Tristan’s eyes, no doubt from his Father, were blue. But not a normal blue. They were deep dark, midnight blue that sometimes seemed black. But Nastasia had her mother’s eyes—Ash’s eyes—in a clear, pale sky blue. So now Tristan had one dark blue and one light blue eye, a startling contrast against his black hair and soft olive tone.
Ash came up next to him to study him in the mirror. “I waited until your other wounds had healed, hoping that your eye might too…”
“But it didn’t.”
She shook her head. “No. I had no choice but to replace your eye.”
“Like Wren has to…”
She nodded. “Hopefully, since you are essentially a Master, you will not have to keep replacing the eye as Wren does. How does it feel?”
Shaking his head, staring at himself in the mirror, he said, “Fine. I mean, it doesn’t feel any different from the left except that I see much more sharply out of it and there’s more colors…”
“The perk of a vampire’s eye.”
Frowning, Tristan turned to face her. “There’s no perk to mutilating your own daughter.”
Ash took a moment to gather herself, letting her emotions show for once. “No. But I must believe something good came from this. If you having her eye is that good, then I am glad for it.” She tilted her head and smiled sadly. “You have a piece of me in you.”
When a dirty thought crossed his mind and Ash grinned in answer, Tristan knew things were going to be okay. If just for today.
21: Mutilation is the Most Sincere Form of Flattery
ASH had just reached the bottom landing when she fell into a graceful crouch. Tristan on the other hand, cried out, flailing madly and barely missed the ice missile. He was a lot less elegant than Ash and landed on his ass on the last step, but managed to avoid getting his head taken off because, clearly, that’s what the vampire was aiming for.
“Fucking A, Desmond!” He shook his head in dismay but really, he saw the attack as a good thing. The vampire was starting to remember he had higher gifts. If he was able to focus enough to use them, to make a nasty missile of ice, then maybe he was coming to. He’d move up to ass scratching then real human speech soon.
Ash sighed as Nastasia cackled with petty amusement alongside Desmond’s own manic laughter. “Remind me to look up the spell that mitigates seikonō.”
“There’s a spell for that?”
Behind them, Wren only sighed but Ash was nodding. “It doesn’t block all seikonō, but it will lessen the violence, slow it down… And since you are the resident pythia whose blood shall quicken it, the spell will warn you of seikonō use—if you didn’t already possess such a trait as an Uruwashi.”
Tristan was left standing at the bottom of the stairs, stunned. He had no idea pythia could do that sort of thing. That he could do it. He still had a lot to learn about himself.
Wren went to Desmond, talking softly to him, begging for him to calm down. Desmond was still wild with anger but he was more focused now. He looked like he was processing the words and understanding them.
The cells were built for vampires, which meant a video system would inevitably get zapped by an angry captive with seikonō. The only option to keep eyes on their prisoner was a window too small to fit through. It was this tiny three by three window that Nastasia was glaring at them through.
“Where is Pollux?” Ash asked.
“You think I’ll tell you? Stupid fucking cow!” she screamed and then looked at Tristan. “Give me my eye back, you cunt!”
Tristan unconsciously touched his face near the eye that wasn’t his. “This isn’t going so well, is it?”
Ash scowled at him. “What were you expecting?”
Tristan swallowed hard, taking a step back. What could he say to the woman whose eye he was wearing? Besides, whatever there was to be said here had nothing to do with him. This was between Ash and her daughter.
“You can’t keep me in here forever,” Nastasia spit out. “And I’m going to kill you the moment I’m out because I know you don’t have the balls to kill me, Asta Moriakos.”
Ash shook her head. “You are not strong enough to kill any of us here.”
Nastasia laughed darkly. “Bullshit. Look what I did to his eye! Surprised he can even walk upright after I gutted him.”
Tristan harrumphed as he lifted the hem of his shirt.
