The Imp Prince Read online

  And with his rage and hate and anguish driving him as never before, he judged his cousin as loathsome.

  Ferdinand’s heart started to pound in tune with his hate, and his vision turned into blood. A growl of rage and frustration and hurt rose up from the core of his being. He wrapped it all up in a layer of hate and hurled it at the only available target.

  His cousin was still smiling as Ferdinand barreled into him, his wedge-shaped frame driving his hard, ugly head deep into Lyndon’s stomach, forcing the air from his lungs.

  Lyndon bent double and crashed onto the floor. Ferdinand followed him there, a ball of fury and hate that landed heavily on his cousin’s chest and flailed away with his fists.

  Lyndon twisted under the onslaught but could do nothing to halt it.

  “My mother is dying!” Ferdinand yelled in nonsensical madness.

  Lyndon tried to raise his hands in defense, his expression turning from pain to confusion and back again. He didn’t understand what was happening and hadn’t even thought to fight back.

  Ferdinand beat Lyndon’s hands out of the way and, with a cry of rage, grabbed him by the hair. He bashed Lyndon’s head against the floor, then deliberately tore a chunk of his hair from his scalp.

  Lyndon had somehow regained his breath. He cried out in pain and fear. Yet even then, he didn’t really fight back. All he did was try to protect himself from Ferdinand’s madness.

  Ferdinand’s rage wasn’t yet spent.

  “You will not take my place! Not now, not ever!”

  He found that he enjoyed pulling Lyndon’s hair. He grabbed two more clumps of it, one in each hand, and ripped them from Lyndon’s skull.

  Lyndon cried out again. He twisted with everything he had and pushed his cousin away, then scrambled to his feet against one of the columns and stood staring at Ferdinand in dismay.

  Ferdinand scowled and panted and surveyed the damage he’d done. The collar of his cousin’s mustard-colored jacket was torn, and he had smudges and scrapes on his face. As Ferdinand watched, Lyndon felt around where Ferdinand had torn out his hair, and his hands came away covered in blood.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Lyndon demanded, his expression incredulous.

  Ferdinand, filled with loathing and spite, glared at him. His fists were still clenched. He was ready to continue.

  “There’s nothing wrong with me!” Ferdinand bellowed. “I see clearly for the first time in my life! You have turned the servants against me, and now I know why. You are jealous of me! You think you are so perfect, and yet I have what you want! Well, cousin, I tell you truly. You will never have it! Darkwood Keep is mine!”

  Lyndon’s confusion was palpable. He clearly had no clue what Ferdinand was saying.

  “I don’t want the Keep–” he began.

  “Liar!” Ferdinand bellowed. “You’ve always wanted it! I see it now! And I say enough!”

  Ferdinand drew himself up to his full height.

  “I say it is enough,” Ferdinand repeated. “You are no longer welcome here. Take what belongings you can carry and be gone. You have until morning.”

  Lyndon’s expression turned into one of incredulous horror. He couldn’t believe what his cousin had said. And yet, there was no doubt that Ferdinand meant every word.

  Lyndon had no choice.

  “I never liked it here anyway,” Lyndon said. He gave his cousin a look filled with hate, then turned away.

  Chapter 3: Funeral

  Lady Ivy died the next day.

  Her maid announced her passing by letting the tray she carried clatter to the floor, spilling the bowl of hot soup she had brought for her mid-day meal all over the carpet, and letting out a shuddering scream.

  Other servants hurried toward Lady Ivy’s bedchamber, but a single glance was enough to convince one and all that there was nothing to be done for her.

  She had not passed gently.

  She was not a picture of peaceful repose, propped up on the pillows on her oversized bed. Instead of lying back with her eyes closed in an imitation of sleep, she appeared to be clawing at her own throat. Her eyes were open and bulging as if her last moments had been filled with terror, and her tongue protruded, blackened and engorged, from between her purple lips.

  The stench of death overlaid the musty odor of the room.

