Immortal

by Nicole Conway

  “Darion Prax is your father.”

  All the wind was sucked out me. I took an unsteady step backwards and leaned against the door. It was too much to process. I wasn’t sure how I felt, or even what I should be feeling to begin with. Was I supposed to be happy? Relieved? Angry? Sad?

  All I knew was that my father—my real father—wasn’t a duke. He was a dragonrider. He wasn’t anyone famous. He certainly wasn’t a noble. He was just a commoner. He didn’t even have a profession outside of being a dragonrider, as far as I knew. Come to think of it, I knew next to nothing about him.

  And myself?

  I was a bastard child. My entire claim to the birthright of being Duke Farrow was a total fraud. All of a sudden, I was an imposter in my own home.

  I wish I could say we shared a mother-son moment of reconciliation, hugged it out, and moved on with our lives having learned from our rocky past. But we’d never been a hugging family. And after that, nothing was the same.

  I didn’t know whom I could trust, or who knew the truth about me. And my mom … well, if we’d had a bad relationship before, now we were like two feral wolves trapped in the same house.

  She refused to see me and wouldn’t even leave her private chambers. She shut me out completely and no matter what I did, I couldn’t get her to look me in the eyes, let alone tell me what the heck had happened between her and Prax. I tried reasoning with her. I tried shouting. I tried begging. Nothing worked. I might as well have been a piece of lint on the carpet in her eyes. She’d never made me feel so insignificant.

  And it was really starting to piss me off.

  Finally, something inside me snapped. It was only a matter of time, I suppose. You could say I’m not the kind of guy who handles loss well. And now I’d lost everything—right down to my own identity.

  I threw mom out. Well, not literally; I didn’t actually touch her. But I invited her to leave without the option of saying no. If she wasn’t going to see me and come clean about her relationship with Prax, then she wasn’t welcome in my world anymore. So I sent her packing and didn’t bother telling her goodbye. I didn’t know where she went. I didn’t care. She was good at deception and manipulation, obviously. She’d survive. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have ended up the duke of an estate I had no legitimate claim to.

  The staff, including Miss Harriet, were understandably distressed. They walked on eggshells around me, which was exactly what I wanted. It made them obedient and cautious. And I had an agenda now, so there was plenty to be done.

  My days of moping in my room were over. I shook off the chains of guilt and grief. Was Jaevid’s death my fault? Yes, definitely. But was there anything I could do about it now? Nope. So I had to do whatever it took to make those feelings go away, to forget about him and everything that was happening around me. I was going to bury myself so deeply in all the rot and ruin nobles loved wallowing in, that no one would be able to find me.

  I would be beyond saving. I’d be every ounce the whopping disappointment all my parental figures took me for.

  I did what I’d always done best. I threw parties. At first it was just one every weekend with a few local nobles from the surrounding area. Then, it was two a week. Then three. At some point, it was as though no one ever left. People were coming from all over the kingdom—people I didn’t even know. The party never stopped and I always had more than enough guests willing to revel in whatever riches I decided to toss around that day.

  The kitchens worked overtime to turn out course after course of extravagant morsels for my guests. Wine and ale flowed like ocean currents. I spared nothing on unceasing music, entertainment and extravagance. Naturally, it didn’t take long for things to start getting sloppy. With hundreds of people filing through my family’s estate daily, the staff couldn’t keep up with the mess.

  But my already intoxicated guests didn’t seem to mind the smashed wine bottles and goblets on the floor, or vomit in the hallways.

  So neither did I.

  “You should have quit being a dragonrider a long time ago.” A girl I didn’t recognize was leaning against my shoulder. She’d been there a while, and she’d had so much wine she couldn’t even keep both eyes open at the same time. “You’re a lot more fun now.”

  “I’m just getting started, sweetie.” I smirked and looked across the ballroom from where we were sitting on a long silk sofa—one of the ones my mother had picked out. She’d always had an expensive appetite whenever it came to spending other people’s money.

