and crusted with dirt and dried blood. “I think a manicure is in order.”
“I’ll help,” I said.
Lucian assembled some tools, and I stacked a couple of overturned buckets so that we could sit on either side of her. He’d moved onto carefully washing her hair, which took great attention to avoid riling her snakes. Even still, he got bit once and hissed back savagely to subdue them. While we worked, Lucian told me about our homeland—limestone cliffs that formed alcoves for swimming and sunbathing, beautiful beaches with black sand due to the residual volcanic ash, the vineyard’s terraced hills, and orchards that bore the sweetest fruit imaginable. His descriptions were not only for my benefit but for Mater’s as well. Lucian told me before that he was glad I’d joined them because she needed a reason to fight.
“Has Mother ever told you the story of how she met our father?” Lucian asked. “Me and Henri’s father, not yours.”
“No. She’s never told me anything about my father either.”
At that, her face turned toward me at last. Her gaze settled on me, so intense that I couldn’t look away, nor did I want to.
“She has a weakness for mortal men, but she doesn’t have a great track record in maintaining them,” he said. I wondered if that meant she’d killed your father as well. “At the coastal edge of our land, is an archipelago of islands. Has Henri mentioned them?”
“Yes, he calls them his islands.”
Lucian snorted. “Henri spent a lot of time there in his adolescence. He was quite broody, as I’m sure you can imagine. Mother gifted them to him when he became a commander in the Roman Army. An overindulgence, if you ask me, but he is her firstborn. In any case, between two of those islands is a very narrow passageway.”
“With sirens?” I asked.
Lucian nodded. “It’s a naturally treacherous strait. Because of sailors’ many misadventures over the years, it transformed into a Shade Vale. And our mother trained the dybbuks to mimic her voice. At her orchestration, their singing would lure men to shore, and their blood would nourish our extended family. It was tidier than feeding upon the locals. Henri and I didn’t know about this custom until we were much older, but if she knew a ship were passing, our mother would haunt the islands and try her luck at seduction. She was much younger then and had a voracious appetite, in more ways than one.”
Mater moaned in protest.
“He’s an adult now, Mother. No need to be so modest.” Lucian smirked. “On one such occasion, during a bad storm with the sirens howling louder than the wind, a Roman naval ship wrecked against the rocks. Our mother, with the help of her hunting party, retrieved as many bodies as they were able, and one of those men happened to be our father, still living. He was being ferried from his homeland in Germania to meet with the emperor of Rome. It was a diplomatic voyage, and his intention was to take the emperor’s sister as his bride, which would extend, through proxy, the Roman Empire into Germanic lands and ensure the tribes there were treated fairly in exchange for Roman rule.”
Mater grunted again, and Lucian responded, “Yes, I’m going to tell him that part too.” He smiled mischievously. “On one of the islands is a small fort meant for defense and imprisonment. There were torture chambers, and some were also used for carnal pleasure. It was there our mother kept our father in bondage just short of three months. Bleeding him and having her way with him. She was merciless in her torment, but his body was young and resilient, and of course, our mother was exceedingly beautiful. Still is,” he assured her with a light pat. “At the end of it, I supposed they’d developed a strange sort of bond.”
“There’s a name for that,” I said. “Stockholm Syndrome.”
“Yes, well psychoses weren’t so well-defined back then. In any case, our father proposed marriage, and our mother refused him, numerous times. He wouldn’t leave, though, such was his obsession with her, and he drove her to the point that she threatened to kill him, yet again. As the story goes, he prayed to the gods for virility, made his offerings, and the result was Henri’s conception.
“Nephilim offspring are a rare blessing, and they were considered such at the time, and so our mother relented. They were married and their kingdoms united.” Lucian sighed. “He was a lot like