CHAPTER46
Sometimes,when a woman steps into the smithy, a cauldron of infinite possibility, she doesn’t know yet what she intends to make. She has her tools, her supplies, and most importantly her skill. A whole world of opportunity is before her.
Sometimes, what she ends up making is astounding. It’s new. Different. Like Grandmother’s lock. Sometimes, it’s nothing at all, just a mess of metal—practice. And sometimes what’s made isn’t what she intended at all. It’s something different. Maybe not good, or bad, just different.
This is one of the first lessons Mother taught me about the smithy.
Creation will happen for its own sake. Things happen, regardless of our intent, and all we can do is judge the result. We were helpless to change it in the process.
I stand before the ruins. This is where I was drawn to on the night of the Blood Moon. This is where I was pulled to when Drew was staying here. Every time, I had an excuse, a reason to find myself attracted to this spot. At first it was the power of the vampir calling out to Ruvan. Then it was my connection with my brother, pulling me toward him after so much time apart.
But now I know, there was an undercurrent all along. There was something else drawing me to this place time and again. Loretta, the woman whose blood I drank in the elixir that was supposed to be for Drew. She was calling out to her own bloodsworn, to the man she loved. The man she has been separated from for thousands of years. Regardless of whether it ends the curse or not, it’s time to put an end to their story.
I arrive at the ruins of that forgotten tower. There’s not much. I’ve seen all of it before. But now I look with new eyes. I remember the shape of the tower, the small room off to the side.
I search the ruins from top to bottom. I spend hours combing through muck and mud until I find what’s been calling me. The cellar door is completely rusted. Heaving it open takes all my strength. Like a primordial monster, it’s resurrected from the mud. Water flows down into the earth below.
If King Solos had gone up in the tower, his body would’ve been found long ago. There would’ve been some record from those who patrol this wasteland, some mention passed down in the lore of the hunters. I would’ve heard it from my brother. There would’ve been no way that Tersius would have let Solos die without gloating into eternity that he was the one to kill the mighty Vampir King.
No, Solos had the upper hand on Tersius. He had bested the hunter. The only way Tersius escaped was by assuming his raven form. And Tersius seemed to think that the curse might have been placed on the vampir because of him. I believe he thought Solos had made it back to Midscape.
So I’m led to think that Solos’s body was never found. I laugh to myself as I stare into the abyss before me. Tersius was hunting for the king that defeated him, the one that had eluded him, the one he thought was constantly pulling the strings, extending his life unnaturally just as Tersius was. Maybe he even thought Solos was behind the curse himself.
But what Tersius didn’t know was that even though Solos was gone long ago, he never really left.
I start down the stairs and arrive in a basement. There’s not much; whatever was stored here has long since rotted or turned to dust. The walls are thick with algae and moss. The swamp is determined to consume this place. Thank goodness it has lasted long enough for me to find it.
In the corner is the withered and mummified remains of the once great king.
The last of the true line of Vampir Kings. A man who fell in love with a human and knew his people weren’t ready to accept his chosen bride. A man who tried to honor her as best he knew how, for good or ill. Who tried to write her into the history by hiding in plain sight. I wonder what he would think of a human as the one to uncover the truth.
He might have preferred it this way.
I walk over to the remains of King Solos. He doesn’t look anything like the man in my dreams. His long, moonlit hair has vanished. His lips are curled away from his fangs, still pearly even after all this time.
Stabbed through his chest is a dagger.
A misplaced curse created by a broken heart.
“A curse of vengeance, a curse wrought in blood for blood,” I echo his words.
He had intended to curse Tersius. He had wanted to cut the man down. To curse his blood for spilling the blood of his beloved.
But what Solos had failed to consider was that Tersius had turned himself into a vampir. Even though he was different from the rest. He had still become a vampir.
So when Solos had lain a curse on Tersius’s blood…he had lain a curse on his own people, too, on the blood of all the vampir. The curse was finalized in this place. Paid for with Solos’s life. The memories didn’t show me the terms, but I can suspect what they were.
A curse of withering. A curse of death. A curse from which there was no escaping, not ever.
And no one did. Not even Tersius, in the end. And not Solos’s own people.
I take the king’s mummified hand and hold it in both my own. “It’s all right,” I murmur. “It’s time to let this go.”
I slowly release his hand and grab the dagger stabbed through his chest. The moment my fingers touch the metal, a jolt surges through me. I shudder. Coldness sets into my body. This is an item of great magic. An item marked with blood.
Thisis the curse anchor.
I wrench the dagger from his chest. A popping sound crackles behind my ears. I stare at the weapon in my palm, not so unlike the one I crafted. I wonder if, in her own way, Loretta was guiding me in the smithy those nights. If blood is a marker, I’ve written her life, her brother’s, her love’s onto my own. I will carry them with me into eternity. I will keep their memories for however long I have left.
