Iron and Magic

So his surrogate father had abandoned him to be with his boss’s wife and their child. That had to hurt.

“It didn’t last,” Hugh said. “Roland tracked them down eventually and killed Kalina. Voron escaped with the child. I thought Voron would come back, after her magic wore off, but he never did.”

“After Voron left, what happened to you?”

“I became the Warlord. Later Roland found out that his daughter survived.”

“How?”

Hugh shrugged. “She started using her magic. Daniels isn’t a subtle type. I could’ve brought her to him, but he wanted her to come to him, voluntarily, which was a lot more complicated. By that point, she had decided that Curran Lennart was her one and only. As long as they were together, inside the Pack’s Keep, I wouldn’t have made any progress. I had to get them to turn on each other.”

He was describing it matter-of-fact, in a detached voice.

“You lured them out of the Keep?” she guessed.

“Yes.”

“How?”

“Panacea. I wanted a lot of distance, so I went to Europe, to the Black Sea. I had a castle there, a quiet base for Middle Eastern operations. There are a lot of potent old powers in Arabia. Best to stay out of their way, on the outskirts.”

“Did Lennart and Daniels come?”

Hugh nodded.

“What was it like meeting her?” Elara asked. “What was Daniels like?”

“You wanted just the facts, remember?”

“Did she like your proposal?”

“No. We danced around for a while. Sparred once.”

“Is she good?”

“Yes.”

“Better than you?”

“Faster. Voron taught us both. It was like fighting myself. She’s a killer. If you take away her sword, she’ll pick up a rock. If you take away the rock, she’ll kill you with her hands. She zeroes in and doesn’t let go.”

Suppressed admiration slipped into his words. Elara felt an uncomfortable pinch.

“Aside from fighting Voron, it was probably my best fight,” he said.

“You fought Voron?”

“I killed him.”

She stared at him. “Why?”

“Roland wanted him dead.”

So his second surrogate father ordered him to kill his first surrogate father. And he obeyed. Either he was truly a monster or…

“Did it hurt when you killed him?”

“He wasn’t exactly in his prime.” Hugh smiled, but his eyes didn’t. It hurt, she realized. It hurt, and it haunted him still.

“Voron was bound to Roland the same way I was bound,” he said.

“How?”

“Roland pulled the blood out of my body, mixed it with his, and put it back.”

She stared at him. “How is that possible?”

“Roland’s magic is ancient. He is capable of wonders. The blood brings with it certain powers. Blood weapons. Blood wards. Long lifespan. Healing is mine alone. I was born with it. Some things I learned like any other mage can learn. But blood powers come from Roland. When Roland killed his wife, he expected Voron to come back. We all did. When he didn’t Roland purged him the way he purged me.”

“What does that mean?” she asked.

“When I found Voron, he was an old man. He had aged. He could no longer make a blood sword. He couldn’t use magic. He still had his skills, but his body betrayed him. I had waited a long time to meet him. There was a conversation I wanted to have. But he wouldn’t talk to me, and I killed him quickly, because it hurt to look at him.”

Is that what would happen to Hugh? “You haven’t aged.”

He grinned at her. “Give it time.”

They walked some more.

“I knew how that damn trip to the Black Sea would end from the start,” Hugh said. “Violence, magic, and fire. An old power got involved and broke open the mountain under the castle to release the magic of a dormant volcano. It melted the castle from the inside out. Solid stone ran like a glowing river. Beautiful, in a way.”

“What happened?”

“I knew I had to kill Lennart, or Daniels would never leave him. We fought. I broke his legs. He broke my back and threw me into the fire. The whole thing was idiotic.”

Volcanic fire powered by magic that melted stone. He should’ve been instantly burned to a crisp. “How did you survive?”

“I teleported out. Had a water anchor in a vial around my neck. There wasn’t much of me left. Roland put me inside a phoenix egg for three months. Took me another two to get my strength back.”

He’d spent three months in excruciating pain. He’d said it so casually, as if it didn’t matter.

“If it wasn’t for Lennart, I might have convinced her. She wavered.”

“I don’t think she did.”

Hugh turned to her. He didn’t want to speak about it in the first place, but somehow Elara was pulling it out of him and once he started, he couldn’t stop. The void was ripping him apart, and still he talked.

“You said she was a killer,” Elara said. “An orphan. Her real father was a mystery. Her adoptive father made her hide.”

“Your point?” he asked.

Elara tilted her head to glance at his face. “Roland took care of your needs. He probably taught you, right? Provided you with money? You were his right hand.”

“Everything I got, I earned,” Hugh told her. “I worked and bled for it. Everything he asked, I did. No matter what it cost.”

Daniels was Hugh’s only major failure. He never knew he was only allowed one.

“But you got whatever you wanted, right?”

“Your point?”

“She was an orphan, living on the run, probably hungry, poor, always looking over her shoulder. You were exactly like her, but you had everything, and she had nothing. Hugh, you’re an astute, experienced man. Put yourself into her shoes. You were both trained by Voron. You both lived your lives in Roland’s shadow. You worshipped him, and she feared him. Of all the people on this planet, you are the ones who truly know what it’s like to be Roland’s child.”

“Except I wasn’t his child.”

Daniels hated her father. She fought Roland on every turn, while he’d spent decades serving him. But Daniels was blood and that mattered more to Roland than anything Hugh had done. Like the prodigal child, when Daniels was found, she eclipsed the decades of his service without trying simply because she was Roland’s daughter and he would never be his son.

“Try to think like her for a moment,” Elara said. “You knew her father in a way she never did. You knew Voron and you likely had him longer than she did. You have so much in common. Then you killed Voron, whom she must’ve loved; tried to kill Lennart, whom she loves; and then tried to force her to go back to the father she hated, even though you, of all people, knew exactly what waited for her there. The betrayal was catastrophic.”

Hugh felt a vague unease. The void spun around him, making it harder to think. He pushed it aside and focused. A memory came to him, he and Daniels fighting in the castle at the Black Sea. She’d won that fight and trapped him with her sword. He’d had to submit. He’d said, “Uncle.” But there was a hint of something there, when they fought. Rage poured out of her, powerful and seductive. That red-hot boiling rage. It turned him on. He wanted to keep fighting her. He wouldn’t have stopped until one of them was dead, and she knew it.

Her face flashed before him. Daniels had looked horrified. And then she almost fled.

The recollection disturbed him. He groped for the connection to Roland, for the clean feeling of surety that clarified all his doubts, but it wasn’t there. He was on his own.

Hugh locked his teeth, sorting through his memories, going through Daniels’s facial expressions. He remembered the last one best, the time he had starved her, trying to force her to submit to her father. She had this look of resignation on her face as if she had given up on him ever getting it.

She never saw him as a man. He was never in the running; he had known that from the start. He was either an extension of Roland or…