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Asha

Crack!

“One.” Vierbalt Tippin, Earl of the Tippin Valley, spoke in acid tones as he raised his scourge again, the beaded tips ready to cut into already-scarred, pale, but likely bleeding, flesh.

Asha learned long ago not to cry. Lightning shot through his veins, pure fire that not only burned him but urged him to strike.

Crack!

“Two!” Vierbalt hissed through his teeth. “I’m waiting for an apology, whelp!”

“I apologize, my lord.” Asha’s voice wavered as the leather straps came down again. “It was impetuous of me to give such impressions.”

Crack!

“Three.” Vierbalt pushed his stringy hair from his gaunt face, blond strands oily from sweat and stress of hard work; the same sweat that stained his doublet that had worn thin in recent years.

Crack!

“Four!” Vierbalt hissed, his way of getting Asha to react, to lash out, to earn more than the five licks he was given. Asha had learned better, though. “You hold your head down in these halls! You are fortunate, boy, that I don’t order you and the maidservant hanged.”

“I apologize, my lord. It was not my intention to inspire such baseless rumors.”

Crack! Crack! Crack! Crack! Crack! Crack!

Snap.

As always, right at his breaking point. Beaded tassels scattered across the room at the height of Asha’s sharp flinch.

Vierbalt bleated out in shock and stumbled back, breathing heavily, but Asha did not move, did not whimper or cry.

He’d learned long ago to let the callouses and scars of years long past do their work to temper his pain.

Though, it appeared in recent months that Vierbalt grew weary of his presence.

Weary of the son he didn’t want to claim.

Quickened steps quieted as Vierbalt retreated, either bored or ashamed. It wasn’t the first scourge Vierbalt had broken on him, but hopefully he’d not afford another too soon.

Asha breathed through the pain, letting the searing lines of it absorb into the network of scars already spidering down his back. His teeth filtered the sound, and a soft cry wavered through the ventilation grates.

“Lyss, you alright?” Asha’s hoarse voice cracked, and he gingerly scooted closer.

“Yes. I didn’t mean to get you in such trouble. I apologize. Please forgive me.”

By her voice alone, he could imagine the tears that coated her cheeks. She’d get a few lashes from the matron and a stern warning not to speak out of turn again, a night in the dungeon, and then made to clean the privies for a fortnight.

“If it wasn’t for that, it’d be something else. He controls his temper about as well as he controls his manhood. ’Else I would have been swallowed rather than born.”

“Asha! Please don’t be so dour. The girls would sorely miss you if you weren’t around.” Lyss’s placating tone came out with a tremble.

“They’d not miss me. They’d miss me taking my shirt off.

” He said this with no arrogance, only fact.

The women made no qualms with his beauty, his fiery-golden hair so much more robust than his father’s yellowed blond or any of his half-brothers, and where his father’s gaunt face made him look sickly, it lent nothing to Asha’s features—shaped as if they were chiseled from the very whitestone that they mined from their mountains.

Statues made from the stone were the glory of empires, but as war ravaged their country, people didn’t spend on such luxuries.

And without that money, House Tippin’s coffers grew lighter by the day.

It was hard to imagine Asha being his spawn by any stretch. But he was one of the few he acknowledged as a bastard.

She hummed with disapproval but did not argue the fact. “Don’t I know it. They’ll be giving me awful troubles for your back this time.”

“They’ll get over it. I’ll make an effort for you. Perhaps I’ll go engage them for tea sometime to make up for the lack of my person to ogle. But, forgetting the unpleasantries, I have to know. What was it you said that made Earl Vierbalt so ill?”

“The girls was chattin’ about trying to lure you into an engagement of sorts—”

“Getting one of them with child, I presume?” Asha snorted. “’Twould have to slip and fall into their skirts by accident.”

Asha loved children, but the whole process of making them seemed…too involved.

“I know! So’s, I told them that you weren’t nothing like your father.

That ’twas all. You’re nothin’ like him, chasin’ our skirts all the time.

I’d have gotten a full caning if he wasn’t such a fan of my hindquarters.

” Lyss sighed, years of annoyance in that tone.

“So, he went off on his rocker again ’bout how you ain’t his son, and I says, ‘’Twas a compliment, my lord.

He’s a fine lad and whoever sired him did well.

’ Honestly, I think he was more bothered by me sayin’ ya was better ’n him. ”

Entirely likely. Equally likely they feared competition. Competition I’d never be.

Asha moved onto his side and maneuvered his body on the cold stone floor, closing his eyes to try to rest. Maybe later he’d move into the hay piles.

In either case, he reached forward and plucked a scattered silver bead from the scourge off the floor.

He’d add them to his collection later. Someday, he told himself, he’d have enough silver bits to buy himself a horse to escape his father’s estate. His earl’s estate.

From birth, Asha had been a disgrace, born of a mistress, and Vierbalt never let him forget it, spitting about him being impure blood.

His wife, the Countess Elin of Wyverncrest, had suffered his indignancies for years with a quiet sort of shame.

Despite his philandering, he still managed to father two other sons with her, Bel and Leza.

