Dragon Slayer (Sons of Rome Book 3)

by Lauren Gilley

  Am I beautiful now? he thought wildly. Your pet has fangs after all.

  Mehmet swung high, and Val blocked it – only for Mehmet to kick him in the stomach and send him sprawling back across the ground. His head smacked against the gravel, and stars pinwheeled across his field of vision.

  Damn it! No matter how strong he felt now, Mehmet was still stronger, and by far the more experienced fighter. He’d let his emotions get the best of him, all his pent-up rage and grief. And he couldn’t stem it now, not even to save his own life.

  He tried to scramble to his feet, but Mehmet was on top of him, his knee pinning him at the sternum, free hand grabbing his wrist and slamming it to the ground. His other hand held his sword aloft, ready to strike. The sultan was all fangs and snarls, his face contorted into something inhuman. A long string of saliva slid down one fang, dangling into the air between him.

  Val hated him.

  He roared. He’d never conjured that sound up out of his chest before; it emptied his lungs and left him breathless, gasping.

  Mehmet roared back, and brought his sword down.

  ~*~

  Val opened his eyes sometime later. Not a killing blow, then. A hard smack with the flat of the blade. His head ached, dull and insistent across his forehead, temples, and behind his eyes.

  His vision cleared slowly, and proved what he already knew from scent: he lay on a couch in the antechamber of Mehmet’s suite. Sun hung in fat, slanted beams from the windows: late afternoon. Hours had passed.

  A pitcher of pale white wine and a cup rested on the table beside him, and when he was able, he rolled over and reached for it. That was when he saw it.

  A narrow silver band around his wrist. Narrow, yes, but solid. And trailing from it, a length of silver chain. It slid across the tile with a sound like a hiss as he pulled his hand to his face and squinted blearily at the cuff. There was no clasp, no way for him to unlatch it. He flicked it with the tip of his tongue – yes, solid silver.

  His stomach lurched, and suddenly he was wide awake.

  He sat up and swung his legs over the side of the couch, so his bare feet hit the cool tiles. His other wrist bore a matching cuff, trailing chain, and when he looked down to identify the cool weight puddled in his lap, he found another chain…one that led up to the collar around his throat. When he swallowed, his Adam’s apple rubbed against it. The chains were hooked to rings set in the wall, brand new, the plaster around them chipped.

  Val took a series of deep breaths. The important thing was not to panic.

  “I thought you were dead,” a timid voice whispered, and Val looked across the room with a start.

  Arslan sat tucked in a corner, knees to his chest, arms wrapped around them. Shivers wracked his thin frame, so the hems of his loose pants fluttered against the tiles.

  “I’m not dead,” Val said, and slumped back against the wall. He felt drained, and that was only partially because of the fight earlier, and the subsequent concussion. “But I wish that I was.”

  Arslan peeked out from between his knees, face drawn and pale. “You shouldn’t wish for such a thing.”

  “No?” A laugh escaped him, humorless and dark. His voice sounded wrong, deeper, maybe, but also hopeless. “I am a prince who’s become a whore. Your sultan sodomizes me nightly. Even if I managed to make it home, my family would disown me – what little family remains, that is. Father is dead. Mircea is dead. Vlad hates me. And now this.” He lifted both hands and let them flop back, the chains rattling. “Who wouldn’t wish for death in my place, Arslan?”

  The boy stared at him a long moment. And then he got to his feet and stomped over, slipper heels striking the tiles with sharp pat-pat-pat noises. He came to stand right in front of Val, hands on his hips, shaking now not with fear, but with anger. Little thunderstorms burst in his eyes.

  Val wanted to laugh, but he knew it wouldn’t be appreciated.

  “You don’t get to wish for death,” the slave snapped at him. “You – you’re still a man. They didn’t take your manhood like they did mine. I can never have children. I will never be strong and powerful like you will. I’m not even a woman – a woman could be useful! I’m just – just – just a thing!”

  “Arslan–”

  “I know what you are.” And here the boy looked apprehensive again. “I know that it’s blood in the cup I bring you, same as the sultan, and your brother. I know that you…” He swallowed and leaned back, remembering himself.

