Castle Bleak, casting its shadow over the town of Tara, never looked as bleak as it did when it was raining. The castle had been built in the second era as Castle Belak – after Tara’s first lord, Belak Koda – but no one called it that anymore, not even him, Thomas Koda, the son of the present lord. Its dreary appearance and dilapidated state had once been a source of bitterness for Thomas, but he had accepted the challenge to do what his father had failed to do: shower House Koda with honour and once again make it chief amongst its peers. Tara would be a bustling city again, and the castle’s battlements strengthened to deter anyone with a conqueror''s mind. But today, the world was as bleak as the castle, the iron sky leaking a drizzle. Mud clung to Thomas’s leather boots as he squelched toward the marketplace. He wore an expensive satin shirt, a rider’s coat, and a black cloak, his blond hair tied back with a lilac velvet ribbon. Though in civilian clothes, he carried his sword at his hip, a privilege within the town walls granted only to the highborn and guards.


    Castle Bleak towered over the muddy, miserable marketplace. On a raised stage, nine men knelt with hands bound behind their backs, heads bowed, rain dripping from their chins. Behind them, the executioner stood with a broad-bladed axe, while a court officiant read the charges from a scroll. Thomas didn’t listen; it was always the same: a border dispute resolved by a hundred men riding out, some dying on the battlefield, and a few more losing their heads to mark Lord Leylyn Koda’s victory. Some prisoners, the lucky ones, had been sent home for ransom. Spoils of war and ransoms – the cornerstone of the Vagoshian economy.


    The officiant finished reading. The executioner bent the first prisoner to the block and swung. The dull thud of the blade was followed by a splash of crimson across the stage, and the crowd cheered. A mother held her toddler high. The head rolled off the stage, landing in the mud, mouth half-open, one eye rolled up, wearing a funny, surprised expression that made Thomas chuckle. A spectator waddled over, grabbed the head by the hair, gave it a swing, and tossed it back up the stage, hitting the basket, prompting a roar of laughter. He did a silly dance, hands above his head. The axe fell again, another head rolled off, and the man, drunk on attention, chased after it.


    Thomas continued up the street. He’d been fond of executions as a boy, but now they bored him. Blood on a stage was nothing when you’d spilled it yourself on the battlefield. That blood was the best blood of all.


    The shops, a row of ramshackle houses of dark, wet wood, had their fronts open to the street. The smell of cooking and fresh bread mingled with the scents of wet wool and horse sweat. Steam billowed from a soup stand run by a fat woman dressed in green wool and thick scarves. Thomas passed the butcher’s shop but stopped at the bakery, where they sold a pastry that seemed too luxurious for a town like Tara – a butter scone topped with whipped cream and filled with raspberry jam. He stared at the pastries. Maybe such a delicacy could thaw a frozen heart? He’d tried everything else. He bought a box for a handful of coppers. The girl handing it over cast down her eyes and dipped her knees.


    Thomas had tethered his horse at the foot of the cobbled incline leading up to Castle Bleak. He swung up onto his steed, whipped the reins, and thundered up, making sure his cloak billowed behind him for all below to see.


    The drawbridge was down. The guards pulled their spears close to their ornamented chests in salute as he passed. Thomas entered the gatehouse, the hooves of his horse thundering dark echoes. He left the horse to the groom before crossing the courtyard, entering the keep.


    The great hall of Castle Bleak was dark, with unlit braziers and air thick with the scent of damp stone and stale smoke. At the far end of the hall, there was a fireplace big enough to walk into. Above it hung the green and gold banner with the prancing bear of House Koda. On both sides of the fireplace were real bears – stuffed ones – standing on their hind legs, mouths open, clawing ferociously at the air. Their glass eyes were lustreless, and their fur was grey with dust. Thin light seeped through high stained windows in the west wall, casting faint illumination over the long table lined with sturdy wooden chairs.


    There was a stillness in the hall, as unrelenting as death. The cold air pressed against his face like a wet cloth. When he was young, these halls had been alight, full with bearded men who drank, laughed, and roared, his father at the high seat, presiding over it all.


