Chapter Fourteen Fauns Ruin #3
The shock on her face was almost worth the apology.
He could count on one of his large hands how many times he had ever said sorry.
He half expected a quick-witted response or a snarly back-handed comment ready to fire. But for a moment, Adan just stared at him--blinking slowly.
She searched his face automatically, almost suspiciously, trying to catch the faintest glimmer of mockery, of insincerity—some cruel glint in his eye.
But it wasn't there--he meant it. He turned giving her a perfect view of his wings. He was ready to fly off and give her space when she started.
"You were right." He stilled, but didn't turn.
"I'm not that kid anymore." Adan sighed into the night sky, pretending to talk to the stars, even though Nox's presence was impossible to ignore.
"Did you know that it wasn't my mother or father or brother that died first from the king's crusades?"
Her hollow eyes slid towards Nox, who still had his wings out.
The stars seemed to bring out a small ting of plum and violet, and glinted like crystal against their twinkling light.
"My great-grandmother, Agnisus Nazyr, she died in the purge of the dragons. No one knew the connection at the time. They thought she died peacefully in her bed, but my grandfather later discovered she was poisoned. Not that my great-grandfather cared, he had his heir.
My grandfather killed him when he came of age, and discovered that his father knew about the poison, and did nothing to save his mother."
"Why are you telling me this?" Nox asked cautiously, but held no judgment. It was a tone she had never heard him use with her, it was wary. Adan exhaled slowly through her nose, her eyes locked on the star. She knew he had turned to face her at some point during her story.
"Because that's how long this war has been killing my family."
Her voice too calm--too steady, devoid of its usual sharpness.
"All of them, one by one." Her stomach tightened but didn't waver.
"I sometimes wonder what my father would think of me now? Would he be proud of how I freed myself from the life of a courtesan? Or would he hate me for killing for a king who is responsible for his death?"
She forced her eyes to stay on the star.
Don't look at him. Don't you dare look at him.
Her chest tightened violently, but she pressed on, her voice still flat.
"I wonder what he would say about the first child I killed in the fighting pits. Or that crowd likes to call me Butcher."
She exhaled sharply through her nose. "Every year since that day, there as just been more bodies, more graves, more blood. I doubt that was the future that Roland Feuer had envisioned for his daughter."
He crouched down, keeping perfect balance on the slanted roof. His wings drooping behind him. She couldn't bring herself to look into his eyes, she didn't want to see the pity waiting for her. Because she had offered up a kernel of truth, he gave her the same gift.
"I never knew my father. My mother and father never loved each other. She was a whore, and my father was a patron of hers."
She looked in his eyes now, and saw no pity there, no disgust, just love.
He loved his mother. "He was a wealthy and high-born and had a family of his own. When she sought him out, he refused to help, and banished her. I was very young when he was murdered."
Adan's eyes widened. "Like I said, he was high-born and locked in a political stand-off like most families of those calibres."
He shrugged like it wasn't a big deal. He was well over two hundred years old, he had time to come to terms with what had happened to his sire.
He never saw the man as his father anyway, and in his mind he had no father.
"How does a bastard-born Demon become head of Shadow House?" She couldn't help the awe in her voice. It was a great feat, and he has held the title since its inception. She had done a great many things in her life, but she couldn't deny that, that was inspiring.
"How does a Phoenix Princess survive the last twenty years?" He tilted his head, giving her a small slash of a smile.
"Touché."
They were both quiet for a while, listening to the night cicadas.
"She had shield powers." Adan said softly.
"What?"
"Agnisus, she had shielding powers." Nox stayed silent, waiting. "It's why my great-grandfather wanted her in the first place, to bread her powers into his phoenix line. She could make magnificent, impenetrable walls in her mind." Like me.
"Dragons had strong mental powers, much like King Cias. It was the real reason that the Great War started. Dragons posed the most danger to him and that was enough for him to start a war."
The propaganda that had been spun for the masses was that Dragons were ruthless and brutal--a danger to the populace.
Mindless brutes that would rape and steal and slaughter without a second thought.
"And again when he came for the Phoenixes."
The world knew that firebirds could be reborn from their ashes.