  “Does that mean you’re afraid of me?”

  “N-no.”

  Val sighed. “Forgive me, Arslan. None of this is your fault.”

  Arslan studied him a moment. “He’ll set you free eventually, you know. No one ever keeps princes. Not forever.”

  “My brother is on his way to take Wallachia back.”

  “Still.”

  Val leaned forward with a groan and dropped his face into his hands. “Not forever. But for a very, very long time.” Right now, immortality didn’t feel tangible. It seemed he’d lived most of his life away from home, a prisoner – and he had. Eventually held no comfort for him now.

  It was silent a spell, one in which Arslan’s breaths grew uneven and hitched. Tears clogged his voice when he finally spoke. “Forgive me, your grace. I shouldn’t have spoken out of turn. I–”

  “Shh, it’s alright.” When Val lifted his head, the boy threw his arms around his neck and pressed his heated, tear-stained face just behind his ear.

  Val felt a strange sort of tenderness. He felt protective. “It will be fine,” he assured, rubbing Arslan’s back, the prominent bumps of his spine beneath his kaftan. “I’ll kiss up to Mehmet and make things right with him. You’ll see.”

  Footsteps in the hallway beyond.

  Arslan sprang back and put a respectable distance between the two of them, retreating to the other side of the table.

  Mehmet entered in a whirl of scents: oil and soap from the communal bathhouse, the smell of women, several of them, and the musk of sex. He slammed the door open and marched into the room, head up, shoulders back. Partaking of his harem had obviously not quieted the rage that still burned in him, reduced now to a low, sustainable simmer.

  He very pointedly didn’t look at Val, going instead to the side table and the collection of bottles there. “Get out,” he said, flat, as he uncorked a bottle with his teeth and poured a more than generous cup of dark red wine.

  Arslan sent Val an apologetic look and then retreated, pulling the outer door shut behind him.

  Then they were alone.

  Mehmet drained off his wine in a few swallows, head tipped back, then poured a second cup. After, he turned and leaned a hip against the table, finally lifting hooded eyes to meet Val’s gaze.

  In the beat before the sultan spoke, Val felt an odd stirring. Somewhere deep, up under his ribs, where it was warm and well-protected. It was…it was resolve. Only a small kernel of it, but hard and bright as burnished steel. It rearranged his insides to make room for itself, pushed out some of his awful, desperate prey drive. He was chained to the wall with silver, a slave in all the ways that counted, but he had a fight brewing inside him, the long-range, patient kind. He couldn’t let it out now, no. But someday. It could wait. He could wait. And maybe Mehmet would beat him, would doubtless ravish him, but Val found that he wasn’t afraid the way he’d been up to this point.

  He lifted his chin.

  Mehmet took another swallow of wine and then set the cup aside, eyes never straying from Val’s face. “I expected cowering.”

  Val didn’t respond.

  “You know, Radu, when I was in the baths, I managed to convince myself that I’d overreacted before. I thought maybe what you needed was some lenience and a chance to prove that you will still obey me. But now I stand here and look at you, and I am furious all over again.” His hand curled to a fist in demonstration.

  Val said, “You’ve chained me with silver.” His voice was eerily calm, composed in a whole new way. Mehmet
noticed, if the way he lifted his brows was any indication. “And you would punish me still? Is your masculinity really so fragile?”

  Mehmet took two strides forward and slapped Val across the face with an open hand. It snapped his head to the side. He felt a jeweled ring open a cut along his eyebrow. He gritted his teeth and faced the sultan, refusing to flinch. “I’m sorry, Your Majesty,” he said without an ounce of sincerity. “I shall endeavor to behave myself from now on.”

  Mehmet bared his teeth and lifted his hand to strike again – but checked the motion, hand hovering in the air. He grinned. “You’re goading me. You’ve never done that before.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  The slap fell. The crack of it echoed off the walls. Val’s skin throbbed; he could feel the bruise forming.

  Mehmet took hold of his chin, fingers digging in, and leaned into his face, so close that Val went cross-eyed trying to look at him. “You have not even begun to imagine all the ways in which I can make you miserable,” he seethed. “You know nothing of pain.”

