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Mircea handed the sleeping child to her mother, who simpered at him past a luxurious brown beard. He took my hand and pulled me outside, into the garden Olga cultivated in the tiny space between buildings. It had a porch swing in a corner, facing a slate patio with a few tubs of greenery. Enough light seeped through the slats in the office blinds to stripe the patio in orange and umber, while the full moon on the pavement turned everything else silver.
“He wasn’t a brother,” Mircea said. “He was a disease, from which the family suffered for centuries.”
“So that’s why you killed him?”
Mircea watched me, eyes liquid black in the dark. “I thought your Fey friend did that.”
I gave a laugh so hard it hurt my throat. “Don’t try it. Drac grew up fighting you; there’s no way he could have mistaken Caedmon’s style for yours.”
I should have read the signs sooner: Drac accepting Mircea without question, Mircea calling him “Vlad” when Caedmon had never heard that name, the fear of fire no Fey would have had. But it hadn’t been until I’d spoken to Caedmon that I figured it out. ?subrand had jumped him halfway around the house, trying to finish what he’d started and remove his main obstacle to the throne. Caedmon joined the party only after the excitement was over, once he and Heidar had beaten the bastard into submission.
“Louis-Cesare asked me to take a look at your mysterious Fey,” Mircea said, not attempting to deny it. “He thought Caedmon might really be ?subrand or Alarr, bringing their war into our world. And because of the work I do for the Senate, I have met both of them.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“I did not kill Vlad, Dorina. The lovely Olga did that.”
“After you maneuvered him into position.” He raised a brow and I scowled. I wasn’t in the mood for games tonight. “I’ve never seen you fight that poorly,” I said flatly. “You wanted him to die, but you didn’t want to do it yourself. Why?”
“Because it was what he wanted.”
“I don’t understand.”
“He wanted to die by my hand. Wanted to force me to do what I blamed him for, and fracture the family yet again. I denied him that.”
“What family?” I asked, my voice bitter.
“We were a family, Dorina, however dysfunctional. We watched each other’s backs; we killed for each other; we saved each other’s lives again and again. And, yes, sometimes we hated each other. But we did not betray each other. We did not prey on each other. Only Vlad did that.”
“Radu attacked him first.”
“No.” The air between us suddenly felt tangible. “The family was broken long before that.”
I swallowed, the fear in my throat thick enough to taste. I’d asked to meet him—demanded it, really—but now I wasn’t certain it had been such a good idea. Maybe if I just let it go, refused to acknowledge those stupid dreams as anything important, I could ignore it all a while longer.
Cool fingers closed on my wrist. The odd lighting cast strange shadows on Mircea’s face, leaving him lean and elegant, but also austere and forbidding. I decided I wanted another drink. “Dorina… be very sure.”
“It’s my right to know,” I said automatically. Taking the opposite side from Mircea was so ingrained that it was out before I’d really decided anything. And then it was too late.
“I left her,” he began simply, without preamble. “I saw to it that she was financially secure, but I left. I couldn’t begin to comprehend what had happened to me; how could I ask her to do so? I didn’t want to see her turn away when she realized… what I had become.”
I didn’t even try to pretend that I wasn’t following him. “And when you came back?”
Lounging in the swing, Mircea looked completely at peace, though there was a tension to his body that spoke of leashed energy, as if staying so perfectly still was a matter of conscious will. “When I came back, I found her village burnt to the ground and its people dead, of ‘plague’ or so I was told. It was not implausible, such things had happened before. And yet…”
“You didn’t believe it.” Mircea lied. It was what he did, what he’d always done, one of his essential tactics for survival. And when unavoidable circumstance forced him to tell the truth, he told as little of it as possible. If anyone could spot a lie in anothe
r, it was him.
“No, I didn’t believe it.”
Suddenly, I couldn’t take it anymore. The pressure welled up in my throat until I thought I would choke on it. Whatever it was, I wanted it over—I wanted to know. “Just tell me!”
“After I left, your mother realized she was with child. She intended to keep you, but once your… condition… became known, she was subject to a great deal of pressure by superstitious villagers to give you away. It was an act she almost immediately regretted. But you weren’t in a fixed location, at a home where you could easily be retrieved. The Gypsies wandered where they would, often even across borders into other lands. She looked for you for years, spending most of the money I had left her in the search, but to no avail. Finally, in desperation, she went to Tirgoviste.”
“Why?” No Gypsies in their right minds ever went there. Drac had viewed them as leeches on the landscape.
“To beg Vlad to help her.” Mircea’s voice was raw.
