Page 584 of Flirting with Darkness

He paused deliberately.

His eyes never left Ghost’s face.

Ghost didn’t look away, either.

“I did not wish him to be raised in luxury, you see,” his father explained, just as casually. “I wished to forge resilience in him. Toughness. A will to fight and thrive of his own efforts. When I saw he wasn’t getting enough of this harder learning from his destitute, gypsy mother, and her overly coddling family, I took pains to separate him from both.”

He studied Ghost’s eyes, his mouth a hard line in his face.

The Count’s eyes didn’t move as he shrugged.

“The Traveler family was easy enough to buy off. As for the mother, she removed herself before I could… she caught the plague of cholera when it went through London. Then again, half the fallen wenches in her class caught it, selling favors to soldiers and knaves in Whitechapel and other slums of that cursed English city…”

Ghost felt his jaw harden painfully.

Still, he didn’t speak.

“I wanted him toughened,” the Count repeated coldly. “I needed him to be a lion. Not a shivering mouse, coddled in the overindulgences of womanly love.”

Those dark blue eyes studied Ghost’s.

“I could not raise him here at the castle, either. No matter what I did, he would never be how I needed him if he grew up with all his wealth around him from birth. Or with servants, aunts, great-aunts, and sisters all as sentimental and foolish as his Traveler mother.”

Ghost felt all those eyes on him again.

He felt none more strongly than those of Count Aslanov himself.

He couldfeelthe old bastard probing him for weakness.

After another few beats of his heart, Ghost’s father finally shifted his gaze away.

“Ah, well.” The Count smiled around at his friends. “You see what I have wrought with my patience and discipline?”

He looked back at Ghost.

That time, his eyes shone with a fierce triumph.

“Look at my son! Even apart from the obvious power of his inborn magick, he is a fine young man, is he not? Strong. Fearless. Clearly of our royal stock. He came here without knowing if I would kill him… without knowing if he would kill me. He has enough of the magick in him, he must have felt my power.”

The old man gazed at him again.

That time, a visible pride shone in those dark, cruel eyes.

“…He came anyway,” he announced. “He came with a handful of weapons to the house of a lord, and while he is laughably out of his depth as he is of yet untrained, that bravery is not something you can teach. It is sadly absent in all of mylegitimatechildren…”

Several of the old men standing with him nodded.

A large man with a jowly face and large, grey-white sideburns grunted in agreement, raising a glass of champagne to his soft lips.

His eyes held the same flat, snake-like cruelty as Ghost’s father.

Ghost didn’t feel the same power on the heavier man, however.

A dim sort of flicker lived there, nothing more.

While perceptible, it felt nothing like what he sensed on the elder Aslanov.

Ghost could feel more of those differences now, perhaps from his father pointing out and naming what he felt. His father pulsed with power, like a small, cold sun. That power radiated off him, making Ghost’s heart beat faster whenever the Count looked at him. It made his lungs struggle to hold enough oxygen. It made his skin prickle, the hair on the back of his neck rise.

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