For the first time in over a decade my eyes finally lay again on the kingdom that was rightfully mine. The sun had just crested the horizon, spilling golden light over fields and peasant hovels of the village just within the bounds of my rightful domain. The dilapidated dwellings were certainly not what I would normally consider picturesque, but the scene did have a sort of beauty to it with the rolling countryside filled with linear, plowed fields and dots of colorful structures. Perhaps I only saw the beauty because I could feel that it was about to be mine.

“Just a short trip through these outer fields and the castle will be in view, if we ride hard and skip our breaks we should be able to get within the gates just before nightfall.” I could see Feros looking at me from the corner of my eye as I gazed at my domain, he had an interesting quirk to his smile. “How does it feel to see the first glimpse of your long awaited prize?”

“It is not a prize,” I corrected with an annoyed sniff. I knew he was going to dampen the mood somehow. I had yet to decide if he did it intentionally or if it was just an unfortunate side effect of a less than stellar personality. “This is all rightfully mine by birthright and always has been. I am merely setting right a coup that overthrew me all those years ago.”

“A baby being born is a coup? Perhaps humans have a definition for ‘coup’ that even I have never heard of.”

The fiend let out a long, unnatural laugh that sent a shiver down my spine. Any time he tried to portray a genuine emotion in a human manner it was like running fingernails down a drawing slate. Technically he portrayed them correctly, but there was something so off putting and inherently wrong about it that it was uncomfortable to experience. Of course I understood that he certainly was not human, but from the vague references he would make to how long he had been keeping up a human disguise you would think he would have at least accidentally become better at it over time.

“Of course it was,” I said with a soft groan of discomfort. It was hard to be scolding when I was having to suppress the feeling of wanting to get as far away from him as I possibly could. “I’m sure by now you have heard the story of my mother’s betrayal. The little bastard was not meant to exist and is an abomination to my family line. She knowingly and intentionally went against the guided hand of fate to ensure my position as heir was stolen from me.”

“Again, pretty sure you have a strange definition of ‘bastard’ there. In fact, I think that for a great long while in your family line he is one of the two only non-bastard children in your family. You being the other, of course,” he said with a smirking grin. “It occurs to me that you probably didn’t even know that, your grandmother and great aunt are not particularly keen on uncovering old family business and much of it they probably didn’t even know. Though I think they must have known, at least a bit, even if their mother was wary about telling them much, it was fairly obvious.” He paused again and his grin widened as if it pleased him to think abou. “Come, let’s ride towards the castle and I’ll tell you the tale of your bloodline.”

“You just so happen to be an expert on the Yser bloodline?” I asked with mocking disbelief. Of course he was, he seemed to be an expert on anything that was convenient at the time.

I cast a glance at Mistra to share a look of annoyance at his arrogance, but she only returned a wan smile. She had been very quiet since arriving at the abandoned farmhouse and seemed much more contemplative, perhaps even a bit jumpy, always looking behind us with fear whenever a horse whinnied or a twig snapped under a hoof. There was obviously something amiss in her head, though there had not been a good time to question her about it without the fiend overhearing and butting in his opinion or making sure we strayed from a serious topic. I severely wished that I had noticed before we had set off again, but I had been so anxious about how long I had slept and how much time that had cost us that I had pushed to leave as soon as I had cast off the bleariness enough to recognize she was not her usual self.

“An expert?” He cocked his head to the side in a parody of deep thought. “Out of anyone still living? Yes, certainly, I can vividly remember how untouched and tucked away the books were, they were quite obviously meant for no one to inquire about and even if they were, then they would be a feat to find. I’m not even sure where the tomes containing what little of the line were recorded are or even if they exist anymore. They might be yet still somewhere in the Drak library in some forgotten, dusty corner, I have not laid eyes on them in so long.”

“The Yser line was important enough to be recorded in books,” I commented with a sense of deep satisfaction. It made perfect sense that blood that produced such refined, powerful women would have a rich, powerful heritage.

“Oh I’m afraid not in the way you’re likely imagining,” he snickered, the sound seriously grating on my nerves, “they only make the books in the sense that they were recorded as sales of slaves or transfers of indentured servants.” His eyes flitted over to me to gauge my reaction though in that moment the full weight of what he was revealing had not sunk in quite yet. “No, the Ysers were certainly not impressive people with health or stature, in fact that only traceable noble blood comes from your great grandmother being… well… utilized by her noble owner.”

Owner. That word applied in regards to my family immediately set my blood boiling and it took a bit longer than one would think for the implication of the word “utilized” to fully coalesce in my mind. I could not imagine a scenario with a Yser woman being forced into servitude by any one and going beyond that into the realms of sexual domination as well made me feel sick to my stomach. Everything he was hinting at felt multiple layers of wrong and deeply offensive. I truly hoped that he was simply taking a line out of his own play book to make things look as terrible as they could to distract me from something else, to his credit if that was the means to the end for telling me it was being very effective. There was a part of my mind that begged me to latch onto the idea that he was trying to distract me from something important and to push through his diversion to seek out what it was, but it was very much losing the battle to the chorus of voices that raged about the slander he was speaking against my blood.

There was no way my familial line was made up exclusively of commoners and slaves, the blood that flowed through my veins was noble and powerful I could feel that and when I looked in any mirror a squat, rounded face of a lesser did not look back at me. I had never glanced at a servant and felt that I saw anything of myself in them, noble lines were almost exclusively very recognizable with their sharper, more refined features passed down through generations of good breeding. Noble families who did interbreed with the help were easy to spot from miles away, the commoner genetics tended to dominate. Nothing about the faces of my mother, my aunts, or myself had a trace of commoner blood to be seen, the only thing I could even bring to mind that was a bit odd was my mother’s unruly red hair, but even that was easily explained away from her father being from a foriegn noble family.