    How bright his future had looked then! He had fantasised about the day when he would succeed his father and grow his own beard. But fortune doesn’t always favour the bold. No man was bolder than his father – or more reckless, for that matter – and in the endless skirmishes of the Vagoshian aristocracy, he’d lately found himself more on the losing side, watching his reputation diminish. When war was planned against the eastern coalition, it wasn’t Leylyn Koda who summoned the lords, nor was it in his halls that they gathered to drink and roar. He had been one of those summoned. And when they rode out to battle, it was Lord Ragan who led them, bearing Garnak’s silver sceptre – not Leylyn Koda.


    The laughter of yesteryears lingered as an echo in Thomas’ mind, reverberating through the dead hall as he walked. That was his father’s legacy, but it wouldn’t be Thomas’ future. He would see to it that power once again filled the great hall of Castle Bleak.


    A broad staircase, covered with a threadbare green carpet, led him up to the archway that stretched the length of the great hall and continued to the living quarters. Here, the braziers were lit – a little warmth and life, at last – their dim glow reflecting off the armour flanking the walls, interrupted by green and gold banners.


    As always, when he walked the archway, his heart picked up pace – not from the stairs, but from the thought of seeing <i>her</i>


    again.


    But first, he had to pass his mother’s bedchamber. He knew better than to try sneaking by her; she’d aged quickly, but her hearing remained as sharp as ever.


    “Thomas?” she called before he’d even reached her door.


    He placed the box of pastries on a chair outside her door before opening it. A wave of warmth met him. A maid in a white cap shot up from her chair, clasping her hands. His mother lay propped up on green velvet pillows, the heavy emerald bedspread pulled up to her waist. The hearth burned, and the air was a soft caress compared to the raw chill of the great hall.


    “Young Master Thomas,” the maid said, bending her neck.


    “Leave us,” he replied.


    The maid left, and his mother gave him a weak smile, having one of her good days. He sat beside her. Her once-thick auburn hair had thinned, streaked with grey. He remembered her as a strong woman with sharp eyes and a sharper tongue, but she was strong no more. A faint lavender scent clung to her, a ghost of the woman she’d been. Her eyelids fluttered with emotion as she stroked his cheek with the back of her fingers.


    “So, you finally come to see me, my son.”


    “I was here yesterday, Mother, and the day before that.”


    “You were?” she asked, a frown of uncertainty creasing her smooth forehead as she slowly retracted her hand.


    He took her hand gently, smiling reassuringly.


    “I was, Mother. We drank tea and had some of Miriam’s butter cookies. Do you remember?”


    She smiled again, though tinged with the same uncertainty as her frown.


    “Yes,” she said. “Of course, I remember. It was very pleasant. Now, where is your father?”


    “Out at Zandar, performing the Lord’s justice.”


    She sank back against her pillows and pulled feebly at her duvet. He helped pull it up to her chin and kissed her forehead. Her skin was cool to the touch.Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.


    “I’ll come back tomorrow, Mother. Be well.”


    She nodded and closed her eyes. Thomas slipped out, grabbing the box of pastries.


    Crossing the roofed bridge over the inner bailey, he wondered what she would be wearing, if she’d be pleased with the pastries, and if this might finally be the day they shared pleasantries and smiles.


    He continued down the west corridor to that familiar door of dark wood, belted with studded iron. Heart trembling, he knocked. Another maid in a white cap opened the door just a crack.


    “Is she decent?” he asked.


    The maid opened her mouth to answer, but a deep, husky voice cut in.


    “She is.”


    The maid stepped aside.


    Viona Rada sat at her dressing table, removing her big golden earrings. She was informed then, that his father had gone and wouldn’t visit her tonight. She wore a billowing dress of black satin, trimmed with glowing burgundy. The fabric shimmered in the low light, the faint sound of satin shifting as she moved. Her hair was styled in the elaborate fashion of highborn eastern women. She cast him an uninterested look in the mirror. Thomas handed his coat to the maid and nipped the sleeves of his satin shirt. He smiled at Viona, but she didn’t look at him anymore. She was pulling pins out of her hair, and that obviously took all her attention. The metallic sound of the pins clicking against the wood of the table as she laid them down filled the silence.


