Page 16 of Blood & Bedlam

“Out with it, already.” I sigh, and she gives me a look that lets me know I’m going to regret this.

“Lady Hecate …” she begins. I take a steadying breath, give her a slow nod to continue. “Greek Goddess of Witchcraft. We know she helped turn you, and that at some point you became her … consort?” She nearly chokes on the word. I hold back a small smirk as her cheeks pink.

“Cami, you’re nearly three hundred years old. Surely talking about sex isn’t a touchy subject for you.” I laugh. She reddens even further.

“Merde, Papa. It doesn’t matter how old you are, the thought of your father getting it on with someone is gross.” She makes a pained face.

“Fair.” I give her an appreciative nod.

“So, your wife passes, assuming by nefarious hands. You said you had Lady Hecate transform you into vampyr, and with that power you defeated those who were coming to conquer Wallachia, but you never gave us any details beyond that. Now we find out that your wife is here and human. I know this may be painful for you, but I have to ask you to tell me all that you can remember. I was going to just ask Juliette to try and dig in the past, see if she can glean something useful, but you know how looking back hurts her. Besides, I don’t want to violate your trust by doing it without your blessing. I’m asking you to tell me. What happened that started our bloodline?”

My head pounds, hard and heavy, as my mind searches out Reine. She’s on the second floor with Martine, our healer, getting her ankle tidied up. I hear slivers of their conversation, and, assured she’s okay, I force my attention back to Cami. She waits patiently, almost like a child awaiting a bedtime story. It’s too bad this tale is one of my deepest nightmares.

“The truth is, I don’t know what happened to her directly. We had been fighting the Ottomans for years, but one spring they pushed in on us, hard. Their rule was brutal and punishing. My father fell on the battlefield and suddenly I inherited a kingdom in the throes of war. Alliances kept borders strong, fortified armies back then—and I had an arranged marriage, orchestrated by my father before he died. I didn’t expect to love her, or even like her, but the moment I met Mina, I knew she was special. Her people hailed from a smaller kingdom to the west, and they had a formidable army. All of that was just a bonus—she was”—I pause, a small, sad smile tugging at my lips—“everything. She never spoke much of her home, and it was clear she was happy to leave it.”

I pause again, traveling through the chasm of years. “When the Ottomans started encroaching closer, we sent emissaries to call upon the army I was promised in our betrothal, but they refused to come. That just wasn’t done back then. Oath breakers were the highest form of dishonor, but they stalled and kept stalling. When the battles spilled into open war in our kingdom, I left for the front lines to lead our people against the invasion. We were well trained, but there’s no amount of training that prepares a human to fight Otherworlder forces. The Ottomans had shifters that killed and fought with extreme violence, unlike anything I’d ever seen before. We were massacred. The old world was rife with stories of creatures but seeing them up close was … soul altering, and I was just a man. Those of us that survived retreated to Wallachia. We rode for two days straight to warn them, but when we arrived, the castle and city were empty and smoldering.”

I can smell the burnt stone and thatch and I swallow, needing a moment to collect myself.

“I found out later that Mina ordered an evacuation, and in doing so, saved the lives of what was left of our people. But Mina stayed. She refused to vacate my throne, knowing the empty seat left my rule vulnerable.”

Cami leans in, unfolding her legs to rest her elbows in rapture, dissecting every word. The pain in my chest intensifies as I force my mind to go back, to see, to remember the billowing cloud of soot and ash as homes smoldered, the way my boots slipped over blood-soaked concrete, stepped over the ravaged and broken bodies of the Royal Guard who stayed to protect Mina.

“She refused to leave my seat, determined that I should have a kingdom to return to. Mina was so sure that I would return. The idea that I could die on the battlefield wasn’t even something she would entertain, according to the accounts of her lady’s maids. But they came for the seat anyway, and when I got to the steps of our home … it was raining, heavy and thick around us.” My voice falters, the visage of her pale, glassy eyes staring up at me from the depths of my memory, her body broken against the wet stones. The stain from pools of her blood, thinned with rainwater beneath her. I think of how I sank to my knees while all the air punched from my body. How the unnatural angle of her arms and fabric of her ruined dress crumpled around her ripped a cry from my chest.

“They threw her from the throne room. Stories high. She waited for me to come back to her, and I wasn’t there to protect her.”