  It was early in the morning, barely dawn, and the guests were beginning to tire. The dancing had stopped, although the musicians were still sawing away at some jolly waltz. Some of the men were crowded around a pair of infantrymen who were attempting to brawl. They were so drunk that neither of them could get a good punch in, though it was hilarious to watch them try. Some of the guests had even passed out on the floor. Others were draped over various pieces of furniture taken in from the adjoining rooms. I wasn’t interested in napping in the filth either, so I had my servants drag a sofa in from a parlor.

  “What’s next, hm?” The girl started playing with my ear.

  I glanced sideways at her, sizing her up. Judging by her tacky dress, she was the daughter of some low-ranking noble who had come here fishing, hoping to snag herself a husband. She was young, a lot younger than I was, maybe sixteen at the most. Pretty, I guess. It was hard to tell with her makeup smeared all down her face. And she was drunk out of her mind.

  “Want to go upstairs?” I suggested.

  She licked her lips and nodded.

  I stood up, surprised to find myself a little woozier than I’d anticipated, and dragged her up with me. She nearly fainted right then, but erupted into slurred laughter instead. She couldn’t put one foot in front of the other, so I basically had to carry her out of the room.

  Out in the hallway, the girl slumped against me suddenly. I had to catch her to keep her from collapsing into a heap on the marble floor. She was passed out cold.

  It wasn’t surprising, really. I’d watched her drink more than anyone her size should have been able to handle in one sitting. Young girls like her always thought they had to put on a show, doing anything they could to get me to notice them and hopefully score the spot right next to me as my duchess. Watching them get so drunk they couldn't keep their drool in was supposed to impress me somehow. It was entertaining, I’d grant them that.

  That is, until they passed out or threw up everywhere.

  I was looking for a convenient place to put her down so she could sleep it off and sober up, when a familiar voice stopped me dead in my tracks.

  “Felix Farrow.”

  I stiffened. Turning around slowly, I narrowed my eyes at the last person in the world I wanted to see here.

  She was standing in the front doorway to my estate, just down the hall. The doorman who had let her in knew he’d screwed up. He stared at the floor, the ceiling, and anything to avoid the blazing wrath of my glare. I’d deal with him later. Every member of the staff knew how I felt about her.

  “Get out,” I snarled.

  She didn’t obey. Instead, she took a step inside and brushed back the hood of her long, gray traveling cloak. Crap. She was even prettier than the last time I saw her. Why did that piss me off so much? It wasn’t fair.

  She was quiet while her eyes traced around the room at all the damage and garbage lying everywhere. When she looked back at me, it was like she didn’t even see the girl I was holding in my arms. She only saw me—just like always.

  “She told me it was bad,” she spoke quietly. “But I didn’t realize it was this bad. I would have come sooner.”

  “Who?” I demanded. “Who told you?”

  “Your mother.”

  My temper caught fire with explosive force, blazing right through the haze of every drink I’d had that night. “You’re not welcome here! I want you out! NOW!”

  “That isn’t your decision to make.�
� She began taking off her cloak and handing it to the doorman, smiling at him graciously as though this was completely normal.

  “Not my decision? Are you insane? This is my house! I’m duke!”

  She glanced at me again. Her light brown eyes shimmered like amber glass in the dim glow of morning light. She had her ginger-colored hair wound into a long, intricate braid over one shoulder. Her skin caught the light like porcelain. It just wasn’t fair at all.

  “And I’m your fiancée. Unbeknownst to you, your father had it added to his dying will that so long as our engagement remains intact, I have shared ownership of this estate. Your mother was the only one who knew about it, and she kept it to herself in case something just like this were to happen.” She calmly took her velvet gloves off one-by-one. “So you’re wrong. This is our house. And I’m here to tell everyone that the party is over.”

  She called over one of the servant girls and began giving quick instructions for the staff to stop serving everyone, begin calling around carriages, and dismissing my guests.

