I stare at him in shock, half-tempted to wipe the smug expression off his mortal features. “Are you saying my transformation was predetermined? That this… state of mine is inherited?”
I hate appearing at a loss in front of my father, but my shock is too great. My thoughts are in flux—how is this possible?
“You got that from Helia.”
“From… my mother? But she’s human.”
Propped up on mountains of pillows, my father sits up with a groan. A hacking cough bursts from his lips. He covers his mouth with his hand. When he stops; when he pulls it away, there’s blood all over his palm.
“Take it easy,” I growl, leaning forward and putting my hand behind his back. Beneath his silk nightshirt, I feel the bony protrusions of his spine. He’s lost so much of his bulk and vitality. “What ails you, anyway?”
“It’s the consumption. Even I have to accept that my time has come. You can’t reverse it or cure it, so don’t even think about it. Believe me, I’ve tried.”
Of course you have, father.
There was a time when I truly believed my father would live forever.
How quickly time passes, making fools of us all.
“Your mother wasn’t an ordinary villager. She was from the place beyond the Khatur; the unmapped zones, where no Rahavan has ever set foot. Your grandfather tried, but every exploration team he sent in that direction failed to return. But that’s not surprising. The Vampyr Tribes wouldn’t just allow humans into their midst. But she… she was an outlier. Curious about humans and Khaturians. She was one of the few that came to the mountains and offered a trade with the Khaturians. Protection in exchange for blood and the chance to live amongst them. When I was a young prince of the empire, father sent me to broker a deal with the Khaturians. A treaty involving the trade of magical artifacts. That’s when I first saw her. I was immediately smitten, and she…” A soft, bittersweet laugh escapes him. “I suppose she was curious, at first. I was a novelty to her, because she’d never really encountered a Rahavan from the Central Plains. And I was full of tales and wit; she loved to hear stories of the lands across the seas and the warm Southern Regions. She was already centuries old by the time I met her. Maybe she was bored of her old existence. I know not. But I suppose you could say I charmed her, and convinced her to come with me, and in my mind, only she could ever be worthy of wearing the crown of the Empress of Rahava. I worshipped your mother, Corvan.”
My legs turn weak. I force myself to sit down on the side of the bed, beside my father.
Just like I did when I was a small boy.
“Are you telling me that mother was a vampire?” I shake my head in disbelief. “It isn’t possible. I saw her… many times… in the sunlight. And she didn’t have… red eyes and white hair like me.”
An image enters my mind, so vivid and bright it could have been yesterday.
We’re in the courtyard garden just beyond her chambers. She sits on a small patch of crisp, manicured grass, her voluminous pale blue skirts laid out over her legs. And I sit in her lap and play with her long black hair, so lustrous and brilliant. I breathe in her sweet, comforting scent, and then I squeal with laughter as she tickles me.
The balmy spring breeze swirls around us, plucking blooms from the cherry tree above, scattering them through a shaft of warm sunlight that illuminates her porcelain features.
In my mind, she’s always bathed in sunlight.
How could she have been a creature of darkness, like me?
My father’s lower jaw begins to tremble. Tears well in his eyes. I’ve never seen him like this; spilling over with emotion, so frail and vulnerable.
Is this the power Death has over a once impregnable man?
“My son, it’s only now that I can look back and profess shame and regret. For I did something truly monstrous, and she never forgave me for it.”
My hand goes to the side of his face. I caress him gently, but somewhere in the back of my mind, there’s this thought that I could so easily choke him to death. “What did you do, father?”
“I lied to her. I told her I’d found a remedy for her weakness against the sunlight. Because all she wanted to do was be able to enjoy the daylight with her half-human son. She did not know that the remedy itself was bound in iron and stone, chained up in a dungeon beneath the palace.”
His voice has twisted into a mockery of itself; thin and filled with remorse and bitterness.
That won’t help him now.
Without me realizing, my hand has curled around his thin neck. Cold anger surges through me. “Aralya. You took her from Solisar, didn’t you? You used her to sustain my mother?”
“I’m not proud of what I did. And Helia was as pure as the driven snow. She didn’t have any part in it. She didn’t know where I was getting the cure from. I told her it was an elixir from the distant lands across the ocean. For a while, she was so pleased with me. She said it was the sweetest thing she’d ever tasted. And her delight at being able to enjoy the full sunshine was intoxicating. You might not be aware of this, but purebloods like her are far more vulnerable to the sunlight than a dhampir like you. It’s why her kind rarely venture out of the unknown lands. For a while, I thought I could win her happiness like this, but eventually, she found out… and when she did, she was furious. I think she would have left me then and there, if not for you. Nevertheless, it was the beginning of her madness.”
I can feel his feeble pulse, fluttering away in his feeble neck. I am this close from killing my very own father. “And what happened? What did you do to her?” My own voice is so cold I barely recognize myself.
“At first, she refused to take anything more. I brought it to her… tried to tempt her, but her will is stronger than even mine. That’s where you get your stubbornness from, my boy. Not from me. She demanded I release the dryad, but I refused. When Lucar Solisar brought her to our shores, he had no idea of the treasure and peril he had in his hands. After what we’d done to her, that creature surely would have killed us all if I’d released her.”
This is Finley’s mother he’s talking about. Not a pile of coins or jewels or a land to be conquered. Her mother.
Father coughs and splutters, making me realize that I’m squeezing his neck a little too hard.
Red haze clouds my vision.
“I should kill you for this,” I whisper at last.
His face turns grey. His eyes bulge. Mustering the last of his strength, father nods. “Go on. Do it. I’m as good as dead, anyway. I’d rather die by your hand than sit here waiting for Hecoa to take me. The pain… it’s fucking intolerable.”
Coming to my senses, I release him. “What did you do to her?”
A lone tear slips down my father’s cheek. “She… was going to kill me. What else could I do? If only she’d accepted my offering. She was weakened with thirst and desperate.”
I rise to my feet, recoiling from him. “You killed her.”
Horror and revulsion course through me. My stomach roils. My senses are flooded with disgusting filth. Never before have I wanted to kill someone more badly than I want to kill him right now—this man that sired me.