His older brother lifted one shoulder slightly. “The Poshani are not like us.”
Oleg glanced over his shoulder again, looking at the black-robed company of soldiers staring at the stage with little to no expression.
“You’re right,” he murmured. “The Poshani appear to actually like each other.” There was a burst of laughter from the humans in Kezia’s box, and he saw Tatyana’s fellow terrin lean over and whisper something that made both women smile.
“Humph.” Rudov straightened his shoulders. “It’s a different culture.”
“Is it better?”
Rudov glanced at him. “Better? No.” His brother glanced to the left, examining the military line of Truvor’s sons. “They could never be what we are.”
“I don’t think they want to be.” Oleg lifted his right arm, settling it on the edge of the box and crossing his feet at the ankles.
Rudov cocked his head and raised an eyebrow at Oleg’s casual posture.
None of his brothers moved. Though Pavel glanced at Oleg, he sat up straight, then returned his attention to the stage. Even Ivan, his most incorrigible sibling, could not bring himself to break his formal posture when surrounded by his kin.
What had Truvor made them? Disciplined, yes. Cold. Martial.
Oleg had stained his soul when he hired assassins to end his sire’s madness. He had broken the law of their clan by killing his own brothers to prevent even more violence after their sire’s death.
He had rid their clan of the cruelest among them, stripping their empire down to the coldest and most brutally disciplined of their number. The young knyaz of the Kievan Rus expected utter obedience and complete control.
And decade by decade, century by frozen century, the blood of Truvor’s sons was buried even farther under the frozen ground where it had spilled, and the heart of the warriors remaining slowly froze with the blood of their dead brethren.
Rudov leaned over to him. “Is something wrong with you?”
“No.” He stared at the stage.
Long ago, Oleg had remembered their names. Once, those names had been burned into his mind. But centuries after Truvor’s death, the legacy of his sire’s bloodline had been reduced to the stoic immortals sitting in the front of Rudov’stheater box and dozens of blood-red tiles decorating a hidden mosaic deep in the Carpathian Mountains.
The only confession Oleg’s ragged soul would allow.
He glanced at Tatyana again, felt her blood and energy moving within his own. In that moment, his mate’s amnis felt like the only living thing about him.
He and all his brothers were not a family. They were the legacy of a monster.
It was what it was.
Oleg looked at the brother sitting in the middle of the front row. Ivan Sokholov. The vampire who had not walked down the stairs. The one who had served him—however unfaithfully—for centuries.
“We kill Ivan.”
“Just like that?”
It was never just like that. Killing his brother would kill another part of himself, but it could not be helped. His soul was already stained beyond redemption.
Was he any better than Truvor, pitting one child against the other? Was he better than the father who laughed at their pain and encouraged those who could not cope to wait in the center of his old wooden fort for the sun to take them?
How many mornings had Oleg woken to the smell of burning flesh in the courtyard?
“We could have chosen death. We could have all chosen death, and some of us did.”
Oleg’s nose twitched at the memory.
“What is it?” Rudov asked.
Oleg shook his head. “Nothing. The play is quite funny.”