  The servants responded to the sight and smell with expressions of horror. They crossed themselves, prayed, and wrung their hands in worry. Though they had disliked or even hated her in life, at her death, much of the hurt and pettiness they’d had to endure had been forgiven.

  “Mother!” came a voice from outside of the bedchamber. All there knew it was Ferdinand, his voice tortured and bereft.

  The housekeeper shot a fearful glance toward one of the footmen.

  “Cover her!” she hissed. “Before he gets here. Don’t let him see her like this!”

  The footman, a wiry man with a villainous look, stared at the housekeeper in shock. Yet he understood the need. He switched his gaze back to the corpse of Lady Ivy, suppressed a shudder of revulsion, swallowed once, and then moved swiftly to the bed.

  There, he hesitated a moment longer. Long enough for the housekeeper to wave him on with a shooing motion and an earnest expression.

  Just as Ferdinand reached the door to the bedchamber, the footman pulled up Lady Ivy’s embroidered bedspread and covered her with it.

  Then he stepped back and bowed his head as Ferdinand came into the room.

  The stench told Ferdinand all he needed to know. Even so, a part of him didn’t want to believe it. This was his mother. She couldn’t be dead. It just wasn’t possible.

  He forced himself to cross to the bed, ignoring the servants and footman as if they weren’t there. Without conscious volition, he found himself sitting in his usual spot.

  He couldn’t look away from the shape of his mother beneath the bedspread. He stared at it for a time, his feelings strangely muted. He still felt the same grief and anger and hate as he’d experienced the day before, but the emotions were distant. He was disconnected from them as if they belonged to someone else.

  It all seemed somehow unreal.

  Then, hesitantly, he reached for the bedspread.

  The footman cleared his throat. “My Lord?” he said.

  Ferdinand didn’t even look at him.

  The footman tried again. “My Lord? Are you sure you want to do that?”

  Ferdinand shot the man a glare filled with enough hurt and rage that the footman immediately bowed his head again and backed away.

  Then, with no further hesitation, Ferdinand lowered the bedspread.

  Even though the servants behind him had seen it before, still they couldn’t help but mutter their shock and horror to each other.

  Perhaps they were afraid of how Ferdinand might react.

  If they were, they needn’t have worried. Ferdinand’s response was surprisingly mild. He didn’t howl in grief or spend his rage in some violent act, as they might have expected.

  Instead, with extraordinary tenderness, he stroked his mother’s cold cheek.

  Then he leaned close enough to her to kiss her forehead.

  For a long time after that, his whole body shook as he cried tears that expressed a hurt and pain beyond mere anguish and grief.

  <<<>>>

  They buried her in the family plot behind the Keep.

  It was raining, a cold, steady drizzle that hung in the air like a promise never to leave. Somewhere in the distance, a crow gave a raucous cry.

  The mood was solemn. Most of the servants were there, including the footman and the serving maid Lyndon had been flirting with when Ferdinand had come upon them.

  Like the rest of them, Ferdinand wore a dark overcoat that reached nearly all the way to the ground, and boots that he’d cleaned for the burial, but which were already speckled with mud and decomposing leaves.

  Unlike them, he hadn’t brought an umbrella. The drizzly rain blended with his tears that ran in rivulets fr
om his oiled hair down the back of his neck.

  There had been few words said. Some of the servants had spoken briefly of their gratitude to have been given their jobs, but Lady Ivy had not been a kindly woman, and her expectations had not always been realistic. There was none who waxed lyrical about her virtues.

  There were few who would have admitted she had any.

  And besides, it was raining and cold.

  Even Ferdinand himself said little. He just stood and stared at the darkwood coffin edged in burnished silver, in which his mother lay. Nor did he need to say much to express how he felt. Everything about him was a testament to his personal torment and pain.

  Finally, well beyond the time when most were starting to fidget in the wet, Ferdinand nodded to the groundsmen. In somber silence, they lowered Lady Ivy’s coffin into the sodden earth and started to fill in the grave, the first shovels full of mud slapping wetly onto the wood.

