Page 47 of Dead Crown
“Shut up, Lumi,” snapped Tivar. “I don’t need a girl. I need a boy. I’m not dealing with a wailing daughter when I need to be making a son. The servant downstairs had a child recently, and she has enough milk for three babies. She’ll take Jacqueline.”
“She needs my milk! You’re not giving her to a servant.”
Lumi got off the bed, and the chain stopped him from going after Tivar who ignored him and left the room.
“Give her back!” Lumi screamed. Jacqueline wailed, and he yanked on the chain. “Tivar! You fucking bastard! Don’t you fucking dare! Give me back my daughter. SHE’S MINE!”
Panic clawed at his guts as he kept yanking on the chain. There was no way he was letting anyone else raise his daughter. He needed her and to make sure she was okay. What if something happened, and he wasn’t there? He scrambled up onto the bed, braced his feet as he grabbed the chain, and pulled.
He’d tried the same thing as a teenager in the early days a couple of times. He’d also tried forcing the shackle over his wrist and only succeeded in hurting himself. Tivar had seen the bloodied marks on his skin, whipped him, and locked him in the closet for a whole day and night. After the second time, he hadn’t dared to try again, and the will to escape had quickly been sapped from him. It wasn’t like his pitiful attempts had worked anyway.
The headboard was too strong to break, and the other shackle locked around the top piece didn’t loosen. Lumi tried to pull hishand from the shackle around his wrist and was sure he could feel Jacqueline getting farther and farther away.
He couldn’t lose her too. He just couldn’t do it. She washis, and he wasn’t letting anyone else have her. She was all he had left of Jaki or anybody else. He didn’t have anybody but Jacqueline. The metal wore at his skin as he struggled to pull his hand from the shackle.
Tivar returned to find Lumi half-mad on the bed as his wrist bled.
“Give her back!” he roared as his tail fluffed with fury. “You can’t take away my daughter!”
“Don’t you ever fucking talk to me like that.”
Lumi should have read the quiet tone, the pulled-back ears, the lashing tail, and the dangerous look in Tivar’s eyes, but panic and fury overrode all thought. As Tivar came to the side of the bed, Lumi lunged for him.
“You fucking bastard! Give Jacqueline back! She’s not yours! She’s mine!”
Tivar flinched back at the sudden violence, and surprise flickered in his face before he reacted. A swift punch knocked Lumi back on the bed and shut him up. Tivar grabbed his throat and held him down as his fist flew toward Lumi’s face again.
He’d pushed a whole fairy being out of his body all by himself. He couldn’t fight off his older brother. Tivar was still bigger and stronger, and Lumi’s attempts to fight him off grew weaker after the second punch to his face nearly knocked him out.
“I’ve taken care of you for years, saved you from East Forest soldiers, and fed you. Everything you have, including your life, is because of me. This is how you repay me? You’re nothing without me. Nothing. It took you years to give me one thing, and it’s not even right!”
Lumi tried to curl up as the blows rained down on the rest of his body. A punch to the gut knocked the wind from him, and he was sure he tasted blood.
Tivar said something, but Lumi didn’t hear him. The pain was so bad, he couldn’t move or hope to avoid the next few slugs. Tivar’s snarls were vague and meant nothing as the blurry room tilted. Lumi definitely tasted blood now, and the bed shifted as Tivar got off.
“Worthless. You can recover naturally, and if you ever speak to me like that again...”
The door slamming shut came through. Why was the skylight dimming when it wasn’t evening yet? It wasn’t supposed to go dark yet. The pattern had always been the same.
He couldn’t even rely on the light anymore.
Chapter Ten
Jaki pictured grabbing Father and shaking him until his eyes rolled around in their sockets. Where was the man who had escaped prison, taken half of Iceland at the start, and raised him to know the truth of his heritage?
Elswere wasn’t a bad man. He wasn’t like he used to be either. Perhaps he’d never been as strong as Jaki imagined him when he was a child. Or maybe Preti took a piece of him with her when she died shortly afterward from the strain. The alcohol had taken a bit more. Life steadily bled the rest.
“Father, we need to stop this,” he muttered at dinner the June after Lumi was gone. “How much did they cost?”
The King blinked as he set down his wine. “Jaki, it’s fine. I already told you this. Enjoy the show.”
Without Lumi around to tell jokes and stories or to be railed after dessert, he figured Elswere thought they needed something particularly fun for the Solstice.
The two dancers on the floor were supposed to be ushering in summer, although a visitor from another Kingdom would hardly call it summer. Outside the enormous windows, the sun had set, and Jaki could see the little dots of snow coming down against the glass. While the temperature rose, the snow never fully melted, and it never grew warm like in other Kingdoms.
The other fairies from the traveling troupe rang bells and played flutes as they pranced around the edges of the Hall. The woman and man barely had any clothes on, and Jaki thought it was a miracle the woman’s breasts hadn’t fallen out of the strip of fabric she’d tied around her chest. Judging by the way a few lords and ladies were staring, they were praying for them to fall out.
He thought for sure it would happen when she executed a backflip, not that he cared to see them. Somehow, the thin little strip of fabric did its job. The man was only wearing a loincloth, and Jaki had already seen more underneath than he wanted to. He assumed the man was winter since he’d dusted himself in shimmery white powder. The woman’s skin was naturally green, and she was clearly one of those rare fairies who could control a good deal of plant life and make vines and flowers come from her body.
