The girl, from the photo. Her hair was like mine, long and thick and silvery blond.
“Nothing else?” I pressed.
He sighed, looking over at the wall of pink roses. He was quiet for a long time, chest rising and falling with each breath. I don’t think he had many visitors and he might actually be enjoying our company. He hadn’t asked us to leave and had even offered us tea. We both declined on account of not trusting him, but now I wondered if he was just misunderstood.
“I had a daughter. You remind me of her,” was all he said, and my heart pinched. It was as I thought.
I noticed the past tense. He had a daughter.
“I’m sorry,” I told him earnestly.
“What happened?” Sage asked.
I kicked her under the table and she winced.
He looked at Sage, seemingly considering her question and if he wanted to answer it.
“I’m never going to see you again after this so…” He shrugged. “Why not?”
Then he leaned in, letting the sun shine on his face, and peeling back his lips he showcased his razor sharp teeth.
We both reeled back a little, unsure what he was doing and he chuckled. “Are you not confused with my lineage? I have the teeth of a dark fey, hair and eyes of a light fey, and the tusks of a troll.”
Ohhh, as soon as he said it, it clicked. He was … a total mutt.
“Your mother or father was both?” I asked.
He nodded. “Mother was half light and half dark fey. Father was troll. I have the lineage of all three. Never quite belonged but I never bothered anyone, so they didn’t seem to mind. Then I met my wife…”
His voice broke as he looked again at the wall of flowers.
The roses. The garden so lovingly cared for … it was his wife’s?
“She was a vampire-fey Ithaki,” he stated and my mouth popped open. The fey were the only ones who could breed with the other races. They had some kind of gene that could morph either way and create life where none could be created naturally.
“So your daughter…” Sage put it all together in her mind before I did.
He inclined his head. “She was a true chimera. Dark fey, light fey, vampire, and troll. She had untold power when I started to train her…”
His voice trailed off and he looked at me. I knew then what had happened without him even having to say it. Power was something that the vampires, specifically Queen Drake, couldn’t allow.
I growled. “They took her?”
He nodded. “The vampires took her, experimented on her, killed her.”
The veins in his neck popped and the ring of the teacup snapped as he held it too tightly, then dropped to the floor and shattered, spilling its contents. “Sorry, I haven’t spoken about this in a long time.”
The fear I’d once held of him, the mistrust, it vanished in that moment. This was just a broken old man. I dropped by his feet and started to pick up the teacup shards. “It’s fine,” I told him. “So is that … why you went to prison? You retaliated?”
He nodded. “Sort of. Justice system was taking too long for my wife’s liking.”
That sounded familiar.
“When my wife and I got news from the local authorities that they’d found our sweet sixteen-year-old daughter’s body on vampire land in a shallow ditch with a bunch of holes in her arms and completely drained of blood…” The knuckles in his one hand popped as he made a fist. “We pressed charges, but they said it could take up to a year to find the killer. Magic City Police don’t care about Ithaki. Some lowly vampire, they said it probably was. I knew that wasn’t true. The queen had been poking around here once she got word of my daughter and her power. Even offered to pay us for her.”
Sage gasped. “Pay you!”
He nodded. “Under the guise that it was some fancy private education, but I could smell the hunger on her when she looked at my sweet girl.” His eyes glistened with moisture in the sunlight and my heart ached for him. If it were possible to hate this bitter queen any more, I did. I wanted her wiped from this earth.
“So, your wife is … gone?” Sage asked.
We were too far into the story to stop now. I needed to know everything. I set the broken teacup pieces on the table and returned to my seat as he nodded his thanks to me.
“Varilla was a fearsome warrior. When she heard about our daughter, she stopped sleeping. One night, I found her gone, bed empty and a note saying she wouldn’t rest until the queen was dead.”
Oh shit.
Sage reached out and grasped my hand and squeezed.
“I ran all night, used every magical power I had to get into the Vampire City walls and to where the queen’s castle was, but I was too late. My wife was dead, the queen wasn’t even in town, but my wife had killed a dozen of her guards before they took her down. They arrested me for trespassing and attempted murder of a monarch.”
Holy shit.
His wife and daughter all gone within a week…
“I’m so sorry,” I told him, my voice breaking.
He leaned inward. “I begged them to kill me, but the queen ordered that I live my life without the two women I love as my punishment.”
Evil woman.
“So why even break out? I mean … you didn’t really have anyone to come home to?” Sage said, and then winced at her wording. “I mean, that’s not what I meant. I—”
He waved her off with his good hand. “No, you’re right. I came back for those.” He pointed to the wall of perfectly manicured flowers. “My wife loved few things as much as she loved me and our daughter, and those roses are one of them. She spent hours out here. I couldn’t bear the thought of them dying too. Something she put so much of her life into.”
A tear slipped from my eye and trailed down my cheek before I could blink it back. It was the saddest thing I’d ever heard, and yet … kind of beautiful. He’d let the house go, but he’d kept up the flowers.
“They’re beautiful flowers,” I told him. “And if it makes you feel any better, I plan on killing Queen Drake very, very soon.”
I was dead serious and he appraised me with one raised eyebrow.
“So it’s true. What her son did? That whole family is evil. Tainted,” he hissed. “It would make me feel a whole hell of a lot better if you’d mail me her ashes once she was dead. That way I could mix them with clay and make a urinal out of them, piss on it every day.”
I burst into laughter; Sage did the same beside me. He grinned. And that was that. We all had something in common. That damn queen was going to die if it was the last thing I did.
He waved me off. “Well, you all better get going. I’ll get the rest of the maps and then you can be on your way.”
I nodded. He was a nice man. I’d totally underestimated him.
He returned a few minutes later with a stack of maps in his arms. “These are copies. You can have them.”
I thanked him, before slipping the ring off my finger and handing him the one physical memory of my marriage to Sawyer that I had left. “Thanks for your help,” I told him.
He stared at the ring, pausing. “I really do need this. Otherwise, I’d—”
I waved him off, looking at his broken-down house and sad life. “Don’t worry. Sawyer can get me another.” I smiled.