Blood-Bound [ Lore of Penrua: Book I ]

65

When Korvan opened the door to the bedchamber, the place was dark. He paused on the threshold, surveying the room. He felt ill-at-ease, but there was nothing out of place.

Being here, though, was enough to shake his calm. He closed the door behind him without a sound, moving into the room on silent feet. In his mind, it was another night, a night very long ago.

In his mind, the door did not close quietly. It slammed.

"Father?"

The room had been different then, marked by the subtle disarray of a boy's chamber: a jacket left carelessly thrown over a chair, books haphazardly stacked by the bed, telltale crumbs from pilfered sweets on the floor. The palace servants were hard-pressed to keep up with the disorder; children left their signs everywhere.

Korvan turned his head. That spirit globe, on its tall stand in the corner, had been glowing that night. And at its foot had sprawled the boy, a book open before him on the floor.

Upon seeing his father, Koreti had scrambled to his feet, wide-eyed ...

"Your Grace—I know I should be abed. I was studying."

Korvan stands staring at the boy, seeing him with new eyes. The sleep shirt, wrinkled, the skinny legs, the naked feet. The disheveled brown hair. The guilty face. How could he ever have thought this child his own?

"Father, it's late, what are you—?" Remembering his manners halfway through the question, Koreti seems to choke on it; he chooses words that are less direct. "Is something wrong, Your Grace?"

At his sides, Korvan's hands tighten into fists, and they quiver. He is breathing hard. It feels like his blood is on fire with the rage of it all, but he reins it in, tightens his hold. He makes himself look: he makes himself see the lie his wife has told him, the lie she has made him live for thirteen years.

Koreti is afraid now. He stands, pathetic and small, looking more like a child than the young man he has become. He shifts on his feet, clearly uncertain what to do, unsure what is expected of him.

Korvan takes a few steps closer, advancing across the chamber.

Koreti shrinks back, lifting his hands. "Father—"

The sound of the blow is brutal in the quiet room, and somehow satisfying. His hand still raised, Korvan watches Koreti pick himself up off the floor with his skinny arms quivering. When the boy's face turns back up to him, his expression is one of betrayal.

Korvan, though, is the one who has been betrayed.

There is blood on the corner of Koreti's mouth. Unconsciously, Korvan wipes the hand that struck him against the front of his jacket, noticing as he does that tears are welling in the boy's familiar brown eyes. For so long he has watched this one from afar, fiercely proud. At times, he has felt like his heart would burst with it: the pride, the joy, the love. He has wondered sometimes, watching the boy turn the pages of a book, or bend to kiss his mother's hand, how he could have created something so blessed, so divine. In Koreti he has seen his past and his future. His purpose. His soul. To be a father is to be a god, he had thought, and to be a servant, too.

This one would have been his heir. This one would have taken the crown. Thank the Goddess his wife admitted her crime, for surely the empire would have fallen in the hands of a mixed-born sovereign.

"F-father," Koreti says.

"No. You are no son of mine," Korvan replies. And he is surprised, as he says it, to feel the pain of this betrayal through the anger at long last. It steals his breath for a moment.