But still many believed the spun story that Cias told his people.
Phoenixes could not be trusted because of our inability to die--they were the closest thing to immortals.
Whipping up stories of Adan's kind, more vicious than the Dragons.
They were consumed by greed and gluttony, all their years would never be enough to swath their rapacity.
Over two hundred and twenty-five years of fighting made people easily manipulated.
And again they fell for the story that was spoon-fed to them.
War makes people do horrible things.
"He will do it again." Nox's green eyes seemed to glow against the stark dark night.
"He never stopped. You should know. You are head of house, after all." Adan did nothing to hide the chiding tone.
"And you're his assassin." He levelled back.
"And you see how he treats me." She raised her chin to see Nox flinch. It shocked Adan. She refused to acknowledge the emotions swimming in his eyes.
It was gone in a blink with a hard set of his jaw. "He will face a bloody end. So shall his son." The dark promise shivered down Adan's spine.
"Darius Dreadmore is a vile excuse for a male." Adan spat the words, his name like venom to her tongue. She tried to ignore the assessing stare, calculating every small movement she made. Before he could ask, she offered up another truth.
"I never told you the whole story." She tapped her tattoo.
"When I was in Czandra's care, she didn't know what to do with me. So she offered me the only life she knew. A courtesan. I was trained from the age of nine until my sixteenth year. It is when they are actioned off."
She couldn't bring herself to talk about the specifics.
But a girl in this world only held one value, one that men were willing to pay for.
"The scars, on my stomach... I did it to myself to stop from being sold."
Adan's throat closed. "I knew I could never allow myself to get pregnant, the child would be half Phoenix. They would be hunted... or worse."
It is true that courtesans are actioned off for their virginity, but they are coveted like dolls.
Kept for breeding and whatever sick pleasure, their master commands.
"It was when Czandra came to me and told me that Darius had taken interest, I knew I had no choice but to act."
Nox stiffened at the comment, and almost fell back off the roof.
He recovered smoothly by making it look like he was only getting more comfortable.
Adan continued as if nothing had happened.
"Even at that age, I knew what type of man he was. I may have been a virgin, but I was far from naive. My training wouldn't have allowed it."
She shook her head as memories bombarded her.
"I finally took action when I started to see the future I might end up having. I almost died that night, it was a risk I was willing to take."
"But you're a Phoenix, if you die, wouldn't just come back."
She shook her head. "I would have to want it."
She cleared her throat, "Czandra found me, and she couldn't keep me hidden... what I had done. All possible interested men bowed out, but I could no longer be a courtesan, I had scared my flesh. I had sullied myself. turns out, Darius was furious and demanded that his father let him kill me.
Czandra managed to sway the king into letting me live, if I went into the Gladiator pits. She told me that if I could make it there, I might have a chance. So I did just that."
Adan's eyes hollowed out at the blood that soaked her hands.
"I rose up faster than any other Gladiator and was free in four years."
Understanding bloomed on Nox's face, "Only the king can release Gladiators."
Her head bobbed. "It was what kept me alive in the those pits. Originally, I planned to assassinate him at my freeing ceremony. But that wouldn't have solved anything. His son would have only taken his place. But he didn't free me, he rebranded me with a dagger and claimed me as his assassin.
I was trained at the Sicarii, but it didn't matter. I was right back where I started, never far from Darius. All my years of running and this whole time I've been running in circles."
Her voice was low, and felt raw from the way it burned.
"I have spent eight years in that castle."
Torture house was more fitting, Adan had the scares to prove it.
Horrors of her past blasted into her mental walls, crashing into them like shards of glass.
Nox was pensive before he spoke, "I have been head of my house for the last nineteen years and in that time I have done horrible things in the name of the king and country. I have done even worse against him, for my people—for our people.
I know I will still have more gruesome tasks ahead of me before my time is up. Especially if I want to free the realm of Cias's tyranny."
"Is such a thing possible...?" She had never known a world not ruled by a tyrannical asshole.
"All I know is I have to try." The words so full of sorrow that Adan had to look at him. A gust of wind blurred her vision, until she realized it was not the wind at all, but his wings as he took off into the sky.