He drew away even more. “You think I was a terrible father? My father sent me to live with his worst enemy in exchange for political security, resulting in my torture, rape, starvation, and abuse for over a decade. Even though they weren’t my children, I never mistreated Mircea or Ilona’s other child. Instead, the boys were protected, well-fed, and well-educated.”

“Yes, of course you had it much worse.”

And he had, by far. Yet that didn’t negate what Mircea had gone through. How could I make him understand that? With his own horrendous childhood, no wonder he was having trouble relating. Add in Vlad being from a tyrannical medieval culture in general, and I could see why he found Mircea’s genuine hurt nonsensical.

“But emotional damage can sometimes be just as scarring as physical abuse,” I went on. “Back then, what you describe might have been considered stellar parenting, but Mircea was still really hurt. And if you think about it, you know a parent’s rejection can be devastating to a person even long past their childhood. You even told my dad that he had no right to judge you so harshly because your firstborn son never had to plead for the love my dad kept withholding from me, remember?”

“That’s not the same,” Vlad muttered, but he looked away a little too quickly.

I moved closer, until he had to meet my gaze or turn his head to avoid it. “I’m sorry, but it is. Yes, things were incredibly difficult for you and all your focus was on saving your country, but you still left a boy who thought he was your son behind. Sometimes kids act out because negative attention is better than no attention. That’s basically what Mircea has done, if you add in centuries of being warped by your revenge-obsessed enemy Szilagyi, while also learning lots of nasty magic from who-knows-who. I’m not saying it’s okay, but I am saying that I one hundred percent believe he did all of it because he’d rather you hate him than continue to ignore him.”

Vlad got off the bed, pausing to give a frustrated look at the small room before his strides began eating up the limited floor space. Maybe that’s why his bedroom at the castle was so large. There, he had plenty of room to pace off his frustration.

“Mircea could have come to me,” he finally said, daggers of his frustration starting to spike into my own emotions. “Had he done so beforehand, had he explained why he sided with Szilagyi and pretended to be dead . . . I might have forgiven him.”

“Would you?” I asked with more brutal bluntness. “You’re known for a lot of things, but forgiveness isn’t one of them.”

He threw me a jaded look. “True, but in the end, it doesn’t matter. Mircea tried to kill you. Even if I were the most forgiving of souls, I wouldn’t forgive that.”

“I’m not asking you to,” I said, getting out of bed, too. “But I am asking you to believe that Mircea wants your respect. Since you couldn’t give it to him as your stepson, he’s willing for you to respect him as your enemy. Take that, and the fact that he wants a chance to live versus the certainty of death by his captors, and I don’t think he’s lying with this lead.”

I went over to Vlad, lightly running my hands over the back he’d turned to me. He’d closed his feelings off again. Maybe he was still consumed with anger, or maybe he was remembering back when he’d been the only father Mircea had ever known, and was rethinking his former treatment of him.

“What was the lead?” Vlad asked after a long silence.

I closed my eyes in relief. “To take down some necromancers in the group that’s holding him captive. Apparently they’re members of a cult that call themselves Acolytes of Imhotep, and all the members know where Mircea is. If we can keep one alive, we can get the location out of him.”

Chapter 29

As soon as dawn broke, Vlad and I went to the basement cell. Gretchen, as expected, was now passed out on the cot, her shirt so stained with red that I couldn’t remember what its original color had been. Smelling the blood from her messy feedings reminded me that I hadn’t eaten in over a day. I hadn’t slept in over a day, either, and I’d have to do both if I was going to be fighting a group of powerful necromancers tonight.

But first . . . “I’ll take her upstairs and get her cleaned up,” I told Maximus, starting to unlock Gretchen’s wrist and ankle cuffs. “She won’t wake up until dusk, so it’ll be safe. You should get some rest, too, while you can.”

Maximus looked as tired as I felt, and he also was in bad need of a shower and new clothes. His shirt and pants were almost as stained as Gretchen’s, and his hair was now the same russet color as Ian’s from all the blood in it. But his gaze wasn’t tired. It was flintlike as he looked past me to Vlad.

“What did you do with Samir?”

“I buried him on the ridge,” Vlad replied.

Maximus gave a short nod. “I’m glad. When the time comes, I want to spend my final rest with our other fallen brothers, too.” Then he paused, and the laugh that came out of him sounded forced. “Unless that’s no longer an option. I have been expelled from your line. I suppose that means you’ve changed your mind about burying me with the rest of your people after I’m gone.”

Vlad didn’t reply. He just looked at Maximus. The staggering amount of years between them, both good and bad, seemed to fill the space and the silence, adding a weight to the atmosphere that hadn’t been there moments before.

“No,” Vlad said at last, his voice rougher, almost hoarse. “I haven’t changed my mind about that.”