birthrightgreen | Write about your father

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

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She smiled and let it go, lifting her head just a bit to kiss him.

"There must be something, if they've stayed together all these years. If they even chose to marry in the first place..."

From:

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"There are plenty of somethings," he smiled into her kiss. "That was the point." Again, he kissed her. "You will see, when you meet them."

From:

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She pulled back from the kiss and just stared at him, startled, for a long minute.

"You want me to meet your parents?" Some sort of terrified vulnerability there, lurking beneath the astonishment.

From:

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He realised that he was pushing again, all in his own way.

"Would you mind," he tested, wrapping her tighter in his arms.

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She didn't resist the embrace, sliding her arms around him to press against his chest.

"I wouldn't mind, sugar. But are you sure...are you sure they'd want to meet me?"

From:

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He knew his parents would both see immediately how successfuly she had already twisted up his gut in a way they could both appreciate. A way that he now realized reflected back to his childhood.

"Oh," he murmered warmly. "They will definitely want to meet you."

From:

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She looked a little doubtful about that. Aristos didn't usually want to meet her, for all they had to be polite to her now, but.

She nodded a little, pressing a kiss to his neck.

"....All right."

From: (Anonymous)

"Don't worry," he soothed warmly, hand following the line of her shoulder. "It won't be today."

From:

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She glanced at her bandaged arm. "That's probably a good thing."

From:

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He kissed the bandage.

"There is time."

From:

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She smiled a little self-consciously.

"You're sure they won't...mind?"

From:

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Truthfully the two of them were often so focused on their own minds - their own lives - it might be hard to say. But he did not know how to say that.

"It will be fine."