The ghost of her rigid body in my arms, unmoving as I cradled her to my chest, haunts me even now. Cami sniffs, eyes heavy and brimming with unshed tears as I flay myself open for her. I know that I’m right in having shared this, because having Juliette look at this, after the horrors she’s endured, would be too much, but Camille is built differently. Not stronger, or more resilient, but unflinching. Unafraid to look at the horrors; instead, stubborn enough to dissect them.

“Papa …” she whispers, empathy pouring from her as she stands and makes her way over to kneel next to me. I push back and turn, taking her hands in mine.

“I can’t let anything happen to Reine. I don’t know what she is, or how she came to be here, but I can’t bury another with Mina’s face.” Camille squeezes my hand and nods, fierce determination in her blue eyes.

“What happened next? With Lady Hecate?” she presses, digging at deep, jagged wounds with her words.

“She came to our land a few months later. Our resistance was nearly gone, and I had become a shell of who I was. I lived only to protect the ones left in my charge. We fortified a fortress at the edge of our lands. She took a look at what was happening and offered to help. I was still just a man, you see—broken and doing all I could to hold it together, but my people were starving, with no relief in sight when the Ottoman Army formed a blockade and put us under siege. Cate interceded. Found a book in our library that told of a legend, hidden deep in the mountains. She called upon the Fates, who you’ve heard of, and confirmed the validity of the ritual called the Sanguinus Lunaria that would allow me to take on a power to stave off the Ottomans. Give me the strength of a thousand men, make me a natural predator to the shifters.”

Cami’s grip turns iron, tethering me back to reality as I dive deeper into my own mind.

“She turned you into vampyr,” Cami confirms. I nod.

“We didn’t know what it would be, exactly. Vampyr existed long before me, but they come from the cursed bloodlines, creatures, born and bitten. But me, I was something different. The power I took in during that ritual set me apart from the rest of them. The stories of the carnage I wrecked on the Ottomans and their shifter allies, how we became a nightmare to them—that’s why they call me leechi. Abomination. I had their power and strength, but without the weakness of sunlight or silver. And when I made you, I passed most of that onto you. And when the Dark Gifts of the Blood manifested in ways that the First Bloods had never encountered … we are dangerous to them because there are no checks and balances to us. We eat when they can only consume blood, we heal too quickly, we have beasts where they do not. We are power. Lady Hecate and the Sanguinus Lunaria gave us that.”

I can practically see the gears behind Camille’s eyes turning as she chews over what I’ve told her, arranging it within that vault of her mind, siphoning the new information from what she’s always known.

“And you became Lady Hecate’s consort after she turned you?”

I nod.

“She found the Sanguinus Lunaria and performed it. I had to choose to drink the poison.” I swallow, knowing I need to tell her all of it, if we’re going for transparency. “I turned some of the others. The warriors that survived the battle with me, but there was … I was in a lot of pain, ami. Emotionally, I was a rage-filled, angry monster. We destroyed our attackers, but the hate that filled me filled them—tainted their rebirth. They became lost to their brutality. It burned away their humanity, and I watched as they returned home, with new thirst, and no enemies left to vanquish. Some turned on their households. We didn’t know anything about the side effects. Didn’t call it a curse then, you see. We were changed. And in the end, to save the rest of the survivors, I had to put down my most loyal captains. Murder of your brothers. It changes a person, and for me, I was already altered. We bound my power to Lady Hecate so she could siphon off the edge and fulfill herself. We rebuilt, but I was never the same. I was bitter and angry, and I had no lust for rule.”

“Did you love her? Lady Hecate?” she asks as I consider.

“I did, in my own way. I wasn’t in love with her, but I was grateful. I loved Mina, and she loved another whom she never spoke of. We were, I think, placeholders for the real thing for one another. A bandage over the wounds they left on us, with assured destruction if left to our own devices. I let her draw from this seemingly endless well of power, and in turn, she curbed my more destructive desires. Eventually, she healed. I didn’t. Instead, I drove her away, and I resented her for it because I was miserable and alone. I left an edict for the line of succession, spread rumors of my brutality to keep Wallachia safe, and then left.”

Camille’s grip on my hands hasn’t relented, and I realize that those unshed tears are now rolling down my face in a rare display. I’ve taught my girls that embracing their emotions is what keeps us human, but this, this grief, is nearly overwhelming.

“Where did you go? Papa, you must have been so alone with all this.” Cami’s own tears come, but they’re angry because she thinks I’ve suffered.