    A surge of anger rose in his stomach.


    She showed far too much pride for a woman given as tribute by her own father. His attention was more than a woman like Viona Rada could hope for, yet all he received was cold indifference. He was tall, handsome, of noble birth. What was she compared to him?


    Nothing.


    She wasn’t even beautiful, at least not in the ordinary sense. Her eyes were well-shaped, almond-like, but too far apart for his liking. Her mouth was broad and to his taste, but the lips weren’t as full as he preferred. She never smiled. Her hair was not only dark but black as a raven’s wing, and her skin had that coppery tone that all the eastern rabble had. But still, something about her made him tremble inside. Maybe it was that haughty look in her eyes or the dismissive curve of her lips, but he couldn’t stop thinking about her.


    He told the maid to brew a pot of tea. She nodded and left. Thomas brought a stool to Viona’s dressing table, setting the box of pastries beside her.


    “What is that?”


    Maybe it wasn’t her face that worked its magic on him, but that voice. Low and powerful, with just a hint of her brutish eastern accent. It resonated in his chest, like the echo of something primal. She wasn’t love, strokes, and giggles. She was lust. That was it, he concluded – carnal lust, nothing more. Once he’d had her, she’d hold no more interest, and the spell would be broken. And the fine thing was, if he wanted her, he could just take her.


    If Leylyn Koda’s fortunes had shifted in recent years, it was nothing compared to the fortunes of Dankar Rada, a drunkard who’d squandered everything his father gave him. He had joined the losing side of every war for over two decades, and House Rada, never prominent to begin with, had been reduced to nothingness. The reparations to House Koda were to be paid in full within ten years. First, Thomas’ father had taken most of Rada’s coin, then the family heirlooms. Then most of their land. Then he took <i>all</i> of their land. And when Dankar Rada ran out of wine and had nothing more to give, he gave up his daughters, as wards but, in reality – as slaves. What could his father do with two girls of a dying house? They had no political value, but they weren’t <i>without</i> value. Thomas’ mother had moved out of the lord''s bedchamber years ago, and having Viona in the house saved his father a trip or two to the brothel every week.


    The surge of anger in Thomas’ stomach became a black serpent of envy, curling and tensing. All of his feverish dreams about Viona Rada were a reality for his father, but Thomas didn’t think he appreciated her as he would.


    “Pastries, Lady Viona.”


    She pulled the final pin, and her dark hair cascaded down her shoulders. The heavy scent of flowers and something more exotic bloomed in the air as her hair tumbled down.


    “I don’t like pastries.”


    “Well, maybe just a cup of tea then.”


    “Maybe,” she said.


    She brushed out her hair with long strokes and vacant eyes. The soft rasp of the brush against her thick, dark hair filled the silence, each stroke deliberate, yet detached. It had to be hard to be a woman, spending so much time just to please. And that was another thing about her – nothing in her personality aimed to please, but she was bending over backwards to please his father. He was nineteen, she two years his elder. His father was over fifty. Surely, she would prefer him if she had the choice? Did his father care for her? Thomas didn’t know and couldn’t very well ask. If Viona was only a warm body to him, he wouldn’t mind if Thomas warmed himself as well, but if her poison had gone deeper, Thomas would be overstepping his boundaries.


    “How is my sister?”


    He smiled faintly. If she ever started a conversation, it was to ask about her sister. In Thomas’s opinion, Velita Rada wasn’t much to talk about, a plain-looking girl of fifteen who spent all her time reading, holding the books so close that her nose touched the pages. It looked ridiculous. Velita Rada didn’t tempt Thomas, but his father had tasted her during the sister’s first week at Castle Bleak. He hadn’t returned to her chambers since.


    “Well, reading as usual. It’s a fortunate thing we have a big library.”


    “It is,” Viona said in a flat voice and kept brushing her hair.