  “You may start with that young lady there.” She pointed to the girl who was still sagging, totally unconscious, in my arms. “It seems the party is long past over for her. See to it that she’s taken back to her family’s home safely.”

  “I won’t stand for this,” I started to yell, but neither she nor any of my staff was listening anymore.

  She smiled so graciously at everyone, using her presence like a soothing balm on the staff’s nerves while giving them careful instructions about how to begin shutting down my party. I might as well have been invisible. Servants and footmen shuffled by without so much as a glance in my direction.

  My blood pressure skyrocketed so high it felt like my eyeballs might pop out of their sockets.

  “You’re all doing a wonderful job. See to it that the kitchen has plenty of help restocking and cleaning up. It’s a lot to manage, I know. But we’ll get through this together.” She patted the doorman reassuringly and sent him on his way. “And would someone call for Miss Harriet? Please tell her that Julianna Lacroix has arrived.”

  By morning everyone was gone. Even the hired musicians had left and the house was finally quiet. My servants were still toiling away, cleaning up the mess that had built up over the past several weeks. It was going to take them a while. But the atmosphere was calm—too calm—as though the whole estate was breathing a sigh of relief.

  It was driving me mad.

  Sitting in my study, I pondered the best way to destroy it while swirling my half-empty glass of wine.

  The door opened without any knock of warning. Julianna came in with Miss Harriet right on her heels. Neither one of them looked happy to see me. Big surprise there.

  “I suppose I should greet you properly.” Julianna eyed the hole in my wall leftover from when I’d thrown the paperweight. “After all, it has been quite a while since we met like this.”

  I made a point not to look up at her.

  “Hello again, Felix.”

  Those words stung. I licked the front of my teeth behind my lips, savoring all the angry things I wanted to say.

  “I’ve asked Miss Harriet to open the guest room next door for me. I’ll be staying here until things are put back in order,” she continued, without missing a beat.

  “Back in order?” I shouted. “What is that supposed to mean?”

  Julianna didn’t flinch. I couldn’t scare her with my temper—I already knew that. She knew me well enough to be confident I wouldn’t actually lay a hand on her. “I understand that you’re grieving. I can’t imagine how much pain you must be feeling right now. But this is no way to honor Jaevid’s memory.”

  “What do you think you know about Jaevid?” I growled, slamming my wine glass down onto the desktop.

  “Not as much as you do, I’m sure. I don’t claim to have known him well at all. But I do know how much he meant to you. And I don’t believe he would approve of the way you’ve been handling things.”

  I cut a threatening glare at Miss Harriet. That was her cue to go. She took the hint right away and left us, closing the door behind her without a word.

  “And how is it any of your business?” I growled again, once we were alone. “Since when is any aspect of my life your business?”

  She crossed her arms stubbornly. “You’re drunk, and judging by the way you reek of soured vomit, I’d guess you’ve been that way for quite some time. You evicted your own mother and are now wrecking your family home.”

  “Right,” I fired back immediately. “This is my family home. Mine. It has nothing to do with you. I don’t know what screwed-up dream world you think you’re living in, but just because our parents signed away my right to choose my bride doesn’t give you any authority over me or anything I own. You really think you deserve to be my wife? I didn’t choose you. I’ll never choose you.”

  Julianna’s expression skewed. I saw anger flash in her eyes. She snatched up my wine glass and emptied the contents over my head before I could get out of the way.

  “I didn’t choose you either, you selfish idiot,” she muttered bitterly. “And I can’t think of anyone who deserves a fate like being your bride. Such a thing would be the worst kind of torture.”

  I hadn’t expected that. In all our years of knowing one another, I’d never seen her get this upset. Before I could come up with a good retort, she stormed out of the room and slammed the door so hard it actually made me cringe.

  I was immediately confused—confused and furious. Hadn’t she been the one who insisted on our marriage? Hadn’t she begged her parents to make the arrangements?

