~*~
Dawn saw Vlad at the window, his elbows braced on the wide stone sill, skinny arms draped through the elaborate silver bars. Watching the sun rise in vibrant pinks and oranges above the tumbling deciduous forests around the Ottoman capital. Beyond the onion domes and spires of mosques, beyond the unclimbable palace walls, the land reminded him of home. The sharp tang of pine needles and the breathless quality of mountain air.
But inside, everything he could touch was foreign.
It was Sultan Murat, he recalled, who’d changed the city’s name – formally, among the Turks – to Edirne. Before, the Latin name by which he knew it, it had been called Adrianople, named for the Roman emperor Hadrian, that visionary engineer who’d designed the wall by the same name.
The heir was here, Vlad thought, being educated. And the hostages of the Ottoman court. Of which they were now two.
A sound from the pallet behind him drew his attention and he put his back to the sunrise to see the faint light play across his sleeping brother’s face.
If it had been up to Vlad, he would have sat on the floor, back to the wall all night, and kept watch. But Val had been exhausted, and tearful, and hadn’t been able to bear sleeping alone. So they’d settled down on a single pallet together; Vlad had woken a few minutes ago with Val’s head shoved up under his chin, his little hands clutching tight to his kaftan. Exhaustion was the only thing that had kept the boy from waking when Vlad extricated himself and slipped away.
Vlad studied him now, heartsick. Tears had dried on Val’s cheeks, their tracks tight and shiny in the early light. The top few buttons of his kaftan had come loose during the night, and the garment gapped now, revealing a delicate wedge of throat, pulse beating in its hollow. His fingers clutched tight at a pillow, knuckles white.
The problem was, Vlad had heard stories. The kinds of stories the wolves had whispered to one another, followed sometimes by shudders or uncomfortable laughter. The kinds of stories children weren’t supposed to overhear. He’d heard what sometimes happened to beautiful little boys who were abducted and taken as hostages.
Vlad, with his almost gaunt face, and his gangly limbs, and his dark eyes with even darker smudges beneath, was not the sort of boy that anyone had ever called beautiful.
But Val was.
Women were always wanting to pinch his cheek, and men awkwardly mistook him for a girl more oft than not. And then there had been the looks that made Vlad’s blood boil – the careful, slanted, breath-held looks of people, boys their age and grown men alike, who set eyes on Val andwantedhim. Sometimes it was a nameless longing, but others it dripped with intent.
Because Valerian was beautiful. And so Vlad’s stomach ached now, because terrible, terrible things happened to beautiful boys in war.
As if sensing that he was being watched, Val shifted and opened his eyes a crack. He made a low, inquiring sound that was all vampire, and not at all human.
Vlad answered, a soft rumble in his throat like a lion cub, then crossed to the pallet and sank down to his knees. “We can’t make noises like that. They’ll know we’re not mortal.”
Val blinked a few times, clearing his vision, and then sat up, frowning and rubbing his eyes. “I thought they already knew? The cuffs were silver.” His sleeve slipped down to reveal the still-pink mark of one of them.
Vlad suppressed a growl. “Well. The sultan knows, at least. And maybe some of the others. But we don’t knowhow manyknow. It’s safer to pretend we’re mortal.” Because if some unsuspecting fool tried to kill them, they probably wouldn’t succeed that way.
“Al-alright,” Val murmured, and swallowed, Adam’s apple bobbing hard. “I’m…Vlad, I’m really scared.” His breath hitched, and his lip trembled, and his eyes filled with fresh tears.
He couldn’t keep doing this, Vlad thought. Emotion was weakness. Tears inspired cruelty.
And Vlad wanted to bite throats and claw open stomachs when his baby brother was upset like this. He couldn’tthink.
So his voice came out harsh when he said, “You have to stop that.”
Val’s mouth fell open, expression slack with surprise. The tears swelled, and they were tears of hurt now, caused by his own brother.
Vlad hated that. Hated himself for causing it. And the anger fell out of his mouth as an order. And an insult. “Don’t be a baby, Val. What good do you think crying’s going to do? Do youwantto draw attention to yourself?”
“N-n-no–”
“No more crying, Val, I mean that. It’s time to grow up. Can you do that?”
His watery blue eyes fell to the floor, the plump cushions and rugs under their knees. He said, very softly, “Yes, brother.”
Vlad heard the sound of footsteps out in the hall, distant but coming closer. He moved around Val, put himself between his brother and the door. By the time a key turned in the lock, and the portal swung inward, he was on his feet, hands balled into fists at his sides, a growl barely checked behind his teeth.
But it was only a slave, bearing a breakfast tray. He looked up, startled by the aggression in Vlad’s stance, and hastened to set the tray between two colorful rugs that Vlad realized were mats for sitting and eating.
A janissary lingered at the door, hand on the knob, sword at his hip and flat gaze trained on Vlad. “Eat,” he suggested. “Before they come to drag you in front of the mullahs.”
The slave scurried out, and then the door was pulled shut and relocked.
