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Atticul closes the door and leans up against it, smirking, “Now, dear Hare, you poor thing. Such a terrible situation. Tell me, did he seduce you or did he force that potion down your throat and take you? No, I saw your face when you discovered what your Plumian brute had done. You wanted him. I expect you drank that potion in an attempt to cleanse yourself of sin like a Bride of Zai. Such a pathetic hope. Sins of the body cannot be washed away even if you drink foribunda.” His smirk grows gleeful. “You must feel so very betrayed. Did you think he was doing it out of love?”
Jemel’s voice comes out scratchy. “Not love, no.”
He looks at Atticul. He looks like himself. The same man he has ever been. Jemel has to remind himself that this man before him is a demon. This is Ur-Durik.
Atticul trots further into the cell, seeming delighted with himself. “An acolyte committing a sin of the body. What a grand horror. So burning is traditional. But burning is more spectacular when there are a dozen or more. Should I send my men out to find me a dozen luxorites? I could bind them and throw them into your pyre as you burn.” His eyes glitter with glee. He has Darek silver in them too. “I could raid some of those pillow houses. I know which ones have secret rooms full of male whores offering luxoli. And there are the women of course. Did you know there were female luxorites? So depraved.” He laughs and Jemel is sure he finds the thought of this compelling. “I wouldn’t burn the women though. Or not the comely ones. A waste of their charms. I would change their minds.”
Jemel’s silence does not seem to bother Atticul one bit. He appears quite happy to keep talking and talking.
“But I would dearly love to take your head at my ascension. Now I do not have the Plumian woman. But I do have the traitor killer of Selim and the pathetic Vindar.” He pauses. “Wouldn’t that be something? Two of my father’s bastards killed as a message that I will destroy you all.”
Atticul slaps Jemel’s face. Jemel’s head is knocked back against the cell wall. The thud of pain barely registers. All he thinks is that Atticul seems to really like hitting his face.
Atticul laughs gleefully. “Are you surprised to learn who your father is? I tortured it out of Vindar. The crime of my father’s that had Damon Darekul sent into the army and the reason Vindar was allowed to marry my sweet, weak sister. So yes, Jemel Darekul. We are brothers you and I.”
Jemel lifts his head to look at Atticul. It feels like lifting a dead weight. “Is that why you wanted me dead? Why you made a deal with Xan to betray me? I assure you I don’t want your throne.”
Atticul seems to bristle at this. “Why would your bastardry ever qualify you to take the throne of Azuria?”
“You must have heard the talk in the Rose Court? Your father’s marriage to Princess Ullinor was unlawful. You are a bastard. And they call in the streets for Emperor Damon. That is what you really fear isn’t it? You fear your father’s bastards coming for your throne. Especially Damon.”
Atticul hits Jemel again, but it doesn’t matter. Jemel has confirmed what he suspected. Ur-Durik is using his same old tricks using mortals' own desires to get them to do what he wants.
“My mother was Princess Ullinor.” Atticul says. He puts heavy emphasis on the word princess, as if still smarting. So fragile on the subject of his mother’s marriage he even feels the need to insist upon its vehemency to Jemel: a condemned man in a dungeon. “But tell me, luxorite,” Atticul coos, leaning in close, “do you know who your mother is? Do you know why it was such a great crime to sire you?”
“Probably some poor Bride of Zai who was executed for it.”
Atticul bites his lip, shaking his head. “Oh no, close but… no. Brother your sweet mother is alive.”
“What?” Jemel feels his whole body jolt. He had never once considered…
“Oh yes.” Atticul strokes a hand down Jemel’s side, rough fingers warm on Jemel’s freezing flesh. “She lives. You have spoken to her.” He leans in close and murmurs in Jemel’s ear. “She knows you are her son.”
“Who?” Jemel says, suddenly desperate as Atticul leans back. “Who is she? Please tell me.” He knows the way he sounds will only satisfy Atticul, letting him know he has power over him. But he cannot help it. “Please,” he says again.
The candle flame flickers on Atticul’s face. “Twenty years indenture is a harsh punishment for a man as high born as our father. Even if he had bedded a Bride of Zai. But what if it were something far worse. A greater crime. A greater sin? Something unthinkable?”
Jemel cannot imagine what that could be. Although Atticul is right. Rafus’s crime had always been a great mystery.
“Dear brother, I almost cannot bring myself to say it. One of the greatest secret of the Rose Palace. I had to torture Vindar to learn it. But it is no surprise that the child born of that crime would be so cursed by Zai. And to think my father did such a thing. Truly twenty years indenture seems too light a punishment. If I had been Emperor, having to pronounce justice in secret for a crime that could never be revealed, I would have had him burned alive for it.”
Jemel says nothing. He has begged. All he can do is wait.
Atticul pauses a little longer, as if still considering if he can bear to speak the secret he holds. But then he breathes it.
Jemel feels as if it lands in his belly like a frozen stone. It feels like pain. He knows it is the truth. It makes sense. It makes sense like nothing else ever has.
His mother is the Immurite. He is the greatest sin he has ever heard of.
26
JEMEL
The door of Jemel’s cell is opened.
The guards do not speak to him as they unlock his wrist cuffs from the chains bolted into the cell wall, dress him in the robes of an acolyte, then refasten his wrists together behind his back.
So he is being taken to death then.