“Why would the slave records be in the Drak library?” It was the first time Mistra had spoken for the day. Her face looked uneasy, like she both really wanted to know the answer and definitely didn’t at the same time.

“Why indeed?” he echoed slyly. “Come now, think, why might a demonic library own records of human slaves?”

Mistra’s eyes widened slightly and she shook her head like a thought had just occurred to her that she found disagreeable and she wanted to force it from her head. “What you are insinuating is madness, human slaves have been outlawed in my kingdom for generations.”

“They have, but surely you know that sometimes royalty does not always follow their own commands to the absolute letter or do you think that your mother just so happened to stumble upon your father’s castle one day and fall deeply in love, my dear Mistra?”

Her face was as mask of shock tinged with horror, it probably looked a lot like mine as I tried to process what he was insinuating. The Yser family line had been slaves for the Draks? That had to be a mistake or a misunderstanding. The mere idea of the possibility made me feel sick and slimy, like I would never feel fully clean again. Perhaps that paled in comparison to what exactly he was implying about Mistra’s mother.

For the first time since I had known him Feros looked a bit regretful as he gazed at Mistra. “I had thought it was just something you chose not to discuss, not that you had not considered it before, surely your mother must have disclosed her past at some point…” He trailed off and swallowed hard, then let out a soft, awkward laugh.

“No, apparently not.” Mistra’s voice was barely above a whisper, her words trembled like she was on the brink of tears. “She mentioned that she met my father traveling through the kingdom and would sometimes talk about staying in the castle, but she always made it seem like her family was nobility and it was always political or social gatherings where they met up.”

“Perhaps this was not the best traveling conversation,” Feros said.

It was the very first time I had ever seen him admit to perhaps making a mistake. Even when he was tormenting poor Ana he never showed a shred of remorse, it seemed odd that now would be different. From what I knew about the fiend he was shameless and did not tend to care who or what his words and actions harmed, for him to suddenly act like this was very suspicious. Though, perhaps exactly as he had intended, I found myself not really caring to pursue the matter in favor of finding out more about the blasphemies he was spewing against both of our families.

“It is not, no,” Mistra said, finding her voice again and pushing her shock into anger, “but you have never been one for tact or decorum. You are going to explain right now what you mean about my mother. Much of my childhood was spent in her estate, a place fit for nobility, it was not a slave hovel. Are you telling me that my entire family has been able to keep this secret? This seems absurd, Laric alone would have used the knowledge to torture me long ago.”

Feros breathed in deeply like he was about to launch into a frenzied explanation, but instead puffed out his cheeks letting the air stream between his lips slowly. “Alright, I will tell you, but I warn you that you will not like it so consider one more time if you want to know the story.”

“The time for my choice of if I wanted to know or not has passed, your insufferable tendency to blurt things out without thinking has ensured that.”

He gave a short nod and spurred his horse into a faster trot, perhaps he hoped that the quicker we got to the castle, the faster the conversation would be over, even if we still had hours left in the journey. “Rafe Drak used to have a… well the word I want to use seems rather crass now… we’ll say a preference towards human women. It was something he always kept rather private, but anyone who took any time to glance through the castle finances or keep an ear open for the quietest of whispered gossip amongst the servants could have figured it out. Usually he would keep a woman or two close at hand in a secret chamber built next to his bedchamber, the door to which is only accessible from next to his bed.”

“A secret chamber with very illegal human slaves?” Mistra questioned. “That sounds too unbelievable, that kind of thing would have politically and socially destroyed my father. He is so paranoid that people are scheming against him, he would never risk such a taboo and forbidden thing.”

“Have you considered why your father is always so paranoid? Perhaps it is because he has done things like that in the past, things that if people were to uncover would end up with pitchforks at his gates demanding his exile or worse. In fact, he knows it could all come crashing down at a hair trigger, it almost had before, your birth was a very, very stressful time for your father and it required a bit of a deft hand to ensure that no one asked too many of the wrong questions. It was a relatively simple manner to pay your mother and her family well enough for them to keep their mouths tightly shut or risk having the flow of riches interrupted. Also there was the very real risk that other kingdoms would put no deep thought behind simply tracking down and killing every member of them if the truth got out.”

“They were just paid off,” Mistra whispered, a distant, detached look in her eyes, “that actually explains quite a bit. None of them could ever give me a straight answer about where their nobility came from and what they did to earn and upkeep such a rich lifestyle. Looking back none of them needed to ever lift a finger to keep a kingly spread of food on the table every evening, yet they all had skills that in hindsight seemed only useful to servants and slaves.”

“Your grandmother’s spinning and weaving,” I found myself commenting.

“Exactly,” she sighed.

“Your father spends what most would see as an obscene amount monthly still to your mother’s family. They will never want for anything until the very last of them who know the truth finally passes.”

“I need a moment to process this,” Mistra said and pulled the reins of her horse and dropped back into a slower trot behind us.

We both looked back to her, Feros’ face still looking regretful. I felt like I should have used the time to question him myself about the slander against my own family, but it felt like the wrong time since I felt like it was likely I would end up getting very angry and loud when perhaps that was the last thing Mistra needed to deal with in the moment. As much anger flowed white hot through my veins, I still wanted to protect her as much as I could and if that meant sitting without answers for a little bit longer than I would like, I would bear the discomfort for her. Besides, while my own paternity might have been less stellar than I had always assumed, at least I had not discovered myself to be a bastard child of a slave. I could not imagine the chaos of feelings that would be rampaging within me if I were currently in her shoes.