Foxx frowned. “Umm…no. Wes, now that I know you won’t be reporting my adorable ass to the government, I feel the need to tell you that I’m over seven hundred years old.”
He jumped when Harlow yanked his arm free with a huff, and found the dhampir glaring down at him.
“What?!”
“Two weeks, Foxx. You have known him for TWO weeks, and yet you tell him how old you are. It took me MONTHS to get it out of you! And I was fucking you for most of those months!”
Foxx wrinkled his nose. “Yes, but it was a game between us. And I did still tell you, so does the timing really matter?”
“You told me AFTER I was changed, Foxx! AFTER! He’s still human!”
“Still?” Wes asked, sounding slightly alarmed. “I would like to note that my plan is to remain human. Though it does seem I’ve stepped onto a landmine somehow.”
“Well… I was just being overly cautious, okay?! I told you, and I would have told you while you were still human if you hadn’t brought it up so much! I just dragged it out because teasing you about it was fun!
“Anyway, I told Wes because there are a hell of a lot of pointless questions to be asked that I could never answer, just due to shit having happened so bloody long ago. And asking about my first memory is a bit pointless.”
Harlow grunted in response. Foxx slipped his arm back through his and pouted. “I did tell you, so it shouldn’t matter.”
The man’s gaze flicked down to him. “Brat.”
“Old man.” He giggled.
Wes cleared his throat. “I suppose, rather than your first, I should have asked about your earliest memory that is still retained.”
Foxx’s smile dropped. “My earliest? Well…my earliest is…of my father yelling…”
“So you do remember some of back then?”
“I…” He started to say he didn’t remember specifics, but that wasn’t true.
Foxx remembered a startling amount, if he really sat down and thought about it. He didn’t remember every year, every day…but he remembered enough. Probably in the same way that most humans remembered their childhood.
He squeezed Harlow’s arm, before deciding he didn’t want to look at Wes any more. So he buried his face against the dhampir as he said, “I…remember enough.”
“Your father, tell me about him.”
“My father…is…a devout man.Wasa devout man, I mean…” Foxx straightened up, forcing himself to meet Wes’ eyes as he said, “He’s nothing now, just dust in a grave.”
While meeting the human’s gaze, Foxx found nothing there to clue him in on what Wes was thinking. The man just had a small smile on his face, his eyes showing no greater emotion… It was…annoying.
“Though perhaps he’s not even that now. I doubt the grave is still there. The town and the castle it surrounded certainly isn’t. It fell…during one of our skirmishes with the Scots.”
Despite the awkwardness he was feeling…Foxx found he had to suppress a smile. The memory of learning of his town's fate had always brought him an immense amount of joy. Especially as he learned that in the fight, Edmund’s family supposedly fell with their castle. There was no love lost there between him and those arrogant bastards. A Lord and his family were not to socialize or even speak to a lowly blacksmith’s son.
Though…there hadn’t been much talk of Edmund, or any mention of him dying with them. Oddly, there was very little talk of him at all since around the time he’d had Foxx captured. Besides the vague rumors that his family shipped him off, that was.
Foxx blinked, realizing he’d been lost in thought while Wes had patiently been waiting for him to say more, as he had intended to do for Harlow. “He was a blacksmith. Not rich, not poor. My mother was kept comfortable, though I heard she remarried later when he fell with the town—a man of high status, in fact.” Foxx smirked. “Then again, she’d always been a social climber. I’m sure my siblings hadn’t minded the change. Her new man was quite rich.”
Wes took a deep breath in and out. “It’s interesting that you mentioned his faith before his occupation. Occupation back then was everything, usually defining most people.”
Foxx snorted. “His occupation was how he survived, but he never liked his job. His craft likely would have shown that, leaving us penniless, if not for his bloody dumb luck of being born with natural fucking talent.
“The man was obsessed with damnation, to the point of learning Latin so he could read the words of ‘God’ himself. He, at one point, practically starved us for a year, just to get his hands on a vulgate bible.
“So yes, while most were defined by their occupation, he defined himself by his devotion. Which, to his endless horror, meant my very existence, and continued presence near him, was risking the one thing he held most precious—his soul.”
The human frowned. “You…stayed near after you turned?”
