, which is equal parts unforgiving, treacherous, and difficult to navigate.
Now, if I think on it, we’re more alike than ever. It turns out my nobleblood state was not preordained or a right gifted to me by deities and malevolent spirits. It was a privilege that could easily be snatched away from me by any of the Five Ministries.
They had no reason to hold me to account because I was a well-paying, well-to-do member of the vampiric aristocracy, who caused little problems. Sure, I could be a pain in their ass with my flamboyance and ludicrous demands, but even as a lord, I was not taken too seriously by the Five Ministries.
Or at least not seen as much of a threat.
Everything has changed. Now I’m digging my heels in the shit just as deep as Lukain is. The only thing different, I recognize, is my half-brother has actually created a legacy for himself. One I hardly knew about, or hardly believed.
I’m seeing it firsthand. Seeing the conversations slipping through the walls, the awe on the faces of the boys and girls when Lukain walks down a corridor. The transformation of this subterranean cave to a living space called the Firehold.
The Grimsons look at me with curiosity and suspicion, and nothing more. Yet they gaze upon Lukain like he’s a god reborn. A martyr, perhaps, or a true legend in the flesh.
It’s something Lukain has never bragged about.
He’s hardly mentioned his past life, probably because his past life changed and veered off course so frequently.
From Olhav as a bastard, to Nuhav as a leader, to Olhav as a jailer.
He’s had many transformations in his life—more than I can say even for myself.
I chance upon the man in question half an hour later, as I’m finishing my pensive stroll. I had not expected to find any likeness or kindness toward my brother, yet here we are.
As I’m heading for Sephania’s location where the Chained Sisters have been holed up, I catch Lukain out the corner of my eye, leaving a small dwelling and closing the door behind him. The room is one of the only ones with a door.
Rather than duck away from him so he won’t see me, I keep walking, knowing we’ll run into each other in a few more steps. We’re converging on the same larger room that narrows into a hall neither of us can avoid.
He catches me out his peripheral and gives me a curt nod. Cautiously, he starts heading toward me, and I have half a mind to curse and spin around to leave.
“Brother,” he says, standing before me in front of the corridor entrance.
“Lukain,” I reply.
We stare at each other. The silence becomes deafening.
“We need to get Palacia back,” he says at last. “That was foolish of us letting her decide her own fate like that.”
I frown, firming my lips. “You’re the last person I expected to steal someone’s agency, given what you’ve started here.”
His brow furrows, confusion spilling across his face. “I was a slaver, Skartovius. Nothing more.”
I let out an incredulous snort. “You were much more. If you can’t see what you were to these sorry people, then you are blind.”
His head tilts, more confounded than before. Probably because I’ve given him a compliment and a backhanded slap at the same time. He should be used to that by now from me.
“Erm . . . all right,” he mutters. “I’m going to find Sephania.”
I clear my throat, watching him turn to walk away. “I was just heading that way as well,” I say, though I don’t move to join him.
He stops slowly, turns to regard me over his shoulder. It’s getting awkward between us.
“You are correct, you know. About Palacia,” I admit. “If we want our little temptress to forgive us, we need to make it right.” I massage my jaw. “My chin still smarts from where she punched me.”
His serious face cracks a tiny smirk. “The woman can land a fist on a man’s face with the best of them.” He massages his cheek in agreement. “Can’t say we didn’t deserve it.”
Then he turns to leave. He gets two steps away. Four. To the hallway entrance—
Something bubbles up inside me. Almost like . . . anxiety? I’m not sure if I remember how that feels, it’s been so many decades. But there’s a very human thing going on inside me, and I don’t like it.
I enjoy feeling impervious. Like a monster. Like an asshole. Because I know that anyone who wants to step to me will be defeated. Squashed like an insect under my heel.
And now this? Butterflies in my stomach—
“Wait,” I call out before I can stop myself.
He’s ten feet away now, half-hidden by the lip of the entrance. He fully faces me, a deep, pervasive knot between his eyebrows. “What is it?”
A heavy, resigned sigh leaves my lips. “I need to tell you something, brother . . .”