  As he watched his mother being laid to rest, he thought again of her words and warnings. His cousin had heeded Ferdinand’s threats well. The servants — his servants, now — had reported that Lyndon had left not long after dawn with some small items packed into a trunk, and headed into the woods that surrounded Darkwood Keep.

  When pressed, the servants had stammered that Lyndon’s intent was to stay a while in the woods, in one of the ruins there, to consider his options.

  At first, this news pleased Ferdinand. His hated cousin was gone, and would no longer add to Ferdinand’s grief.

  ‘There’s a demon in him,’ his mother had said.

  Yet as he stood in the cold and the rain, listening to the rhythmic sounds of the groundsmen shoveling earth into the grave, he began to doubt.

  Whispers of uncertainty teased at his mind. It was as if his mother was in there, urging him to consider other thoughts.

  Lyndon hadn’t taken to the road. He wasn’t heading toward the town where he could perhaps start afresh, using his talents of drinking and flirting as best as he could to make his way in the world.

  Instead, Lyndon was still close to the Keep. Almost within shouting distance.

  Close enough to maintain contact with those servants he had befriended.

  Close enough to sneak in whenever he wished.

  Close enough to continue his plot.

  The groundsmen filled the hole surprisingly quickly. It took only minutes for the muddy earth within to match the height of the surrounding grounds. And in that time, Ferdinand’s rage and hate had once more joined with his anguish.

  Lyndon had done as Ferdinand had demanded, yet his motives remained. He still desired the Keep for himself, just as Ferdinand’s mother had said.

  As the groundsmen tapped the last of the mud into place, Ferdinand let out an audible growl of fury. He would not let his mother down. He would not let his cousin get his claws into the Keep. The Keep was Ferdinand’s, and it would remain so.

  If Lyndon had been there at the burial, Ferdinand would have launched himself at him in madness and hate, would have wrapped his fingers around his throat and squeezed until the light went out of his eyes.

  But Lyndon wasn’t there, so for some minutes, Ferdinand could do no more than stand in place, his hands flexing by his sides in impotent rage.

  Then he caught the eye of the footman with the villainous look. A thought came to his mind. The footman looked the type to be open to opportunities outside of his regular role.

  Perhaps he would not be averse to earning additional coin.

  Perhaps he would not be averse to sharpening his knives.

  And perhaps he knew where Lyndon had gone, or at least could find him swiftly.

  The burial of his mother complete save for engraving the headstone, Ferdinand and the servants turned to head back indoors, with Ferdinand in the lead so that none could see the grin of madness and glee that twisted his lips.

  Part 2: Lyndon

  Chapter 4: Drunk

  Ferdinand, Lyndon knew, didn’t understand.

  Immediately after the fight in the entrance hall, Lyndon had stormed to his rooms and shut himself away. Then, with a sense of frustration, he opened the door again and leaned out.

  “Wine!” he bellowed, loud enough for the servants to hear even if the nearest to him was in the kitchen. “Bring me wine!”

  He slammed the door behind him and threw himself angrily into his favorite quilted lounging chair, one leg draped over the arm so that his foot dangled.

  His head throbbed from being banged on the floor. And from having great handfuls of hair being torn from his scalp.

  He did his best to ignore it.

  Whatever vile insult his cousin imagined simply wasn’t true, he thought. Lyndon had never wanted to own the Keep. The idea repulsed him. He knew full well the cost of doing so and also knew that Lady Ivy, sister to his own dearly departed mother, had struggled to pay that cost even in her best years.

  What chance would Lyndon have of reversing that trend? Even if he wanted to, it was well understood that his grasp of finance began and ended in calculating the number of bottles of wine and whores he could purchase with the coin in his pocket.

  Or at least, Lyndon had thought it was well understood. Although perhaps his cousin had missed that particular lesson.

  Nor was that the only lesson his cousin had missed, Lyndon thought sourly. Ferdinand had missed those on good sense and kindness as well. And perhaps those on differentiating between the paranoid ravings of those who strayed too close to madness, and wisdom.

