“The grandfather who bought your mother from a human trafficker and planned to pass her around to his friends when his son had no more use for her? That grandfather?”
She nodded. “I didn’t say he thought I would like or forgive his father, but he talked of him often and I know he missed him.”
“Did he ever speak of his mother?”
She shook her head. “Not once. I never once heard her mentioned and when I asked about her, he said she’d died long before he could remember her.”
“It is possible the lairs there were also extremely violent, as the ones in my homeland,” Timur said, “but from what you tell me, your father wasn’t a violent man. I believe, no matter what, that your mother was his true mate. He stumbled across her by accident. He would never be violent toward her. Others? Who knows?”
She put down her fork and rubbed her thighs with her palms, back and forth, a gesture that often soothed her. Lately that horrible itch that engulfed her body would come at unexpected times and she rubbed her skin in the hopes of soothing it. Now, she knew that was her leopard pushing close to the surface, rising again and again before the emergence.
“I never saw my father violent, but he did tell my mother about some of the men in his lair. The ones who didn’t have a wife, and some who did, waited for new girls to be bought and passed around. The things my mother told me sickened me. She didn’t want me to ever go looking for my grandfather, no matter how much my father hero-worshiped him.”
Timur’s eyes went cold again. The blue flames flickered beneath the glacier, giving the blue a deeper color. His eyes fascinated her. Sometimes she thought she was catching glimpses of his soul. Ice or fire. Those were her choices and she wanted them both.
“Did your father encourage you to seek out your grandfather?”
She hesitated. She always protected her parents, preserving their memories and talking about everything good. She felt she’d already put her mother in a bad light, which was wrong. Her mother had been loving, just a little hesitant and distant, but always loving and kind. There had been good times with her, where they’d both laughed and celebrated being feminine.
Her relationship with her father had been more complicated. He’d been a strict taskmaster. He’d forced her to run every day, no matter how bad she’d felt. He’d insisted she learn to handle weapons, and he’d been harsh with her. He’d used a rubber knife and raised welts all over her body when he’d slashed or struck her with it, to show her that she would have been cut that many times before she’d disarmed him. He’d been the one to teach her to swim and dive. To do everything.
He’d been fun as well. He’d made her laugh and sometimes, he made her feel like a princess with her knight guarding her castle. She’d loved him for those times. He’d been a perfect mix of love and danger. Of harshness for necessity, tempered with love. She understood that he’d had to be harsh in order to ensure her safety—to make certain his wild child obeyed him.
“It was the only time I ever heard them fight. My mother rarely contradicted my father, in fact I would say never. She would beg him to go easier on me, but she didn’t tell him to stop and when he wasn’t easier, she didn’t argue her point. She went along with everything he said. He was talking about his father and how he was wealthy, and he would one day love to see his grandchild. He told me I would be welcome in my grandfather’s lair, that he was still alive and wanted to get to know me.”
“Your mother wasn’t happy about that.”
Ashe shook her head. “Absolutely not. She told me under no circumstances should I go there and that I should forget all about him.”
“My father was furious with her and told her I would be welcome. She reminded him that his father bought girls—young girls—and used them before returning them to the lairs to die.” She looked down at her hands, ashamed of her father and horrified by his furious outburst at her mother. “My father said that his father only bought castaways, little whores, not good women.”
There was silence, and she couldn’t bring herself to look at his face. “My mother struck him. Hard. Right in the face and she left. I just stood there, and I remember crying. Crying for her. Crying for knowing my father had called her a whore. Later she told me that females in her lair were treated as less than human, with no rights. Some were killed at birth because the fathers wanted no part of them. She had been sold to my grandfather, but she’d done nothing wrong and she said even if she had, it was no excuse for any man to treat a woman that way.”