Love has a strange way of working. It evokes contradictions in us all. How did this man, Heskel Angul the Silverknight captain, go from slaying vampires to loving them?
Well, the firstborn son would find out.
And, as he would come to learn . . . it was all a lie.
The son left his hideout and returned to the city he once called home. He located Heskel Angul on the outskirts of the city, living a quaint life in the countryside away from the bustle of Olhav.
He barged into the man’s dwelling, expecting resistance, but found none: just an old, decrepit man still clinging to life and a failed rebellion left behind.
Except itwasn’ta failed rebellion left behind, the son learned.
All the years away, all the years wondering why Heskel never turned at Alacine’s urging, it was because Heskel Angul had awoken that sizzling ember and turned it into a seed of righteousness to his lifelong cause.
Heskel never planned to give Alacine Mortis a pleasant life. He planned to get close to her, kill her, and slay as many vampire bastards as he could get his hands on before death curled its cold fingers around his aching heart.
The Silverknight general had never let go his beliefs. He had simply hidden them, licked his wounds, and nurtured his hate for vampire kind. Now, wedded to the greatest enemy of all, he wassoclose to realizing his final dream and meeting his Truehearts on the other side.
Heskel would go out in a ball of fire, formed from the smoldering embers of his youthful rebellion.
This was all learned by the firstborn son by the parchments, plans, and schemes laying around Heskel’s dwelling. When he burst in to slay Heskel in order to hurt Alacine, he had never considered that Heskel planned to hurt Alacine himself.
In an abrupt turnaround, the firstborn son of Alacine Mortis had a new reason to kill Heskel. It was no longer vengeance, butpreservation.He could not simply allow this ancient human to kill his mother, half-brother, and all the others of the vampiric courts of Olhav.
This man wanted death to all vampires, and in the end he was only met with death himself, on the edge of the firstborn’s blade.
The son emerged in Olhav triumphant. He raised his own army of sycophants and followers. He promised great change in the community of Olhav—a different way of doing things.
Meanwhile, Alacine was hurt immeasurably with Heskel’s death. With her firstborn son becoming a powerful, popular nobleblood in his own right, with a court of his own, she could not directly move against him.
As she had feared, her son’s ambitions had come to fruition. He was no longer a nuisance, but an adversary.
And it’s been that way ever since.
It should be obvious by this point, dear reader, who this firstborn son is. He is the Sireslayer: killer of his own father, co-killer of Alacine’s husband who begot numerous bastards with other women, and killer of Lukain’s father Heskel. He is the same vampire who saved your life from Alacine’s cruel vampiric husband, only to be tossed aside the moment it was convenient for her.
He slayed your father, Lukain, not out of a sense of hate over you, but out of a sense of duty to his kind.
And yes, he stole your father’s silver sword, to use as a symbol of what the Silverknights so nearly succeeded in doing: eradicating the world of vampires, dhampir, and anyone associated with the monsters from the silver mines . . . including Heskel’s own son.
You.
There is the truth. Your mother is a liar, Lukain, and has twisted your mind with a varnished truth. She called your half-brother a killer, when she herself murdered her husband to be free of his bloodbond over her. She filled your mind with the idea your brother was an ambitious monster, wicked and self-interested, when she herself was the monster all along. Always plotting. Always scheming. Always rising to the next level of the Five Ministries. For over one hundred fifty years, Alacine Mortis has been this way.
And now the tide has turned, and for the first time, she isscared.
If you don’t believe me or this story I’ve penned . . . then why don’t you ask your mother for the simple truth?
The ancient vampire sits back from his desk, pleased with his work. With a great sigh, he straightens out his back, hearing the pleasant groans and cracking of his bones, and folds all the pages into a small leather-bound notebook.
Then he realizes he’s forgotten something. Muttering to himself, he flips to the final page once more.
In elegant script, he signs his work—
Alacine’s firstborn son, your brother, Skartovius Ashfen.
Chapter 44
Lukain
