He continued to look at her for another long minute, as if memorizing her. “We found a portal and made our way down through the labyrinth. I was very young and had not quite lost all emotion. Thedepravity and tortures sickened me, and yet I still had the arrogance of youth. Lilith had taken my mother, believing a female weaker than a male and that she could control her, but it wasn’t so. My mother was extremely strong. Lilith had her tortured. The things done to her were unimaginable.”
Tiny beads of blood dotted his forehead and trickled down his face. They caught glimpses of flesh being torn from a body and demons gathering around a woman they could barely make out to abuse her flesh in the worst ways possible.
“We had to bargain for her. For every hour of bargaining, the tortures worsened. Lilith agreed to give her to my father if I stayed with her for a specific period of time as her lover. She wanted my blood and a child. If she wasn’t with child by the end of that time, I could leave but had to return at least one more time to try again. My father and I went over the contract word for word. It would be binding. I wasn’t about to give her a child, and she couldn’t have our blood. We knew she wasn’t going to allow my mother to go with our father. He would have minutes to take them away from there. But we had to make certain I didn’t sign anything I wouldn’t be able to live with. In the end, we signed the contract. She brought up my mother, but she was already dying. I lost both of them.”
Vasilisa couldn’t conceive of the horror of watching both parents die with the woman who had them tortured and murdered waiting to be serviced. She could feel the absolute loathing and repugnance he felt. He wasn’t emotionless at that point. He had still retained some of his feelings. He must have wanted to kill Lilith, to kill all of them.
“The bodies were of no use to them and vanished immediately. Lilith acted outraged that my mother was in such a bad way and berated the demons who brought her to us. She kept trying to tell me how sorry she was. She evidently didn’t—and still doesn’t—realize we can hear lies.”
Afanasiv’s voice was so low Vasilisa felt she had to strain to hearhim speak. She realized she not only could hear him, she also caught images of the empty spot where there was only a dark crimson pool left behind where his parents had been. Fire glowed around him. Not the flames of a purifying fire, but muddy flames that threw off a bloody coppery shadow.
Lilith sidled up to Afanasiv and attempted to run her fingers down his arm in a show of sympathy as she smiled up at him. “Come with me. I’ll make you feel so much better.”
“I told her we had rituals when warriors had fallen, and I had to attend to them. That gave me two days of reprieve before I had to fulfill my part of the contract.” Afanasiv’s voice had gone back to strictly expressionless.
Vasilisa let his statement actually sink in. The contract he signed to get his mother back included him being Lilith’s lover. Giving her blood. Giving her a child.Hischild. Afanasiv’s child. The child that should be theirs.
There was a strange roaring in her ears. He’d been lovers with Lilith. What else could he have done? But a child? His mother would never have agreed to such a contract. Thoughts rushed through her mind fast, and she couldn’t slow them down. Her emotions were all over the place. Anger. Sorrow. The need to cry.
“How long were you in the underworld before you were allowed to leave?” Razvan asked.
“There is no keeping time,” Afanasiv said, rubbing his temples. “At least not now. My memories were lost to me. I put them away so I did not have to look at the things I did. The words of the contract were such that I could make use of my Carpathian illusions, and I did so. Lilith believed them, and that was what mattered to me. Later, I wondered where the honor was in what I did, but she murdered my parents, so at the time, I cared little whether she got her side of the bargain or not.”
Wait. What was he saying? What did he mean? Vasilisa struggled to understand. Carpathian illusion? His honor in what he did?
“I knew there would be no child, and she couldn’t pretend because she would want me to come back. I insisted she allow me to leave. I told her I would return and when I would return. She struggled with allowing me to leave, but the contract had been signed by both of us. The repercussions to her would have been severe.”
“Then you went back because it was a matter of honor,” Razvan said.
Afanasiv inclined his head. “Yes. I knew getting away would be much more difficult. I had studied their ways and kept maps in my head of the labyrinth, but it changed constantly, so I couldn’t always rely on the layout down below. The one thing that was useful was information on the demons. I was able to catalogue the powers each had. Strength and weaknesses and what each could do. Some were extremely foul and others not so bad. There is a hierarchy. I was able to learn that and how to appeal to the ones who would take bribes. I learned everything I could the first time I was there because I knew that the second time, I would have to find my own way out.”
“I can’t believe you put yourself into their hands a second time,” Ivory said. “That took such courage.”
“Or stupidity. Lilith was wild. She would go back and forth between acting as a lover might and being so angry and hostile, believing I was deceiving her in some way. I was, but she couldn’t catch me at it. She wanted a child and she wasn’t getting pregnant. She wanted my blood and yet the Dragonseeker blood eluded her. She would send me to be tortured and then show up weeks later begging for forgiveness, wanting to take care of me, promising it wouldn’t happen again. It did because Lilith wanted her way and wasn’t getting it.”
“In the time you spent there, did you have any inkling of why Dragonseeker blood was so important to her?” Dimitri asked.
Vasilisa had the uncharacteristic urge to yell at him. Why was he calmly asking that question when Afanasiv was telling them he had been tortured? That he’d been subjected to the whims of Lilithrepeatedly for who knew how long? Months? Years? Time meant nothing in the underworld.
“I tried to talk to her about it. She changed her answer often. There were a few times she would talk about Mother Earth and how she paid homage to her, started covens and yet was never accepted as her child. She talked about cousins she had who were so good that Mother Earth accepted them, but not her. But she got her revenge. She slept with the lifemate of her cousin, and he was so corrupt he tried to murder his own lifemate. He killed her mother and nearly managed to kill the unborn baby sister as well. Lilith was so delighted by that. She danced around the room singing. Then she flew into a rage because she wasn’t accepted by Mother Earth as her child, and nothing she said made sense after that.”
Those in the room exchanged long looks as they puzzled out what that meant. Who Lilith was talking about.
“Lilith could be talking about Arabejila. Her lifemate, Mitro, murdered her mother, who was pregnant with Arabejila’s sister. Dax saved the baby’s life. He and Arabejila hunted Mitro, and eventually they were able to defeat him,” Razvan said. He looked at Skyler. “You met this child, Arabejila’s sister, when you were very young. I have caught glimpses of her in your mind.”
Skyler made a little face and turned toward Dimitri, as if he could access the memory for her. “I’m sorry, I have no recollection.”
“She healed your mother’s injuries. There were so many.” There was regret in Razvan’s voice. “Eventually, your mother was taken prisoner by the high mage. He detested her because of her lineage—one that was far more powerful than his. That was why he kept her so weak and drained. “He was certain he knew she was mage, but she kept up the facade of being human to protect you from him. She didn’t want him to know you had any power at all. Once he had you, he would never have let you go. She thought as a human and behaved as one for your protection.”
“Now Lilith has several Dragonseekers right here, all together,” Benedek said. “Clearly Skyler is a child of the earth, as well. Who else would be considered a child of the earth?”
“Tatijana and Branislava are,” Ivory said. “Razvan is.”
Benedek turned his attention to Afanasiv. “There are five Dragonseekers in this room together, Siv. Four of the five have admitted to being children of the earth mother. Are you?”
Afanasiv sighed and nodded his head. “Sadly, I must answer in the affirmative.”
There was a stunned silence. His brethren exchanged a puzzled look. Vasilisa managed to pull her hand away from his. He hadn’t told her. She had been so certain he tracked and read the ground so easily through his connection to her, but he had his own connection. He didn’t need her at all. She’d never felt so distant or off center in her life. She thought they were so well suited, but suddenly everything she thought she knew about him was wrong.