  It was hard to speak with his jaw clenched so tightly, but he managed to say, “Just kill me.”

  For a moment, he thought that might happen. And he wanted it, cowardly though it was. He didn’t want the pain that would attend the killing, but to finally be free…that was fine. That was good.

  But Mehmet released him and stepped back. His expression shuttered. “Why did you ask to spar? And don’t lie to me.”

  “I wanted to build my strength up, and refamiliarize myself with a sword.”

  “Why?”

  “So that I could return to Wallachia with Vlad.”

  He thought Mehmet would strike him again – his face contorted terribly, red and screwed-up, a fit of childish emotion – but he refrained, and returned to the side table to fetch his wine. “You thought I would allow that?” he asked over the rim of his cup.

  Val shrugged, and the chain attached to his collar swayed. “I thought it was worth a try. I thought I could manipulate you into it.”

  “You thought…” His eyes widened, face going blank with disbelief, and he drained his cup. He set it down and reached for the bottle again. “I had no idea you were this willful,” he murmured. “I’ve underestimated you, clearly.”

  He walked in close again, and raised the cup to Val’s lips, pressing the sticky rim between them. Val opened his throat and drank, obedient in this small thing. Swallow after swallow, and he immediately felt the throbbing in his head ease.

  Mehmet gave him half and sipped at the rest himself, sitting on the edge of the table so they were on eye level with one another. In an eerily calm voice, in control of his vast temper now, he said, “Do you think me stupid?”

  It was defeat, and not bravery, that gave Val the courage to speak the truth. “I think you’re lustful, and unhappy, and spoiled.”

  Mehmet stared. Then he laughed, sharp and hollow. “The two of you really are brothers, aren’t you?”

  “No one ever seems to think that. Palace gossip has it that we’re half-brothers.”

  “You certainly look it. But that rebellion,” he said the word like a curse, “is certainly an inherited trait. Perhaps from your father. He never could adhere to a treaty.”

  Father had rebelled when he saw no other choice. But it was Mother who’d passed along her temper. Val kept such knowledge to himself, saying a quiet prayer that, against all odds, she was still alive.

  “You might be beautiful, but you aren’t stupid,” Mehmet continued. “So you already know that you could never go back with your brother.”

  “Like I said. It was worth a try.”

  “My, but I hate you like this.”

  “Then why not let me go?”

  A cruel smile. “Come now, I just paid a compliment to your wits. You know why you must stay. You are leverage against your brother.”

  “Vlad hates me.”

  “He acts as if he does, yes, but he doesn’t. He wouldn’t hate me so if he actually hated you. So you will stay here, and be a good little boy, so Vlad Dracula knows to uphold his part of the bargain.” Another smile, this one satisfied. “You are here for the duration, little golden Radu.” He stood and paced back toward the side table for a refill. “You should be grateful,” he said over his shoulder. “You still have all your limbs, and both your eyes. Comfortable accommodations and the sultan’s favor.” He spread a hand across his own chest in demonstration. Tilted his head. “It would be wise of you to keep my favor.”

  Yes, keep it. Until he was able to get loose, to run home. Stay on Mehmet’s good side, gain his trust, gain his freedom…

  That little bead of resolve inside him gathered mass, weighty as a stone in the pit of his stomach.

  He thought of Vlad, of the riding crop slapping his head, his shoulders, the backs of his knees. His willfulness and sullenness in the face of all his teachers. That was resolve. The kind of thing that got men through captivity. It was only his body that had been hurt – and it was a strong body at that. An immortal one.

  What was a little pain and a little time to a vampire if it would, in the long run, get him what he wanted?

  Val decided something. He wet his lips. “Alright. Let’s make a bargain, then.”

  “A bargain?” Mehmet’s laugh turned slowly disbelieving, and then faded away altogether as he took in Val’s seriousness. “Alright,” he said, quieter, “what sort of bargain?”

  “I’ll be obedient,” he said. “I’ll pleasure you.” It was only a physical sacrifice, after all. What did it matter? “And you will train me to be a proper prince.”

