“She has a weakness for mortal men, but she doesn’t have a great track record in maintaining them,” he said. I wondered if that meant she’d killed your father as well. “At the coastal edge of our land, is an archipelago of islands. Has Henri mentioned them?”
“Yes, he calls themhisislands.”
Lucian snorted. “Henri spent a lot of time there in his adolescence. He was quite broody, as I’m sure you can imagine. Mother gifted them to him when he became a commander in the Roman Army. An overindulgence, if you ask me, but he is her firstborn. In any case, between two of those islands is a very narrow passageway.”
“With sirens?” I asked.
Lucian nodded. “It’s a naturally treacherous strait. Because of sailors’ many misadventures over the years, it transformed into a Shade Vale. And our mother trained the dybbuks to mimic her voice. At her orchestration, their singing would lure men to shore, and their blood would nourish our extended family. It was tidier than feeding upon the locals. Henri and I didn’t know about this custom until we were much older, but if she knew a ship were passing, our mother would haunt the islands and try her luck at seduction. She was much younger then and had a voracious appetite, in more ways than one.”
Mater moaned in protest.
“He’s an adult now, Mother. No need to be so modest.” Lucian smirked. “On one such occasion, during a bad storm with the sirens howling louder than the wind, a Roman naval ship wrecked against the rocks. Our mother, with the help of her hunting party, retrieved as many bodies as they were able, and one of those men happened to be our father, still living. He was being ferried from his homeland in Germania to meet with the emperor of Rome. It was a diplomatic voyage, and his intention was to take the emperor’s sister as his bride, which would extend, through proxy, the Roman Empire into Germanic lands and ensure the tribes there were treated fairly in exchange for Roman rule.”
Mater grunted again, and Lucian responded, “Yes, I’m going to tell him that part too.” He smiled mischievously. “On one of the islands is a small fort meant for defense and imprisonment. There were torture chambers, and some were also used for carnal pleasure. It was there our mother kept our father in bondage just short of three months. Bleeding him and having her way with him. She was merciless in her torment, but his body was young and resilient, and of course, our mother was exceedingly beautiful. Still is,” he assured her with a light pat. “At the end of it, I supposed they’d developed a strange sort of bond.”
“There’s a name for that,” I said. “Stockholm Syndrome.”
“Yes, well psychoses weren’t so well-defined back then. In any case, our father proposed marriage, and our mother refused him, numerous times. He wouldn’t leave, though, such was his obsession with her, and he drove her to the point that she threatened to kill him, yet again. As the story goes, he prayed to the gods for virility, made his offerings, and the result was Henri’s conception.
“Nephilim offspring are a rare blessing, and they were considered such at the time, and so our mother relented. They were married and their kingdoms united.” Lucian sighed. “He was a lot like Henri, our father. Firm but generous. Infuriatingly stubborn. Mater fought her feelings for so long, but in the end, she surrendered to them. Isn’t that romantic?” he asked with stars in his eyes.
“Parts of it.” Other aspects were extremely disturbing.
“Love is for fools and peasants,” our mother rasped. She hadn’t looked away since Lucian had begun his story. Her hair was now clean, and Lucian set to drying it lovingly.
“Come now, Mother,” he teased, “you were neither a fool nor a peasant, but you were very much in love with our father. And without him, you wouldn’t have birthed the most handsome of your three sons.” Lucian’s smile was blinding. “I’ve been waiting so long for a human to enchant me enough that I don’t wish to kill them.” Lucian shook his head sadly. “But they’ve all turned out to be disappointments.”
“You might want to lower your expectations,” I said.
“Maybe,” he said without much commitment. “But I have had a great many thrilling trysts.”
God help the man or woman who caught Lucian’s attention.
Mater, now pink-skinned, clear-eyed, and with her damp hair shining, looked much more like the woman from my dreams.
“You look beautiful,” I said to her shyly.
Her lips curved into a smile, and she clutched my hand between her bony fingers. “So are you, my son.”
I caught Lucian staring at me with a mixture of menace and longing.
“Must run in the family,” he said and licked his lips hungrily.
“YOU NEED A BATH,”I said to you a little while later. I’d finished tending to Mater and found you preparing to bed down for the night.
“Is it that bad?” You sniffed your underarm discreetly.
“Yes,” I said but that wasn’t the only reason. I wanted you naked, not for me but for my fingers. They hadn’t touched your bare skin in a while, and you owed them that. “Come with me.”
I retrieved the basket of toiletries I’d cobbled together from your supply runs to Ashur’s lair, essentials for a relaxing day at the Shade Vale Spa. The warm mineral baths were the only luxury this miserable mine had to offer, and I made the most of them.
I led you to my favorite pool, a couple of chambers away and downstream from our drinking source, where the water collected in a natural hollow that reached the tops of my thighs. There was a ledge for sitting—the flowing water had weathered away the sharp edges and left it smooth and slick.
I undressed you and instructed you to soak while I washed our clothes, then wrung them out and laid them on some nearby rocks to dry. The lamp I’d brought with us lit the cave in a dim glow, but our eyes were sharp so that it was enough. I’d hoped the warm water would release some of the tension from your muscles, and as I started kneading your neck and shoulders, it seemed that it had.
“Why haven’t you shown me this before?” you asked.
“I tried, but you wouldn’t leave Ashur unsupervised. He’s fine though. And Maxwell is sleeping, and Lucian is watching over Mater. It’s just us here, and I want to take care of you.”
