Nobody hears the thing you won't say (pt. 1 - Hamid's perspective)

"So, we have some...strange news." The Branad boy began, looking unusually nervous.

Just when I finally got used to his false bravado. I raised an eyebrow. "I'm used to strange when it comes to the two of you. What? Did the enemy breach a camp? Did the Demon burn something down?"

I held my hands up, my gut telling me that there was some new disaster.

Both David Branad and Hansa Reeves looked at each other, Hansa fiddling with her sleeves.

"What?" I demanded finally, irritated with the silence. I missed the old days when I had actual soldiers who reported to me, not these brats with undeserved powers. "You two never shut up, and now-"

"When did you find out about your wife and child?" Hansa asked, and I froze at that.

The girl avoided my eyes as always and I sighed impatiently, regretting the day I met these nitwits. "Almost fourteen years ago. The night everyone hiding out at Galen Creek was murdered. Why?"

"Who told you?" Prince David was very lucky I couldn't throttle him.

I glared, and David amended that question. "Sorry, sir, we wanted to know how you found out."

"The same way everyone found out, we returned to the camp, and everyone there: the injured, the sick, reinforcements, the women and children were dead." This better be leading somewhere.

"So, you saw their bodies?" Hansa asked, a little indecent in her interest.

My stomach twisted. "What? What in God's name-"

"Please, it's important." Hansa insisted, her eyes drilling into a spot slightly left of my head.

"No. I did not see their bodies, mostly because everyone had been torn to pieces by rabid vampires. Half the dead were unrecognizable, and...there were no survivors. Nobody hiding out in the woods, nobody anywhere. They were just dead." I crossed my arms, the old, bitter sadness bubbling up again. Every time I thought I'd buried them, the memories rose up like bile.

Hansa and David shared another look, this time more excitedly.

"I demand an explanation, right now." I snapped, and David turned to me.

"Okay, so, so you know how everyone in your family is born with a birthmark?"

I nodded stiffly, pulling up my sleeve to show the dark spiral on one forearm. "Even she had it."

"General, uh, we think your daughter is still alive." David rubbed at the back of his neck. "Commander Layla has her, she has that exact same mark."

My heart squeezed, then seemed to thud slower. Years of training had taught me never to react outwardly, and I stilled. It was impossible.

I had not had the courage to sift through the bodies to find both of them, but I had searched every inch of that forest, hunted down every vampire involved. Nobody had survived, and I felt it. I knew, somehow that they'd died.

It was obvious with my wife when the spells she'd cast had fallen. But Mazarin...

Really, I didn't want confirmation that my bubbly, naughty six-year-old had died. That everything she could ever be, ever do, or say was over.

I should have known that Sienna would have never let anything happen to her child.

"General?"

I blinked and looked up, David was saying something and Hansa was holding out a box of tissues.

Scoffing, I pushed it out of the way. Like I could ever be vulnerable in front of these two imbeciles. They needed me to assure them that the sun would rise tomorrow with their confidence issues.

"Where was she? Was she one of our rebels? A villager?" I asked, my mind already spinning possibilities. She could be a painter, I gleefully remembered that little tyrant ruining our walls with her fingers and my stamping ink. How angry I had been that day...

"Sir," David swallowed ominously. "She's in a holding cell right now. We can-we can, Hansa, let's go? See her?"

I stood immediately, following the rightful heir and Hansa, planning. No matter what crimes she'd committed, she was my daughter. She'd be pardoned on my authority, and I'd change her mind. No child of mine was going to be a pawn in the enemy's nonsense.

How much damage could sweet Mazarin have even done? The child I knew was sunlight bottled up, kind, vivacious, adorably energetic...

Soldiers stepped aside and saluted, and I nodded carelessly, too distracted to catch uniform errors or bark out orders.

My daughter was alive. I didn't need to be a father figure to the prince, didn't need to mourn her, at least.

Part of me felt guilty. How could I not have known? Not have sensed it? One of my family's gifts was our Seventh Sense, the ability to feel outcomes, feelings, to guess right.

I didn't make a habit of sharing it, because of the uncomfortable associations with woman's intuition, but I should've known.

Perhaps it was the decades of finding friends dead, the horrors at Galen Creek, the murders, plots. Maybe I was conditioned into thinking that the worst tragedy of my life had to be complete.

