Write about your father

[birthrightgreen]

My father? He had no right to such a name. She denied it, and I never called him so. But all right, sugar. If that's what you want. Let's talk about the man who sired me.

Women rule in Terreille, and the whole concept of Protocol has been perverted. It used to be a balance. District Queens served Province Queens who served Territory Queens--the strongest and the best, chosen by the dark Jeweled Blood of the Territory. Males served the Queen their heart led them to. The Blood looked after the landen, and the land flourished and it was good. Caste, social standing and Jewel rank worked together, a triumvirate of power and position that kept our people always in a dance of power and protocol and in balance. The strong protected the weak.

Or so I have been told. It is not so, now. Males, even privileged ones, are no more than slaves. Frightened, weak males strip any weaker female of all her power and frightened females ring strong males before they can become a threat. A strong Queen could challenge and change this, but males bed them too young and they rise from their Virgin Night broken and useless. No threat to the SaDiablo reign.

Kartane SaDiablo. Only son of Dorothea SaDiablo, Red-Jeweled High Priestess of the Black Widow Coven and ruler of Hayll. Most of Terreille has fallen into Hayll's shadow, into Dorothea's shadow. She perverts everything she touches, and her son is no exception. Weak-willed, cowardly bastard, he took his ire out on the weak, the helpless. Darkness forbid that a Queen could rise, strong enough to challenge Dorothea's rule. Any such she saw broken, and her son soon became one of her favorite instruments.

He was a pretty boy, I've heard tell. A broken man when I finally saw him, caught in the web that Jaenelle wove around Briarwood, but a pretty boy. His mother thought so as well. He was naught more than a child when she took him to her bed to pleasure her. They say that sort of thing can break a man. He couldn't stop her, so he took it out on those weaker. Servant girls speared so viciously they had to send him away because the other men complained they couldn't use the girls. He hated whores. The gossip in the houses was that he could only rise to the occasion if he caused pain, and only the lower houses allowed the games he wanted to play. He was banned from houses before he found ways to just dominate the young girls without marking the goods. But houses had rules, and he didn't have absolute power.

So he took to playing his mother's game. Find a witch, young, still a girl. Spear her, hard and vicious. Break her web of power and drive her beyond herself. He'd keep them sometimes. Make them play his game until he seeded them. Sometimes they aborted spontaneously. Sometimes he gave them a brew to drink. When the child was gone, he tossed them out to go back to their families or a Red Moon House or the gutter.

My mother escaped his depraved games. She'd worn the Green when he broke her past herself. She couldn't use more than basic Craft when he was done the first night. She escaped and she whored for her keep so Kartane couldn't find her and destroy the child she gave birth to. His child.

Me.

His mother's pawn found her while I was at school. Slit her throat. I ran, so they wouldn't find me.

And then I trained. I killed. Planned men's deaths carefully and cruelly and sent them to it.

Dress rehearsal, sugar. For the right place. The right time. For my meeting with my father.

Comments

[birthrightgreen.livejournal.com]

She didn't flinch externally from his voice, but internally, there was a small one.

Her voice was soft, a little bit distant, only because she hadn't gone there in a while. "There weren't many places they didn't, sugar. A whore on the streets has no protection at all but her own strength. Once my reputation with the knife was better known, it was rarer. In the houses....it wasn't good form to leave marks that couldn't be easily healed."

Not that there weren't other ways to cause harm. And a whore in a house who used her knife on clients found herself on the streets again. She'd had to curb her temper.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_deadlydance_/]

He didn't want her to pull away. He simple wanted to understand. Arm coated with the protective salve, he listened to her speak.

"Here," he asked after she stopped, kiss her cheek. Aware that it had probally been struck by the back of some bastard's hand, more than once. Surreal would not let him fight her battles for her. He knew that. But she might let him hold her after. "Here?" His lips brushed her forearm.

[birthrightgreen.livejournal.com]

Her heart ached a bit at the gentleness of it. Her eyes closed, and she nodded.

"Yes. There." The places she hadn't had bruises would probably take less time to kiss.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_deadlydance_/]

Another kiss, this time to her wrist.

"Where else," he pressed softly.

[birthrightgreen.livejournal.com]

Her fingers brushed over her collarbone. "A client broke it when I was thirteen..."

[http://users.livejournal.com/_deadlydance_/]

He kissed there too.

Lingered longer for her pain.

[birthrightgreen.livejournal.com]

She brushed fingers through his hair. "No one's harmed me in over two hundred years that I didn't consent to, sugar."

[http://users.livejournal.com/_deadlydance_/]

"Which is how it should be." He lifted her into his lap, careful of her arm.

[birthrightgreen.livejournal.com]

She settled there, regarding him seriously, eyes dark and contemplative.

"There were times it was advangtageous to let them, either for profit, or to advance a plan. Advantageous to appear weak, to let them think they had the upper hand and then to strike."

[http://users.livejournal.com/_deadlydance_/]

He nodded tightly, because he could undertsand that. As much as it twisted his stomach, he also could see that in the end, she had been protected by the bruises as well. How it hid her strength.

[birthrightgreen.livejournal.com]

She brushed fingers through his hair, smoothing it back, and traced fingers down his cheek.

That sometimes she'd welcomed the pain, let them hurt her so that she could feel the spark of hatred...that sometimes it was her own punishment, to let them treat her so. She didn't think he needed to hear that.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_deadlydance_/]

He decided he would hold her for as long as she would allow.

[birthrightgreen.livejournal.com]

She was content, today, to let him hold her as long as he pleased. It was soothing to be held without expectations. A reminder of easy days with Daemon, though, admittedly they hadn't been nearly naked when snuggling.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_deadlydance_/]

Tucking her robes around her to keep her warm, he pulled them both back onto the bed, running one hand up and down her back.

[birthrightgreen.livejournal.com]

She leaned into him, resting her head on his shoulder, nuzzling his jaw a little.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_deadlydance_/]

His hand moved from her back, to her hair.

"Is the salve helping?"

[birthrightgreen.livejournal.com]

"It's numbing it a bit. I think...it might need to be rewrapped. A bandage?" She looked rueful for a minute. "I ought to have said before you headed down..."

[http://users.livejournal.com/_deadlydance_/]

He nodded and kissed her forehead. Tucking her down into the bed, he settled a coverlet around her and went in search of a bandage.

[birthrightgreen.livejournal.com]

She cradled her arm a little, waiting for him to get back, snuggled down where he left her.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_deadlydance_/]

He reappeared with an actual bandage this time, and not a bulky towel.

[birthrightgreen.livejournal.com]

She rewarded him with a soft, warm smile.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_deadlydance_/]

Gently he lifted her arm, and after placing a kiss on her knuckles, began to slowly wrap the wounds.

[birthrightgreen.livejournal.com]

She watched him, quiet, then brushed the fingers of her other hand through his hair, which was quickly becoming one of her favorite things.

"Thank you."

[http://users.livejournal.com/_deadlydance_/]

He smiled at her touch, a subtle one to let her know it pleased him. Then he went back to wrapping her arm. As tight as possible, before it would hurt her.

"You're welcome."

[birthrightgreen.livejournal.com]

She winced just a touch at the tightness, but knew it was necessary.

"You've done this before?"