I pick up the vial and race out of the room.
“Floriane?” Lavenzia calls up to me. Winny’s fiddle playing stops.
“I’m fine, don’t worry about me.” I close the door behind me loud enough that they hear. They’re going to assume that I’m going to mourn Ruvan again. They’ll give me space.
Except I don’t stop in the chapel, I continue up the stairs and across the beam. I pass through the rooms and hallways that connect to Loretta’s old quarters and down into her secret passage. I know it’s dangerous to go alone, but I have my dagger with me, and this is worth the risk.
This might fail. I don’t entirely know what it is I’m trying to do. But right now is the closest I’ve felt to hope in days. I don’t want to give it up. I have to try. Callos said that a part of blood lore is instinct. The magic is always in us. So I trust my gut and attempt to claim my power.
At the very least, I’ll see the truth of what happened to Loretta, Solos, and Tersius…through their own eyes.
I open the tap on one of the ancient kegs, and elixir plops out. I hold my head under the spigot and take three drops into my mouth. Holding them there, I race back up the stairs to Loretta’s room. I close the secret passage and stand at the edge of the bed.
Well, here goes nothing. Cheers. I raise the obsidian vial I carried from Ruvan’s room in a toast to the past and drink.
Loretta’s blood was the basis for the Hunter’s Elixir. The vial we took from the fortress was likely mixed with Tersius’s blood as he continued to experiment. I theorize that the original elixir in the old castle was mixed with Solos’s blood, since she was working with him. And, even if it didn’t, they were bloodsworn.
If I’m right, if any combination of my theories is correct, then I should have the blood of all three of them in me now. Those markers—those memories—I should be able to access them in dreams, even if fragmented.
Holding up my dagger, I lightly nick my skin between my collarbones—right over Ruvan’s mark. Just like before, the pain that creeps up the back of my neck at the mere thought of trying to recall my dreams abates. A door has been opened within me and I walk through by lying on the bed.
As soon my eyes close, I’m whisked to a different place and time.
Loretta races through the night, wet up to her knees in the Fade Marshes. I can feel her heart racing as keenly as I can feel the anger that burns around Tersius’s ears. His eyes are ringed in gold and shining in the low light.
“Don’t run from me!”
“You took my work!” she shouts back.
“It was my work,” Tersius seethes.
“Our work.”
“You stole and bastardized it!”
She clutches three books to her chest—the three journals that had been missing from her bookshelf in my earlier dream.
“It was mine!” he roars. “Now come back here. Loretta! Listen to me. I am your brother!”
“You are a monster.” Loretta glances over her shoulder, her eyes growing wide.
“I am the future of the vampir, of humanity, of all of Midscape. Humans will return across the Fade. We will no longer be the weaker species, preyed on by the others. I’m doing this for us, all of us, Loretta.”
“We were never preyed on.” Loretta shakes her head; tears spill over her cheeks. She ducks her chin and barrels into the night. “You could’ve worked with them—with me—but you went too far.”
“Don’t pretend like I still hold a place in your heart! Did you even weep for me, sister, when your precious King Solos banished me?”
Loretta stumbles, glancing back. That wound is still fresh for her. I can see the longing in her eyes—feel it in her heart. She misses her brother. Misses the man he was.
“Go, run back to him, do his dirty work of fetching my stolen breakthroughs.” His words are bold, but I can sense a deeper panic in Tersius. He’s afraid of Solos. I wonder if he’s freshly turned, if his powers aren’t as great as he thought. “No matter what you do, you know he will never respect you. Jontun will never write about you and Solos will never command it. You will be his hidden whore!”
The entrance to the secret tunnel is ahead. In this time, it’s protected by a wall and gate. I can feel Loretta’s panic. Her belief that if she can get there, she’ll be safe. She clutches the books tighter.
But she slows to get one last look at her brother. “When I am queen, I will ask for fairness when they judge you for your crimes against humans and vampir. But I will not ask for leniency.”
Tersius moves as fast as a vampir. He grabs her wrist, looming over her. The books topple to the ground. “I can’t let you do this.”
“Let me go.”