Despite Asha’s insistence that he have nothing to do with them, they found ways to cross his paths. Like tonight, it seemed.

The sharp clip of Bel’s footsteps pricked Asha’s ears, his left foot landing heavier than his right from the botched job the cobbler did repairing his shoes.

Asha smirked. Having the cobbler mis-set that one tack was the best thing he’d done all year, since Bel was the nosiest and most capable of the three Tippen males.

“Brother! Are you in here?” Bel called out.

Asha didn’t respond. He hated speaking with him, and it was usually wise to pretend to be asleep.

“How you sleep after such a beating, I’ll never know. If Father let me handle it, you’d be crying still.” Bel sniffed pretentiously and shuffled away, another goal in mind.

“Dear Lyss! I have a gift for you. Come!” Polite shuffling came in response to Bel, and a hollow metallic exchange. “Stolen from the kitchen, and still warm.”

“You do offer me such kindness, Lord Tippin,” Lyss said, her voice hollow and flat.

“I do, do I not? I see you fawning over Ass-a over here and I have to remind you of what’s good.

” Bel chuckled and Asha made no response, only balled his fists as the door to her cell clanked open.

In far too short of an order, he steeled his anger and covered his ears to drown out the sounds of Bel’s pathetic lusts while Lyss dutifully accepted his affections.

After all, what were chambermaids for? His whimper of a finishing song ended with a grunt and a hasty readying of his clothes before he locked the bars and left.

“Aren’t you afraid he’ll leave a bastard in you?” Asha asked.

“Nah. I’ve drunk dragon’s venom twice. I’m as barren as your father’s fields.” She laughed sorely, and he turned his head away in shame and disgust.

“Dragon’s venom?” He scoffed, and she made a noncommittal noise.

“’Bout the only target your father can hit is a woman’s snatch, and that’s certainly not on purpose. I’d rather be barren than bring another you into the world. No offense.”

“None taken.” Asha laughed sorely. “But I was more upset at the dragon part. Aren’t you disgusted by that?”

“’S’not from a real dragon. It’s a wyvern’s. ’S why Countess Elin’s family still has money in these times. The venom elixir is cheaper than a brat, I always says.”

It was not something they usually spoke of. Asha had taken his fair share of beatings keeping Vierbalt, Bel, or Leza from haunting her quarters. Though he never spoke it aloud, if she’d ever been forced to carry a child—he’d gladly step in to raise it. He loved children.

“I’d rather die than have any part of a dragon in me. Sickening beasts. You know they’re the reason we’re at war? The reason we have nothing. With their caves of treasure and refusal to join forces. Saying it’s unfair of them to pick a side, like us squabbling matters not to them!” Lyss snorted.

He’d seen them flying overhead before, seen their fire spit into the wind, threatening to rain unholy ilk upon them all. Asha rather liked them, but to say so would hurt her feelings. They were gorgeous— “Fearsome creatures…”

“Don’t I know it. I’d still have me mam and da if they’d helped at the battle of Crossfaire. The Ramolians wiped my entire village out. Auctioned us all off. Couldn’t find me a richer household to buy me off on account I was an ugly child. Boy, didn’t my skirts fill out?”

“I’d say so.” Asha stared at the ceiling. Lyss did have a nice shape and rather full bust.

“What would you know? You spend more time thirsting after the stable boys than I do, ya weasel!” Lyss giggled and Asha silenced.

“I can look all I want. Doesn’t mean I’ll ever give into it.” Asha couldn’t. It was not permitted in the kingdom of Monsmount for man to love man.

“Nah, you’s all pure, aren’t ya! Not like the dragons! What is it you crave? Are you on top or the woman? Maybe you wish to be bred like their concubines.”

“Quiet, Lyss.” Asha’s cheeks went hot, burning far fiercer than the stripes along his back. “I’m not my father. I don’t need sex. Don’t need that either.” Would if he could, though. Would.

“Save for when you’re off churning butter in the woodshed. Anything can happen between the ears when you’re wanting.” Lyss giggled and Asha seethed a hiss of displeasure.

“How do you like your men? I like ’em tall, dark, and somewhere else, besides here.” She cooed a sarcastic noise of pleasure and sighed.

When Asha thought of tall, dark, and handsome, he imagined the fair-skinned boys of the stables, dark-haired and bright-eyed, none stupid enough to chase the chambermaids around. But he wanted something darker.

As a boy, he’d been allowed into town once, and a tradesman from Sauria, the land of dragons, had smiled at him, all soft-brown skin and dark eyes full of wonder, but his son, a half-caste boy with him, made Asha realize at once that girls weren’t for him.

He craved men, tall and sturdy, with deeply-sunned skin and strong jaws.

Merely thinking about the boy he’d seen all those years ago made his cock twitch, but nothing more. Nobody since had drawn him so.

“Maybe you like those thin boys with hair like corn silk?” Lyss giggled.

“Not my type.”

“So, you do have a type, do ya?”

Trapped, Asha sighed heavily. “It’s inconsequential. I’ll never marry or partner.”

“Mayhap someday the right m—person will come along.” Lyss’s voice grew soft and reedy. “Possibly one’ll come for me, too.”