    She was quite the reader herself, and Thomas reminded himself not to say anything degrading about people who spent their lives reading about the triumphs of others instead of pursuing them for themselves – like he did. He had served at the front of the war against the eastern coalition. The war had almost been over when he reached the front, but he had spent two weeks there, and even if he hadn’t gotten the opportunity to draw his enemies’ blood in combat, he had at least gotten to execute some of them on the battlefield. He had returned to Tara in triumph. The only thing that irked him were the malignant whispers that he had commanded more servants than soldiers in the war.


    He opened the box and showed her the pastries.


    “There are four of them. I can’t possibly eat them all.”


    “Give them to the poor, then. There ought to be plenty of them around the market.”


    He sighed and took a bite of one of the pastries. The maid came back with a silver tray and poured them tea.


    And <i>there</i>! There it was!


    A shadow of a smile on Viona’s lips when she thanked the maid, who bowed and returned to her corner.


    Thomas chewed and swallowed.


    “It doesn’t need to be like this,” he said, taking another bite. “We could go for walks outside the castle, maybe to the theatre and to dinner.” He brightened. “Maybe we could bring your sister as well?”


    “That would be lovely.”


    “You say that, but I don’t hear it.”


    She put the brush down and looked at him.


    “Thomas. I’m your father’s prize, not yours. You will not take me anywhere.”


    “I will,” Thomas said in a voice that was all too eager. “Father doesn’t mind.”


    “And the fine gentlemen we’ll meet at the theatre? What do you think they will say?”


    “I do not care what they say or think.”


    And, as if miracles still happened, she gave him that ghost of a smile.


    “Your father will.”


    Well, yes, of course he would. His father was trying to get him married to one of Emperor Kasimir’s seven daughters, and such a match would be impossible if he were seen in public with a tarnished woman like Viona.


    He finished his pastry, sipped the steaming tea.


    “I care for you, Lady Viona.”


    “Stop it with the ‘lady,’” she said with a frown. “I’m a lady no more. Your father took that away from me.”


    “Well, pardon me for disagreeing, but your father did that when he gave you away.”


    And that actually shut her up. Her cheeks darkened, but he knew it was from anger, not embarrassment.


    A jolt of excitement.


    Finally, something more than indifference. If he couldn’t get love strokes and giggles, her anger was the second-best thing.


    “Do you prefer Miss Rada, then?”


    “I would prefer if you left my room and never returned.”


    His heart stopped. His head cleared of thoughts. An empty void inside until rage came screaming in, filling him to the brim. His hand shot out and grabbed the back of her head, jerking her closer. Her upper lip curled in a rage that mirrored his own. This uppity fucking <i>bitch</i>


    denying him what was his to take! The maid gave a shriek of despair.


    “You talk mighty bold for a slave, girl!”


    “I wish you a thousand deaths, you son of a rapist,” she snarled.


    There was a sense of tremendous power, having her by the hair as he did. He clenched his fist, pressing her chin upwards. That slender neck. That throbbing vein. Those furious eyes staring at him.


    She was his to take, and <i>gods be damned</i> if he wouldn’t!


    He grabbed a handful of her breast and squeezed as hard as he could.


    “You like that, don’t you?” he asked, his voice thick. “I tried to treat you like a lady, but if you prefer to be treated like the whore you are, I’m happy to oblige.”


    The power in him welled over. But he wasn’t satisfied. He wanted to see fear in her eyes. He wanted her crying and whimpering, all that uppity nastiness gone, before he flipped her over and thumped her silly over her dressing table. He let go of her breast, whipped at the hem of her dress, and got his hand in. The satin rustled as he worked his way up to the forbidden place. He was dizzy with desire, fingering the inside of her thigh. Fear in her eyes now? Yes? He looked at her.


    No.


    Her smile was pure viciousness, and then, he couldn’t even have imagined it – she burst out <i>laughing</i>.


    “You pathetic boy. You aspire to be more than just the son of a rapist, then?”


    He pulled his hand away as if he had burned himself, stumbling back. She turned her back to him, ran her fingers through her hair and once again looked at him through the mirror.


    “I believe you were about to leave, young Master Thomas? Don’t let me stop you.”