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“What I have,” Mircea corrected sharply. “A magical disease that I passed on to Dorina, and which is killing her. You know this.”
“What I know is that ye’re not taking her to some lunatic in the damned desert—”
“I will do what I must!”
“—and letting him carve her up—”
“He isn’t—will you listen?” Mircea grabbed the old man’s wrist, because he’d jumped to his feet, as if he planned to spirit Dorina away while Mircea was too weak to stop him. “He isn’t going to carve up anything. He’s going to cast a spell that divides her mind, walling off the vampire-based insanity and allowing her to live a normal life. Isn’t that what we’ve wanted?”
“No! That’s what ye’ve wanted! Ye hate what ye are, even now, after all this time. Ye can’t accept it, blame it for costing you—”
“Careful.” They didn’t talk about his deceased wife. They just didn’t.
Except for tonight, apparently.
“Why careful?” Horatiu demanded harshly. “Elena’s dead because of that damned murderous bastard of a brother of yours, not for anything ye could have—”
“She’s dead because I left her! Alone and unprotected! Just like I left Dorina—”
“Ye didn’t even know she existed!”
“And that makes it better?” Mircea got up, despite the fact that there was no room to pace in their closet of a kitchen. Or in the rest of the shack he called home these days. A dainty old lady dipping her toes in the surf, the man who sold it to him had said. When the reality was that it was a roof and little else, one that looked like it could collapse into the sea at any moment. He should be glad to have it nonetheless; plenty had less. But he resented it, like he resented having to fawn and crawl to the praetor, to the wealthy so-called healers who had yet to heal a damned thing, to the whole world!
When he was alive, he’d led armies in suits of armor that cost more than this house, possibly more than the whole street. He’d returned to palatial dwellings, servants, the finest of food. And gold, so much that he’d become careless with it, and had to be chastised by his father, because too much liberality could be viewed as a sign of weakness.
He didn’t miss the money—most of the time—or the trappings and finery. He didn’t mind living in poverty, in mended clothes and patched shoes, in a city where ostentatious wealth was the only birthright anyone cared about. He didn’t even mind the contemptuous glances—
All right, that was a lie. They burned almost as hot as the sun, but he could deal with them. He couldn’t deal with this. Watching his daughter die, eaten alive by the curse that had already stolen his life, his wife, everything he cared about. And was now determined to deprive him of the last thing of value he had left.
It wouldn’t succeed.
Not this time.
“I can’t kill it,” he told Horatiu. “It’s part of her now. But I can trap it, imprison it, wall it away. This mage said he’s done it before, but it takes a fantastic amount of power, more than he possesses or I can afford—”
“Then this is over.”
“Like hell it’s over!” Mircea rounded on the old man. “He doesn’t have the power now, but I’m going to get it for him. And when I do, the vampire part of Dorina will never be a problem again.”
“The vampire part.” Horatiu’s rheumy eyes met his, and there was fire in them. “D’ye hear yourself? Has this latest charlatan rattled your brain, or did the sun cook it?”
“Have a care—”
“I am! I do! And the sense that has somehow left you.” The old man gripped his arms, and Mircea allowed it, despite the pain. Because Horatiu looked pained, too. And worried, more than Mircea thought he’d ever seen before. “She’s your daughter—all of her—aye, the vampire part, too. How d’ye think we found you tonight? Do ye think a human could have tracked you in time, through the maze of streets around here?”
“She is human.” Mircea pulled away, furious that Horatiu couldn’t understand. “She has abilities, yes, because of the disease, just as I do. But it’s killing her—”
“And this mage won’t? Men like him prey on the desperate, telling ye what ye want to hear, to gain what they want in return. He’s fed you a story!”
“He’s also the first decent chance we’ve had! The first to hold out any real hope—”
“Aye, that’s how they get you. They’re purveyors of hope, of dreams—and nothing else!”
“And how would you know?”
“How would you? Because he told you?”
“No. Because she did.” Mircea looked up, in the direction of the room where his daughter slept. “Dorina followed me tonight, to the praetor’s. Not in body,” he added, because Horatiu was looking alarmed. “Mentally. You were right about her gifts.”