“I—I don’t understand.” The girl sounded less sure after seeing his nearly blemish free stomach. Hell, he was impressed himself. “You should be…”
“Hurt? Nah, a little knife won’t hurt me.” He sounded confident as hell but he still didn’t have a clue how he wasn’t half dead. How the nasty old scar from the one who tried to gut him was gone. He was almost back to his pre-Malik state. Even the scar on his forearm seemed lighter than before, though it was hard to tell under the tattoo. It might as well have not existed.
The girl sneered. “Guess I’ll just have to try harder.”
He flipped her off even as Ash pushed him aside.
“Leave him alone,” Ash snapped. “You quarrel is with me. As it always has been.”
“Fucking right it is!” Nastasia screamed so loudly that her voice broke and tears of rage ran down her cheeks. “You should have just killed me instead of letting that monster take me away from your breast as an infant!”
Ash took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I thought he had.”
“Don’t feed me your fucking lies! Do you know how hard it was growing up an orphan in the streets of Turkey? It’s amazing I lived as long as I did. And I was happy! My god, and you just destroyed it all for your own selfishness.”
“Nastasia…” Ash shook her head. “You have known the truth since that day we met in Turkey. You and you alone have decided how you would be thereafter.”
“More bullshit!”
“No one can make you be anything but what you chose to be.”
“You don’t know what it was like, trapped by Malik. To be loved by him.”
“Excuse me?” Ash snapped, her body shaking with rage. “You think to tell me I know nothing of what it’s like to be under Malik’s thumb? I was a puppet to his machinations two decades under the guise of love and freewill until he grew bored and led me to you, my daughter, my own flesh and blood. I was prepared to leave the man that I saw as a god, my savior and lover all for you.”
Nastasia scowled but kept her mouth shut.
Empowered, Ash took a step forward and Tristan moved back to join Wren. Desmond had fallen silent long ago and they were all watching in silent awe to the family drama playing out before them. Desmond actually seemed to be following the conversation.
“Devastated doesn’t even come close to explaining how I felt the moment I realized that the past seventeen years with that man were all a lie. The prologue of his stratagem, his elegy of entrapment. All I wanted was you, however you’d have me, a dear friend or a mother… I was willing to leave my personal God for you. Since you grew to feel the same for him, you must understand what that meant.”
Nastasia was silent and Tristan glanced at Wren. He stood with his head bowed and Tristan knew that the man was remembering Ash’s pain, obviously far more intimate to it than Tristan. But he didn’t need to know the details of their tragic history, he could feel the weight of every single emotion Ash felt like a weight on his soul. Tristan thought he knew pain, understood it on a very intimate level. But now that he was connected to Ash, he realized how naive he’d been. That someone could live through that much turmoil and come out as well as Ash did? She was the strongest person Tristan had ever known.
“I chose to give you life with a man I loved. I did not choose to give you up. I did not choose Malik over you. I never would have.”
Scornful, Nastasia said, “But you choose him over me.” Her gaze went to Tristan. “That disgusting half breed cur.”
“Yes,” she answered and both Wren and Tristan made the same little noise of surprise. Not that it was the truth, which it very
much was, but that she admitted it, that was the surprise.
“I am three hundred and sixty-three years old and I have been dead for three hundred and forty-one years of that. No—” She stopped, face contorted in thought and then shook her head. “No, not the full three hundred and forty-one. The past six months…” She looked at Tristan, a soft look on her face. “I have been alive again these past six months.”
“Spare me your bullshit romantic notions.”
“I only speak the truth, my daughter.”
“Don’t fucking call me that!” Nastasia spun around, making a loop around her cell and kicking the back wall for good measure. Desmond echoed her disgruntled grumbling with his own colorful compilation of curses in a show of solidarity even if the man had no idea what was going on. At least he was using human speech again.
“It is what you are, Nastasia. No matter your feelings towards me, I will always be your mother. You will always be my daughter.”
This set Nastasia off into another very loud tangent. Next to Tristan, Wren sighed. He gripped Tristan on the arm and said, “Sorry friend, I’ve had enough of caustic loved ones for the day. I’ll go and see to Elinore.”
