“Lucar, my patience is wearing very thin. I’m well aware that Dorava Solisar is not Finley’s birth mother. So. Why?”
“I… I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He shuffles backwards, attempting to rise to his feet once again.
I shake my head. It’s always the nobility that are so slow to understand their predicament. The minor lords are the worst of all.
My hand shoots out. He doesn’t even react, because he can’t see me in the darkness. I grab his right wrist and immobilize his hand. I bend his pinky finger backward, snapping it.
“Aaargh!” He cries out in pain, his voice turning falsetto. “You fucking lunatic.”
“That’s your sword hand, isn’t it? You have ten fingers, Lucar. I can do this nine more times. Then we’ll move on to your limbs.” My voice is flat; emotionless. I don’t relish torture, but I’m no stranger to it.
Lucar Solisar is breathing heavily. A sheen of sweat covers his face. I release his hand. He yanks it backward, as if recoiling from a viper bite.
He reeks of fear and the stench of captivity.
He won’t last long.
He’ll break soon.
I can see it in his eyes; wide with terror, the glazed stupor of denial slowly turning into realization. Through my herbal-scented mask, I can smell him; sweat and filth and the coppery stench of his blood.
I’m repulsed.
After Finley, I’ll probably never want to taste another man’s blood again.
I sigh. “I can do this all day, Lucar. Maybe I’ll skip the fingers next and go straight to a limb. Arm or leg. Your choice.”
“Urgh.” He makes a strange sound; primal, guttural, incomprehensible.
It’s the sound of a man who’s realized he’s completely powerless.
And just like that, he folds. His shoulders slump. A tremor courses through him. He buries his face in his hands and lets out a shuddering sob. “Oh, Goddess,” he whimpers.
“Lucar,” I say softly, making it sound as if I’m relenting a little. “Focus, man.”
“Argh, bloody hells, you fucking maniac. She’s… she’s born to an outlander, all right?”
Oh. And so we get ever closer to the truth.
It explains why Finley has dark eyes and dark hair, in contrast to her father and her brothers.
“An outlander? From where, exactly?”
“Batava.”
Thirty years ago, my father sent his armies across the sea to try and conquer the peninsula lands of Batava. I was just a boy at the time. I would spend countless evenings poring over maps and charts with my father, playing at strategy, moving silver pieces into place.
But once his armies landed, the map reading and games of strategy stopped.
And several years later, the Rahavan forces returned, at a third of their original size, and the land of Batava had not been conquered, and talk of the failed campaign was forbidden.
“How does a Batavan come to be in Rahava?”
“I brought her back,” he admits quietly, his voice tinged with bitterness. “I was one of the few that returned from the Batavan War. And she was beautiful. Exotic. A prize. I couldn’t help it.”
My anger returns, colder than before. All this talk of war is making me desolate. I’m filled with anger and dread for Finley’s mother. “What did you do to her, Lucar?”
“Sh-she left.” His left eye rolls upwards ever so slightly. Despite the cold, he’s sweating more than ever. “When Finley was a babe. She was yearning for her homeland.”
“What did I say about lying to me, Lucar?” The cold feeling is gone, replaced with incandescent anger. This is Finley’s mother we’re talking about, and he has the fucking nerve to lie to me about her?
I take his ring finger.
“Urgh…” He tries to yank his hand backwards, but I’m too fast.
There’s a soft crunch as bones and cartilage fold as easily as paper.
The baron lets out a desperate, choked sob. “S-stop!”
“It’ll be some time before you’ll be able to hold a sword again,” I say softly. “My physician can re-set those fingers, but if I have to break any more, you’ll never wield a blade again.”
“Just stop. I’ll tell you,” he grunts, the last of his resolve crumbling. “Th-that woman… Finley’s mother… she’s a monster. I didn’t know… she was unconscious and wounded when I took her from the battlefield. It was only later… when she healed…. we had to put dampening irons on her. If they ever release her, she will—”
I shoot forward and grab Lucar’s neck, slamming him against the floor. Right now, I really, really want to kill him. “Where is she now?” I relent ever so slightly so he can talk.
He coughs and rasps. “I… I don’t know. Your father was interested in her; in the fact that she didn’t seem to age. He came and took her away… for research. To the Imperial Labs in Grenevere.”
Research. The word fills me with revulsion. “And did he ever tell you what he found out? If she isn’t human, then what is she?”
“She’s… from the other side of the world. A place we don’t understand. Not quite a witch, nor a demon. She’s a spirit of the forest. She has the power to bewitch men and curse them. Emperor Duthriss said a certain word once. Dryad.”
A frisson of anticipation courses through me. The word has a familiar ring to it.
Dryad.
I need to know more. And now I have a word. It’s a start.
To unlock Finley’s truth and find her mother.
Pray that she is still alive, father. If you’ve killed her, then…
I don’t know what I’d do. The depth of my protectiveness surprises me. I’ve only encountered Finley twice, and each time I took advantage of her, succumbing to my terrible thirst.
In spite of all that, she was blunt with me when she had to be. She was courageous, putting her brothers’ lives above her own. Sharp-witted, and yet clever enough to know when to yield. She even figured out my identity on her own, putting two and two together despite my changed appearance.
And when she realized who I was…
She didn’t grovel or simper; didn’t change her behavior toward me.
Did father intentionally send me a blessing in disguise? A baron’s daughter and a dryad’s child, sent to marry me, a vampire?
Finley’s all alone. She has no friends; no allies.
The least I can do is be her strength.
I think my mother would have warmed to her in an instant.
I rise to my feet. “That’s enough for now, Baron Solisar. Get up.”
He hesitates, wincing as he wraps his intact hand around his broken fingers. Slowly, tentatively, his fearful eyes darting around in the darkness, he gets to his feet.
There’s no more talk of the almighty emperor and how he’s going to punish me. Before me, Lucar Solisar is just a man, confused and defeated, finally understanding his place.
It only took two broken fingers. It’s as Treave said.
He’s the soft type.
“I’ll send my physician to set and bind your fingers. Think of a plausible story for how you got the injury. A guard will come shortly to escort you to your room upstairs in the main castle.”