The Fox’s Tale

I felt the blood drain from my face. “Your father beat you?”

“Had me beaten, yes.” He frowned at the book in front of him. “This alone proves nothing. We’ll need something more concrete before we accuse them of treason.”

“How? What? Why?” The questions tumbled out of me.

“Why? Because accusations of treason are not to be made lightly, even if those you are accusing are loathsome. Perhaps even more so if they are loathsome. Far too easy to work others into a froth when the accused is-”

“No, not that!” I protested in irritation. “I know why we need more evidence before we accuse anyone. Why did your father have you beaten?”

Lucas continued to root through his father’s books and papers. “He had sent me to court as a spy and was furious that I’d been banished. He wanted to know what I had done to cause such an offense and I refused to tell him.”

“But, you’re…”

“I’m what?”

“Incorruptible? I mean, you guys don’t really feel physical pain right? And you heal even faster than Shifters so what was the point?

This question caused Lucas to stop his searching. He sat back down and studied my face. “Have you ever heard of a substance called bog iron?” I shook my head.

“What about a flogger?” he asked.

“I do not like where this is going.”

“Bog iron is the only known substance besides teeth that can penetrate the skin and organs of an Incorruptible. Every morning I was flogged with a cat of nine tails with knots that had been dipped in liquid bog iron. Every night I healed so that my back was smooth and unblemished for them to begin again.

“As for the point of it all, well, it was to break me. To bend me to his will. I was his heir and I looked, I look, the most like him. I imagine he thought because we looked alike that our dispositions would be similar as well. He was wrong.”

“How’d you get away?” I asked softly.

For a brief moment Lucas looked confused. “Oh, you’re under the impression that I was held captive for this. That was not the situation. I presented myself each morning in the courtyard of his palace, he’d ask me to confess, I’d refuse, he’d have me flogged. Wash, rinse, repeat. It was all very tedious.”

“Wait, you willingly let yourself be flogged?” I gasped; incredulous.

“To protect Esma and the future I hoped to have with her, that I still hope to have with her, I would have endured anything. You would do the same for Ellery of this I have no doubt. Besides, the pain of my punishment was nothing compared to how it felt to be told she was with child.”

“Does Esmeralda know?”

“Possibly. There is much we haven’t discussed.”

“So, why’d he stop punishing you? Did he finally realize that you weren’t going to break?”

Lucas sat back and tapped his lips in thought. “I don’t believe Father ever realized that I wasn’t someone he could bend to his will. He did, after all, try to order me to murder my own mother. He stopped the floggings after he tried to make Asher use the flogger on me. To up the sadism factor to it he had begun making my younger brothers come and watch.”

He took a sip of his drink. “One day he dragged Asher forward, shoved the cat into his hands, and ordered him to use it on me. Instead he dropped it, pulled his shirt off and went to stand next to me. Gregor and Vincent, who were eleven and nine at the time, did the same. The members of the Night Guard who had been the ones delivering my punishment weren’t willing to flog children and stood down.”

He closed his eyes at the memories that he was reliving. “Father picked up the cat himself and went to beat all of us, beginning with Vincent, and I stepped between them, catching the cat across my chest and face. I will never forget what he said.

“‘Caring is a weakness Lucas, and a king cannot afford to be weak. If you care for nothing and no one then your enemies will have no leverage over you. I care for nothing, not even you. You are all dead to me. Get out of my sight.’

“Those were the last words he spoke to me for one hundred and sixty six years, until he summoned me to the palace the night I killed him.” He picked up his empty whiskey glass and the house refilled it. He lifted it in a silent gesture of thanks. After taking a sip he continued.

“My father lied though. He cared for many, many, things: power, his legacy, our family name, his lineage, keeping the Incorruptible bloodlines pure. In the end that was his undoing, caring for things instead of his people.”

He drank some more and then went on. “Had he not been so consumed with his desire for his own realm he would have realized that I had been given the powers of the High King decades before I executed him. But he was unaware, until the very end, of what he’d wrought within his kingdom, within his family.”

Lucas laughed a bitter laugh. “I broke him like a twig and my only regrets are that I could only kill him once and that I didn’t do it sooner.” Lucas drained his glass. “Let your enemies believe you are weak and their conceit will be their downfall, Alexander.” He titled his head back and stared at the ceiling.

“Wow.” The house refilled my tumbler and I drank from it gratefully. “Wow,” I repeated. “Your dad was a moron.”

“What?” he asked, amusement filling his voice. “There was much he didn’t understand, but he wasn’t a moron.”

“No, he had to have been a moron. Anyone who could spend more than five minutes with you and think that you were weak in any way would have to be a total moron.”

“Yes, well, he didn’t understand love. He truly thought it was a weakness, and because I cared for my mother, for my siblings, for the women he discarded, for Laurent, he was convinced that I was weaker than a butterfly’s wing.”

“Who’s Laurent?” Lucas rolled his head so that he could look at me. His expression conveyed his sentiments. “Oh. Does Esmeralda know about him?”

“Yes. And he knew of her, at least in part.”

I blew out a breath. “I’m glad you killed him.”

“Laurent? Laurent isn’t dead, he lives in Provence.” When I rolled my eyes at him Lucas realized who I was talking about. “Oh, you mean Father.” He looked puzzled for a moment and then said, “thank you?”

I snorted. “I’m sorry you had to, and I hate that you went through what you went through, but if he were still alive Ellery would-”

“Ellery would be in even more danger,” he mused as he propped his head up on his left hand.

“I was going to say that Ellery would be headed there to kill him herself.”

Lucas paused, imaging that scenario and smiled for the first time in hours. “She is very protective of those she cares for, isn’t she?”

“Can’t imagine where she gets that from,” I said with a snigger.

“Oh, don’t start that again.”

The alcohol was really hitting me because I asked, “what do you want your name to be? Granddaddy? Pops? Poppy?”

Lucas lurched off the sofa, a huge grin on his face. “Keep talking, smartass.” Whatever the house had been giving him was having the same effect. He staggered towards me as I continued to rattle off nicknames for grandfathers.

“Paw-paw? Pappy? Pop-pop? No wait, I’ve got it, Big Daddy!” Lucas tackled me off the chair I was sitting in and we tumbled to the floor, knocking over a stack of books as we went.

“I’ll show you Big Daddy, you insolent whelp,” he barked as I cackled with laughter. Lucas pinned me on my stomach, my right hand behind my back and then sat on me. “Apologize!”

“Never!” I said through my laughter. I put my head down and blew out a huge breath. My eyes focused on the book in front of me. “Wait a second, what’s that?”

“You diversionary tactics won’t work with me, young man.”

“No, Lucas, stop, I’m serious. Something is wedged inside this book.” Lucas slid off of me and I sat up, pulling the book in question into my lap.

A thin, leather bound volume, no bigger than my palm, was stuck inside the middle of a book of mechanical conversion tables. I pulled it out and saw that the title was written in an alphabet I didn’t recognize, the gilding faded to almost nothing in places.

“Put it down.”

I looked up, confused, at Lucas, who was now standing over me. “What? Why?”

“I said put it down, Alexander.”