Tristan didn’t blame him, wished he could take off too. But that was the old him, running away from his problems, hiding with bullshit stopgaps. He nodded to his friend. “I’ll come up in a bit and make another healing spell for her.”
Wren gave a parting nod before ascending the stairs to the main level. Desmond didn’t like this though and let out an anguished cry. Thankfully he didn’t throw around his water seikonō again, Tristan wasn’t up for dodging ice and cleaning up puddles.
Curious, Tristan dared to get closer and looked in through Desmond’s cell window. The vampire bared his teeth but didn’t toss any seikonō at him. Honestly, the whole thing made Tristan a little sad. Desmond was a dick, but he didn’t deserve this.
“Should be you in that cell,” Nastasia growled. She all but threw herself against the door, shouting through the bars, “With him! Give my fucking eye back!”
Tristan sighed, looking to Ash. She looked tired and worn thin. She was strong and put up a good façade but he knew how much it hurt her to have her own daughter hate her. To have mutilated her the way she did. For him.
He let her know with a nod and a thought that he’d had enough and left her to it. Just as he was mounting the stop step to the main level he stopped and sighed. “Really?”
Kiba turned and smiled. “What?”
He tried to look away, he really did, but the tattoos were captivating. “Why the fuck are you standing in my kitchen naked?”
The wolf shrugged tiredly. “Was just on my way upstairs. I shifted outside so I wouldn’t make a mess.”
“Erm…” He didn’t even know that shifting was a messy affair. “Okay.”
“I’m going to stay in Ellie’s room, if that’s okay. I think she needs someone to stay with her awhile, see if she can sleep.” He hooked a thumb in the air at the man next to him. “Wren says she was scared but he needs to be hidden soon.” He looked up, out the atrium windows. “Sun’s coming up.”
“Maybe put on some clothes first.”
Kiba chuckled. “Of course.”
“Is she any better though?” Tristan directed to Wren.
The vampire shook his head sadly before flinching and looking past him and up. Tristan turned at the slap of bare feet on tile, saw Ellie coming down the stairs and then turned to give Kiba a look. The man gave him a silly crooked smile, tried to cover up with his hands and left the room. He had to pass by Ellie to get up the stairs and despite only wearing a lot of jewelry and tattoos, the girl didn’t even notice.
Her hair was a mess, stuck up on one side. Her complexion was pallid and there were dark circles under her eyes. The samue she was wearing without a doubt came from Ash. It was dark blue and while it was blocky and unflattering, somehow looked adorable on the poor, wrecked girl. “Can I have a drink?”
“Sure, sweetheart,” Tristan said with a smile. She wouldn’t look up to meet anyone’s eye and he hoped to lull any fear she had. Maybe she was afraid of Wren? Did she even understand what Desmond was, that Wren was that too?
When he looked up the man gave him a small shake of his head. He wanted to ask what Wren was hearing but thought it would be rude to do in front of Ellie.
“Can I have hot tea?” she asked when Wren reached into the fridge for the jug of water.
The vampire shut the door and looked piteously at Tristan for help. Chuckling, Tristan walked past the vampire, patting him on the back. “Yeah, I got it. You go on up to bed before its too late.”
Wren bowed his head. “Oyasumi.”
“Night.”
With a sigh, Tristan set about making the hot tea. His mom loved tea, so he was pretty familiar with it. Though, she had an electric kettle to make things more streamlined, Tristan had to make do with boiling water in a pot. He measured out a mug then thought better and added a second portion for himself. Water over the heat, he turned to look at Elinore again.
He’d felt her moving while he had his back to her and found her slumped on a bar stool at the center island, staring down at the quartz countertop. She was pale to start with but she looked about four shades whiter than before, her brown freckles standing out like blood on paper. The place on her neck Desmond had mutilated looked… pretty okay, actually. Tristan remembered a big chunk of flesh having been ripped off but instead of bloody, gaping hole, there was a patch of smooth, bright pink skin. Noticeable, but not hard to look at.