But I was wrong. Mazarin was alive! Alive, and hopefully well, but I steeled myself.

She could be injured, ill, traumatized. She might not even know me.

We entered the cold, grey corridors of the prison holdings and for the first time, I detested their bleak design.

My daughter would be heir to everything my great name stood for. She shouldn't be welcomed into the fold like this.

My second, hard-won persona recoiled in disgust at this weakness. I was stronger than this, and I needed to be because right now my daughter was the enemy.

The two sides: father and general warred the entire way through the prison, and I barely registered our entry into the maximum security section.

"So..." David tried and failed at some of his old confidence. "She's-well, she's in there. Uh, good luck, sir."

"We'll be here if you need anything," Hansa said, and I snorted. Those were the least comforting words known to man.

"Thank you, but I have it handled from here," I replied, one hand on the door. I had waited fourteen years for this.

"She might not be who you expect," David mumbled, and I narrowed my eyes at him, swinging open the door.

It took me five seconds to recognize the lieutenant of my greatest enemy. We called her the Demon of the Battle for Archan. The most skilled fighter on the other side, with the exception of the usurper king.

I couldn't count how many soldiers had been either cut down or obliterated by her. The tide of battle had single-handedly turned around.

"You?" I snarled, one hand moving to my sword.

"Surprise." The Demon waved with a shackled hand.

"General!" David blocked my path, as did Hansa.

"That's her, Mazarin!" Hansa yelped, raising her hands.

I stared at her, breathing out sharply, staring into Sienna's hooded, night eyes.

Mazarin lightly tilted her head, raising an eyebrow haughtily.

That look didn't belong to anyone else, but me. My eyes went to her forearm, to the dark spiral standing out on her tanned skin.

"Out," I ordered, sheathing my blade.

"But-"

"General, we've basically-"

"I said, get out." Once they left, I turned to her.

How many times, had I stared through binoculars at the right hand of my enemy? Into the eyes of the mask she usually wore?

And never once had I seen it.

"Do you know who I am?" I asked, too wary to sit down in front of her. This was not the painter I had imagined, or anything else noble that I had expected of my daughter.

Mazarin chuckled, sucking at her cut lip. "I make it a point to know my enemies, General Hamid."

I have no idea what I had expected. Father was optimistic. "And who are you?"

Now I saw the Demon in those shark-like eyes. Sienna's had been so warm, and Mazarin's even more crinkled and kind. 

"How rude. Shouldn't you know the right hand of your enemy? No wonder we're winning the war." Mazarin's eyes tracked me as I sat down, analyzing.

There was an unsettling amount of me in the basic things she did. The General sneered at me, are you proud? Of your maniacal, traitorous daughter? Remember the innocents she's hurt.

"Do you know the name Mazarin?" I asked, unable to stop myself.

"Oh, God." The Demon's shackles rang as she dropped her arms on the table and leaned back. "Don't tell me, a daughter? Wife? Girlfriend?"

"What?"

"Mazarin. She seems important to you." The Demon stared at me amusedly. "If I killed her, I'm sorry."

I watched her then, my heart squeezing with pain. I wondered if the hope I felt for her was paternal or my extra sense, telling me she could be redeemed.

"Sorry that I can't tell her apart from anyone else I killed." The Demon yawned into her shoulder.

I slammed a hand onto the table. "Shut up." I'd change this, I'd fix this if it was the last thing I did. My weakness stopped me from finding her when she was a child. My guilt let her become whatever this twisted thing was.

It made me sick, thinking that my enemy knew, every time Mazarin won a battle, that she'd struck a blow against me.

The General needed to take over now. "What's your name?"

"So, what's the plan?" The Demon asked, looking bored. "Execution? Torture? Preferably torture other than hearing the sound of your voice."

"You'll be tried in our court, sentenced, and...we'll see about your future. I can...protect you." The General faltered, but I kept going. "You just need to trust me."

It didn't matter if she believed it, I already believed I could save since before I entered this room. It was my job. I didn't need instincts for that.

I ignored whatever stupid answer the Demon gave, getting up to go towards the door. Right now, I felt an unbearably deep disappointment, even if I was willing to work with her.

So I stopped. A gamble, but I needed to take it. Something told me it would pay off. "Your name. Your real one is Mazarin. If you can, try and remember Sienna and a small village near Galen Creek."

Then I left before the Demon could see me lose it.