Page 98 of Mortdale

Chapter 18

Logan

King Ulric had failed exactly twice in his life.

The day he’d forced my existence upon my mother.

And the moment he made the mistake of speaking about my wife. “The exarch happened to tell me in passing that your wife has gone to see him a few times.” He reached into a glass jar across his table, bringing a colourful bit of comfit to his rotten teeth. “That old, charming prig must have left quite the impression on her.”

“She went once. Accompanied by my men.”

When he’d called me here after four days of slaying and burning the sick that had eaten through an entire neighbourhood of humans, I knew he’d bring her up. He knew to bring her up only when I was exhausted, sleepless, drained.

He leisurely chewed, sputtering his words all over. “You’re sure? It wasn’t what I was told.”

“It would be to your advantage to shut the fuck up when it comes to my wife. I won’t allow you to slander her. I’m not my father.”

The stale, musk-filled silence echoed across his dim study for a stretch of a time.

He huffed, dropping a half-eaten comfit back in the glass container. “Edmund Duncan was a good man. But he is not your father.”

“He’ll be the only father I will ever know.”

The pale man turned a few shades too red as he leaned forward in his armchair and stared up at me. “You know what is expected of you. Luella is sick. She will not succeed my throne. You’re the only heir I have who is anywhere close to decent in taking my place.”

His bastards littered the grounds of every street corner in Mortdale, but his one obsession had been my mother. And only I was here to be subjected to it.

“A true shame. She would have been twice the king you are.”

“Logan!” he bellowed, his lips turning purple as he huffed for a few breaths of air. “As my bastard, they will kill you if I am thrown off this throne! They will hunt down all my bastards until my bloodline is eradicated. Starting with you!”

“I am Edmund Duncan’s son. They have no reason to kill me.” For years, he’d submitted parental claims over me to the parliament, and every single time, they’d accepted my submission of denial. My father had been a well-loved, smart man who’d known Ulric’s twisted mind too well. He’d spent years studying it, planning for his inevitable death as soon as I’d been born because he’d known the only thing standing between Ulric and I was him. And he’d still refused to step down, to let go of his claim, to let go of me.

His face turned mauve as he coughed into a napkin, struggling to regain his colour. That was what lifetimes of inflicting horror and pain and terror on others did to you. It rotted you from the inside.

He pointed a bloody finger at me. “You will have no choice.”

“I am Edmund Duncans’s son,” I repeated.

His swollen hand hit his desk, sending papers flying everywhere. “Logan!”

“Born thirty-seven years ago this December first by the name of Logan Edmund Duncan. My mother was Agatha Duncan, daughter of the Earl of Galahad and his wife Morgana. My father was Edmund Duncan, son of the Duke of Darkheim and his wife Cecilia, whom you all killed. I had two brothers; their names were Heath and James Duncan, both killed by you. And a sister I couldn’t protect—her name was Cassandra,” I said, trying to let her name shatter in my throat. “I. Am. Logan Duncan. My father is Edmund Duncan.”

He coughed again and purple blood dripped down his neck, soaking the white neckline of his shirt.

“For what you did to my mother,” I said, throwing a cigarette butt to his feet. “I should have killed you a long time ago. Had it not been for my father, I wouldn’t have hesitated a moment. It was his dying wish that I lived and died as his son. If I killed you, they’d all know how I came into this world. Of the violence that birthed me. The violence that might as well have killed my mother.”

I looked nothing like him, but I could have sworn every time she’d looked at my face, she’d seen him. My mother had been a soft-hearted woman. She’d borne nine months of the sickness growing in her stomach, gone through twelve hours of birthing pains to bring her greatest agony to life. If only she’d had the heart to cut the roots of the evil cancer that had plagued her when she’d had the chance. Maybe…maybe she would still be alive today. Maybe my brothers and sister would have grown up with a mother. A sane, loving mother who wouldn’t have hated them too for loving me.

He coughed onto a napkin, folding it to wipe the dark blood on his lip.

I sighed, shaking my handkerchief and opening my fists to wipe the blood on my palm. “Watching you suffering and helpless will have to do.”

He’d shrunk back into a shadow of a person, crippled by fear yet tempted—still tempted.

Luella was waiting just outside her father’s study. She leaned against her cane, struggling to stand upright. Her thin red hair was gathered in a braid thrown over her shoulder to cover her sunken flesh, and her skin had become so transparent you could see the blue veins on her face and the fingerprint bruises left by her carers all over her bony arms. Like me, she looked nothing like the man who’d sired her. And I was thankful for it. “You never come to see me anymore.”

A pang of guilt struck me right through the ribs. “You should be in bed, Lu.”