Lucivar looked up from peeling a potato at his mother where she was chopping onions. He frowned and set down the knife. "Luthvian?"
He never called her 'mother'. He didn't think she would approve.
She didn't pause to glance at him, the knife working efficiently across the vegetables, chopchopchopchopchop turn the cutting board chopchopchop. "Are you done already? Cut them up like I showed you."
"No, I'm not done." He hesitated. "Who's my father?"
He thought he saw Luthvian's hand slip, the knife stuttering on the cutting board. The next moment she had regained her pace and he thought he might have imagined it.
"It isn't important. He doesn't care about you." There was a harsh note in Luthvian's voice that made him want to flinch. He stood his ground.
"I want to know who he is."
"Was," Luthvian snapped. "He's dead now."
Lucivar did flinch at that, years of dreams evaporating in a moment, regardless of whatever dark hints Luthvian had given him before.
"Was, then," he said, determined not to back down. Not this time.
The knife sped up and he could hear her annoyance. "It doesn't matter. It was his choice not to acknowledge you. He chose to be no part of your life. Don't try to make him a part of yours."
"Why not?"
Luthvian turned her angry eyes on him and for a moment he recoiled, afraid she would strike him. "He threatened to kill you when you were only a few hours old. Do you want a man like that in your life?" She asked, coldly.
Lucivar looked down. "Do you know?"
"Know what?" Luthvian snapped.
"Who my father was."
The knife stopped. Lucivar glanced up and cringed at her angry back, tense and turned on him. "What are you saying?" She asked in a voice that was far too even.
He shook his head, but not quickly enough. Her slap stung and he fell back, startled. "You will never suggest such a thing again," she hissed, in a voice that was nearly unrecognizable. Lucivar nodded quickly.
"It was just something I heard…"
She shook him. "Never!"
"I just want to know…who he was…"
Luthvian's voice grated painfully. "All you need to know about him is that he didn't care about you. He didn't love you, he never loved you. He didn't care about either of us." She picked up the knife again and began chopping raggedly.
"But –"
She slammed the knife down on the counter. "Leave it, Lucivar!" She yelled, and he drew back at the gleam of tears in her blazing eyes. Flinching, he looked back down at the half-peeled potatoes. "I don't – want to talk about it."
He picked up knife and potato again, shoulders hunching and wings pulling into his body. "All right."
"He didn't even want you," she said. Lucivar felt the well of bitterness and pain and sliced viciously at the potato skin. It took a moment to recognize the pain as the knife bit into the meat at the base of his thumb. He watched the bright, red blood well around the knife for several moments.
"Luthvian," he asked quietly, at last. "Do I look like my father?"
"Lucivar, do I have to…" She began angrily, but she trailed off, one hand closing around his wrist and drawing the knife out of his palm.
He looked up at her – not much, though, he'd grown – and added, quietly, "I'm sick of being a half-breed bastard."
Luthvian was wrapping a towel around his hand painfully tightly. Her mouth seemed to tighten, but she said nothing.
"Someday I'll find him," Lucivar said, stubbornly, "Or his grave, or whatever's left."
Luthvian shook her head and tied off the makeshift bandage. "Wait here," she said tersely. "I'm going to go get some bandages."
When she returned, she looked him in the eye and her words were clipped. "Sometimes you are far too much like your father for your own good." Then her eyes closed off and she set to bandaging his hand. He let her, wondering how much of what she told him was true, and how much of it was lies. And if it mattered.
Ultimately, he was and always would be a bastard. No amount of graves or searching would change that.