  It was a risk. He could be killed on the spot.

  But Mehmet smiled, slow and nasty. “You’re terrible,” he said.

  And Val knew, though abuse awaited him, that he could do this. That it was worth it.

  And that, even in this small way, he’d won.

  25

  RUMOR HAS IT

  Somewhere on the Road

  Malik snapped several twigs in half and fed them into the fire. Then he sat down on the felled log opposite Vlad’s, elbows resting on his knees. Thus far in their march, Vlad had never seen the man look tired. He woke before dawn, without prompt; rose from his bedroll without all the usual griping and stretching and blinking. Just popped to his feet, bundled up his bedroll, and went to rouse his men. He never yawned. Never complained.

  If he hadn’t been able to tell differently, Vlad might have thought he was an immortal.

  “The horses are secure,” he informed Vlad. “Watches have been posted.”

  “Good. What of Mustafa’s men?”

  “Sleeping.” He gave a little grunt that Vlad had learned was a one-note laugh. “Gambling.”

  Vlad snorted. “Will they be ready if we’re ambushed, you think?” Vlad dangled the line as an opening – an invitation to criticize the foot-soldiers together.

  But Malik said only, “Yes.”

  Vlad nodded and reached for his saddlebag, which waited at his feet. From his carefully rationed allotment of food, he chose a piece of flat bread and some dried goat meat. A cloth-wrapped bottle of dark wine lingered at the bottom, but he wouldn’t break into that yet. He wanted to be sharp. Sometime later, when the others were asleep, he would move silent and careful to the horse lines, and take a little blood from his mount.

  Malik dipped into his own rations, and they ate in silence for a time, the fire crackling between them.

  They’d crossed the Danube two days ago, and it was now that their travel had to become stealthy. For the first weeks, marching out from Edirne in a wide column that occupied the whole road, travelers and merchants had quickly moved to the shoulder, heads bowed in deference to the emperor’s Janissary Corp in their fluttering crimson capes. Road dust kicked up from hooves and boots had hung over them like a cloud; Vlad had tasted it every time he’d opened his mouth to issue a command. They’d made good time on well-traveled roadways; an ideal trip.

  But th
e river marked the boundary. Vassal state of the Ottomans or not, the Romanian-held lands of Wallachia were under Vladislav’s control. If any of his men spotted janissaries, or worse, Vlad himself, on the move, they’d raise the alarm. When Vlad arrived in Tîrgovişte, he wanted it to be a surprise for his nemesis.

  As he chewed the tough jerky, and stared into the hypnotic dance of the flames, he realized he hadn’t had so much time to stew in his own thoughts since he was first taken captive all those years ago.

  At Edirne, his days had been full. Schooling all day, in groups and with private tutors who, despite his insolence, had been forced to grudgingly admit that he was clever. Then it was riding, dueling, archery practice, and dancing lessons. Of all the crimes the Ottomans had committed against him, no one could claim that hadn’t given him a proper knight’s foundation. He was only seventeen, but he’d been prepared for this moment – for this war for his homeland.

  But he’d been busy then. His thoughts only his own in the twilight moments before exhausted sleep claimed him, or in his quiet visits to the chapel. Now, save a few commands, and consultations of the map with Malik, he was plagued with the quiet. The creak of saddle leather, the clink of armor, the clop of hooves, and the background din of soldiers’ voices. As they moved slow and steady toward Tîrgovişte, he was left to his own imaginings. And there was only one thing he could imagine: death.

  He imagined his father as Cazan had described him: ragged and breathless, writhing on the ground in the jaws of a wolf. Dying alone. Imagined the red, wet knives of the men who’d known they had to cut his heart from his body. How had Vladislav known? How had he acquired a wolf?

  He imagined Mircea, sputtering around a mouthful of dirt, weak and bleeding out. His last vision had been of darkness. How quickly had the earth they’d heaped on him crushed his chest? Or could he still be alive? Asleep? Like a true vampire?

  He imagined his mother, their household wolves. Cut down screaming, blood spraying across walls, soaking into the cracks of the paving stones.