A door creaked open behind me.
I pivoted to look over my shoulder.
Balthazar swept into the room, appearing jaunty and effusive.
“Good morning, my darling,” he boomed. “I trust your accommodations were suitable?”
“We’re chained to the ceiling in a pig pen of a room. There’s nothing suitable about it,” I snarled.
Grinning, he said, “I’ll have the maid send some fresh towels. But I doubt it will improve your rotten mood.”
“Why did you bring us here?” I felt so helpless hanging here when I wanted to kick his head and choke out his life. “Why didn’t you kill us? What purpose does it serve to bring us here in your hideous den?”
“Oh, be nice,” he said with a chuckle. “Surely your accommodations aren’tthatbad.”
He sauntered to where I stood and dragged a finger across my cheek.
I snapped at him like a dog.
He yanked his hand away, his lip pulling back in a sneer. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” Then, he cocked his head, his expression softening. “There’s so much of your mother in you. It’s uncanny. Especially since she didn’t love you. She often shared how much she despised your father andloathedbringing you into the world.”
A great ball of insecurity, like snakes uncoiling from wispy restraints, filled my chest.Could this be true? It couldn’t, right?
“You’re wrong. My mother loved my father and me! I saw it with my own eyes! I felt it!”
Balthazar let out a tsk and shook his head. “Your mother was a great, magnificent, beautiful creature.” He spread his arms in exultation. “We shared a glorious love that no man can experience or even comprehend. There’s no way such a love could be duplicated by marrying your pitiful, pathetic father. She felt shame over copulating with him, so how could she possibly embraceyou?”
A sneer formed on his face as if the thought of my mother making love to my father was reprehensible. “Can you picture it? A resplendent firebird, capable of moving through time, being plundered by a maggot of a man and his tiny cock?”
He rocked his hips and shuddered.
Ineverwanted to consider my parents being sexual with one another. But the image Balthazar painted made me want to vomit, and I doubt I could unsee it,ever.
“Is this your best tactic? Trying to poison my mind with your vile perceptions? I’d say you are the one most despicable. Did my mother ever see you when your skin is parched, falling away from your face in chunks?”
Balthazar’s nostrils flared like I’d made a chink in his calm veneer. He shot toward me, seizing my neck, and squeezing.
I let out a shriek, desperately trying to get him to ease up on my throat.
“If you were to fall in love with the darkness, you wouldneverlove Roman Alexander again. You’d see him as weak, a brute, nothing but a worm,” he hissed.
His hot breath burned my skin.
“Your mother and I were in love through time. I had to kill her for betraying me. But you want to know what’s interesting?” He released me as a cunning smile spread across his face. “Right when I was about to kill her, she confessed her love for me. She told me she had no choice but to be with your father. She pitied him. I’m sure you were conceived in a one-off encounter based on your father’s own desperate needs.”
“What kind of ‘glorious love’ is that if you felt you had to kill her,” I shot back, trying to shield my mind from all his lies.
“Stop speaking!” Balthazar roared. “You knownothing. Your mother was full of secrets. She would have betrayed me. She would havekilledme.”
I snarled, writhing in my restraints. “Some great love if she wanted to destroy you. She was probably growing tired of you.”
“You know nothing!” Balthazar’s voice came from everywhere, bouncing off the walls. “She went to that blasted tribe seeking help. She sought out the man you knew as Moon Lee. And answer me this—why did the tribe never tell you that Fierce Wind was your mother? Huh? Why didn’t they? The chief knew she was your mother, but they concealed it from you. Now isn’t that strange?”
Something stirred in my chest. The thought of my mother crossing time to be here, to seek Moon Lee, gave me a strange comfort. I clung to it like a lifeline. Shemusthave loved me, at least a little. But as for Grey Feather not telling me that Fierce Wind was my mother, I was angry that he’d kept something so big from me. How could he do this? Did he think I couldn’t handle the truth?
“Where is Lee hiding?” Balthazar growled. “You know where he is.”
“You know Moon Lee?” I asked.