“Ellie?”
She flinched but didn’t look up to acknowledge that Tristan had said her name.
Slowly, he moved around to the other side of the island and slipped onto the end stood, leaving an empty one between them. “Elinore?” he tried again, his voice softer than before. “Will you look at me?”
She was trembling but she forced herself to look up. Her complexion had paled even further and her eyes were wide, pupils blown with fear.
“Ellie, honey?”
She looked him square in the eye that time and he smiled. She must have seen something good in that forced smiled because she relaxed, just a fraction.
“Hey… how are you feeling?”
She blinked, thought a moment, eyes unfocused and then shrugged. “I don’t know. Tried. I guess. Can I have hot tea?
“Yeah, sweetheart. I’m making it now.”
Her gaze darted to the stove and then back to him. The water was almost to boiling point—he could hear it. Fucking, hear it. God, he had a lot of shit to get used to.
“Does—” He stopped, licking his lips. He really didn’t want to give her any ideas, but if she wasn’t offering freely, then yeah, he had to prompt her. “Does anything hurt?”
She stuck her bottom lip out as she seemed to think seriously about the question. She also seemed to relax just a little bit more.
“My neck itches a little…” She ran her fingertips over the pink flesh but didn’t scratch at it. “And I’m tired.”
Tristan nodded as he slipped off the stool to get the boiling water. With his back to her, pouring out two mugs, he asked, “How do you like your tea, sweetheart?”
She didn’t answer and he turned to find her looking confused.
He smiled. “My mom always made hers British, with milk and sugar. Some people like it without anything, or with honey and lemon… What would you like?”
“Can I meet your mom?”
Tristan flinched, not expecting her to ask that. “Um.” He swallowed his emotions back. “Sorry, darling, but you can’t. She died.”
Ellie cocked her head to the side, brow furrow in thought. “Does makes you sad?”
He sighed and went to go stand at the island across from her. “Yeah, it does. Very much.”
“Do you cry?”
God, his throat was closing on him. “Often.” Lately it seemed like that’s all he did. Whatever, he wasn’t afraid to show his feelings. If h
im crying made someone else uncomfortable, they could fuck off.
Ellie stuck her bottom lip out, thinking again before saying, “I don’t think I will cry when my mom dies.”
“Why?” he asked, incredulously.
Ellie shrugged, but she’d pursed her lips in a gesture that told Tristan she wasn’t going to say aloud why. But, really, she didn’t have to, did she? She didn’t love her mother. And that broke Tristan’s heart.
“Elinore,” he said, proud his voice didn’t crack. “Would you like to live here?”
She blinked, obviously thinking again. Boy, this girl… she was either every thoughtful or she was having trouble processing. He was guessing the latter. “With you?”
“Yep. And Ash.”
“And the doggie?”
Tristan grinned. He hadn’t realized she’d seen the Were in his four-legged form. “Kiba, yep.”
“And the pretty lady?”
Tristan frowned. “Pretty lady…?”
Ellie nodded, jumping down from the stool and coming around to his side of the island. “Ahuh. The pretty lady with the long black hair. She was just here. She helped me take a bath and sang to me. And gave me pizza. She is very nice.”
It took Tristan a moment and when he realized what she meant, he burst into laughter. His amusement made her smile big. “No, darling, Wren is a boy.”
“Oh,” she said thoughtfully with a pout. “Well, he’s very pretty. And nice. His voice is soft and makes me feel good.”
Chuckling, Tristan was shaking his head as he turned back to their steeping tea. “Yes, he is very nice.” Since she hadn’t answered on the tea accoutrement question, he decided to make them both the way his mom liked it.
“Will the scary one live here too?”
Tristan lowered his head. Because, fuck. She did remember being nearly killed by Desmond. “No, honey,” he said, voice thick with sorrow. “He won’t be staying here.”
Primal Burdens: (The Uruwashi Series #5) Page 24