  No, Lyndon didn’t want to own the Keep. He just wanted to live there, with no responsibilities and no expectations beyond his simple ongoing existence.

  Despite the ever-present gloom, its foreboding design and its tired, run-down and ill-repaired state, the place was magnificent.

  Before his parents and brothers had died, they had all lived in a house that had been considered luxurious. But it was nothing compared with this. His own suite in the Keep was large enough to house not just a bed, but also sufficient furniture that he need not leave it at all should he so choose. The lounging chair he was draped across was one of three, each with their own side table. In addition to those, there was a low divan, a vast chest of drawers, a writing desk, and a series of cushions of various sizes scattered about.

  All this was framed in rich carpets, thick velvet drapes that hung across every window, and massive wooden arches that held up the ceiling.

  And that didn’t even include the bathroom and closet, each of which was far larger and ornate than it needed to be.

  As he heard a polite knock on his door, Lyndon wondered why his cousin had even thought he might risk all of this.

  Lyndon shifted in his seat and flinched at the pain in his middle. If there was one lesson his cousin had not missed, it was how to hurt others.

  “Come!” he called.

  A servant, a boy who must have been a year or two younger than Lyndon and Ferdinand, entered the room. He was balancing a goblet and a dusty bottle on a silver tray.

  The boy hesitated a moment as if unsure where he should set them down.

  “Bring it here,” Lyndon grunted.

  There was something wrong with Ferdinand, he thought. Him and his mother. Both of them looked at the world in a way that didn’t ring true. It was as if they thought everything was arranged against them, as if they viewed every deed as a deliberate affront.

  Lyndon took the goblet from the tray and gestured for the boy to fill it.

  He knew that Ferdinand and Lady Ivy’s viewpoint was skewed. People didn’t work that way. The world was hard enough to navigate without conjuring plans just to upset others. Even if those others did rule the Keep.

  The boy paused in his pouring with the goblet only half full.

  “Keep going,” said Lyndon.

  And now, just like that, he was banished. Cast out of this grandeur, of the only home had known since his family had died. Where would he go? What would he do?

  He had no skills to speak o
f. And what little coin he gained as an allowance from Lady Ivy rarely lasted beyond a couple of days.

  The Keep was his life!

  A surge of anger almost inspired him to fling the goblet against the wall. But it had good wine in it, and such should not go to waste. So instead of hurling it away in a fit of pique, he brought it to his lips and downed most of it in one swallow.

  Then he held it out to the boy once again.

  “My goblet is empty,” he said.

  Dutifully, the boy filled the goblet again.

  <<<>>>

  Two and a half bottles later, Lyndon had forgotten the pain in his head where Ferdinand had bashed him against the floor and torn out chunks of his hair. He had forgotten the bruise to his stomach muscles where Ferdinand had barreled into him.

  What he had not forgotten was Ferdinand’s accusation and anger at Lyndon’s supposed plot.

  And the wine in his blood had lent him and anger all of his own.

  Not one to want to suffer alone, Lyndon had thrown open his doors and invited in those servants he counted as friends. The young serving maid was there, as was the housekeeper, and several others. Lyndon had an ornate, wind-up music box that sat on his writing desk. It was playing one of the tunes pressed into a steel cylinder now. Although each note was high pitched and metallic, the tune nevertheless managed to sound melancholy.

  Lyndon didn’t care. He danced to it anyway, exuberantly and with surprising grace given the wine he had drunk, sweeping the young serving maid along as his partner of choice and putting all others in immediate danger. He managed this with one hand still gripping his goblet, the burgundy liquid within sloshing dangerously close to the lip with every twirl and dip.

  On another day, his cheeks would have been red and shiny from both the alcohol and a broad, perpetual smile. There would have been laughter and frivolity to go with the dancing and liquor.

  But on this day, while his cheeks were still red, there was little sign of his grin. And instead of jokes and mirth, he punctuated his more extravagant prancing with pronouncements of frustration and rage and occasional woe.

  “That misshapen, ugly, twist-minded dew-beater! How dare he treat me like this? I am his cousin!”