  We’d only been children when they’d announced it, and yet I remembered that day so clearly that it made me sick to my stomach. My parents and hers had sent out a public decree and announced it before a ballroom full of friends and family; she and I were to be wed as soon as I took my official post as duke. Julianna Lacroix would be my wife, whether I liked it or not. I had been completely humiliated and emasculated, which was pretty traumatic for a kid just beginning to come into manhood. My parents had decided without even asking me how I felt about it. I was already fighting tooth and nail to convince them to let me have a dragon of my own. And now they weren’t even going to let me choose my own bride.

  I guess I never considered that she hadn’t wanted it, either. After all, that was usually what other girls wanted whenever they came around me. It wasn’t exactly a mystery why. I was the highest-ranking noble in Maldobar. The most eligible bachelor in the kingdom. My family bloodline was shared with princes and kings going back generations. Marrying me would bring power, prestige, wealth, and security—everything a woman wanted.

  Every woman except for Julianna, apparently.

  I didn’t know what game she was playing at, but I didn’t want any part of it. I’d spent years driving as big a wedge as I possibly could between the two of us, hoping she would take the hint and get out of my life. According to the contract, she was the only one who could break off the engagement. Those were the terms. And I’d tried everything. I’d sabotaged her social standing amongst the other nobles, disgraced her at parties, and pretended not to know her at all. Nothing worked. She wouldn’t call off the marriage.

  Was it cruel? Yes. But the fact that she grew up to be beautiful, and smart, and … unfortunately, one of the nicest people I’d ever known didn’t matter. She had betrayed our friendship in the worst way. I’d trusted her more than anyone, even my own parents. Going behind my back to plot this forced marriage to me was not something I could just forgive.

  Maybe she’d been able to chain me down as her fiancée, but Julianna wasn’t going to win this time. This was my last shot at freedom. She thought she could just swagger in here and run my life?

  She was in for a rude awakening.

  “Give it to me now!” I yelled at the top of my lungs, flinging a tray of dishes leftover from my uneaten dinner across the room. Plates and cups shattered, rai
ning porcelain splinters all over the carpet.

  Miss Harriet had to duck to get out of the way. “Master Felix, the mistress has forbidden it. She had all the alcohol in the estate poured out. Even the wine!”

  “Are you deaf or just stupid? How many times do I have to repeat myself? This is not her house. You don’t follow her instructions. I am the master of this estate!”

  I was so out of breath that I had to catch myself against the back of the sofa. My skin felt clammy and my head was swimming. I could barely put one foot in front of the other. All I wanted was a drink. It had been two days since my last one. Just one strong glass of wine and I knew I’d feel better.

  “Sir, I can’t—” Miss Harriet started to protest again. I picked up another object, which happened to be a sterling silver water pitcher, and reared back to throw it.

  My chamber doors opened.

  “That’ll be all, Miss Harriet. I’ll handle it from here.” Julianna came striding in with her sleeves rolled up and an apron tied around her waist, looking as cool and collected as ever. She carried a tray full of supplies.

  My housekeeper didn’t argue. No doubt she’d been looking for an excuse to leave this whole time. She was the only member of my staff who was still brave enough to try coming in to bring me food. Everyone else was too scared of me, I guess.

  As soon as she was gone, Julianna gave me a scolding glare. “You shouldn’t be so unkind to her. That woman loves you like her own son.”

  “Hah!” I tried to steady myself. My hands shook so badly I couldn’t grip the pitcher any longer. It clattered noisily to the floor and sent water splashing everywhere. “Come to watch me suffer?”

  She frowned. “I came to help, since you’ve driven away everyone else. You’ve been drinking too much for too long. You’re going through withdrawal sickness.”

  “I’m acutely aware of that, genius.” I glared at both blurry images of her, since I couldn’t tell which one was real. My vision wasn’t so good and my head was pounding.