Will he be obliged to hunt me for what I’ve done? I rub the hollow at the base of my neck where Ruvan’s mark is hidden. Even if Ruvan undid the bloodsworn, do I have a place to return to?
“No one survives the Blood Moon.”
“I did,” Ventos insists.
“So I see. And now you must tell me how.” Drew continues to speak with that unnatural lilt to his voice, one I’ve never heard from him before, not even in jest. It’s eerily similar to how Davos always sounded. He smiles Davos’s same, haunted smile. “Come, we will discuss privately.”
I sink farther back behind the crowd, hoping Drew doesn’t look my way. I know if I focus on him too much I risk drawing his attention. We always knew when the other was seeking us out. But I can’t not stare.
My brother is alive.He might be the master hunter. He might resent me for all I’ve done and what I’m trying to do. But the feeling of him still existing on the other side of the tether that unites us wasn’t a lie.
Just like I hope the similar feeling of Ruvan still drawing breath is equally true.
Drew leads Ventos to the back of the room, to a pointed doorway at the left of the altar, almost completely hidden. They disappear and the rest of the hunters go about their business. As the gathered, chattering masses begin to retreat, I make my way to one of the benches lined before the altar with the cask of elixir. I sit with my sickle on my lap, pretending to polish it.
Do I get the elixir now?I glance over my shoulder. No, still too many.
Time becomes hard to follow. Minutes are slipping away, falling into hours. I can feel the night thinning like a man’s hairline.
Ventos still isn’t back.
I look over my shoulder again. There are only three left, all in the back of the hall. Their heads are bowed in some kind of prayer. Perhaps for the hunters still out tonight. This will be the best chance I have. I should go for the elixir.
But instead, I slip through the door on the other side of the altar, readying some kind of excuse or explanation for when my brother undoubtedly recognizes me, and an excuse for why I’ll need him to get me elixir. I need neither. The room is empty.
There is a rack of casks similar to the one on the altar on the other side of the wall that’s now at my back. Wheat is so precious in Hunter’s Hamlet that only a rare bit is saved for the brew master—to ferment for the old gods on high holidays. These casks look the same as those in the brewer’s barn, but the smell is vaguely metallic. Familiar. I realize where I recognize it from and am suddenly wondering if this is how the Hunter’s Elixir is made. If these casks are full of elixir, then we have what we need. But where is Ventos?
My musings are stilled as I discover a passageway in the far corner of the room. The racks have been slid to the side, revealing a doorway. I hear hushed whispers and distant wheezing. The passage smells of must and something…ripe. Almost sweet? But in a horrible way.
Rot.
Carrion rot. That’s what the smell is. My stomach turns as I stand on the precipice, knowing I must descend into those depths and meet the horrors that await me.
I’m not ready. But I have no choice not to be. Ventos and Drew must be down there.
The passage becomes icier the deeper I go. The weeping on the walls turns to frost. Eventually, I end up in a room that is a duplicate to the main hall in almost every way—from its vaulted ceiling, supported by beam and buttress, to the ghostly outline of an altar at the far end. But unlike the hall above, this room is lined with even more rows of casks. There must be hundreds.
My focus is not on the fermenting elixir, however. Rather, I can’t take my eyes from the altar at the far end. Candles support a latticework of heavy cobwebs rather than flames. The altar itself is carved from stone, done with such extreme skill that the ruffles of a sculpted altar cloth look like they could flutter at the faintest breeze. The stone stitching looks as if it would feel warm to the touch, like real fabric.
The fabric parts at the front of the altar for a crest I have seen before. Two diamonds are stacked on each other, the top smaller than the bottom. Arcing around them is a sickle shape. It is the same symbol as what was on the silver door in the old castle of the vampir.
That’s not the only similarity to the vampir’s home. A stone figure stands above the altar, much like King Solos in the chapel Ruvan and I became bloodsworn within. The man wields the weapon of the hunters—a silver sickle—in one hand, and three leather-bound tomes are balanced on his other palm. A raven’s feather is pinned by a black brooch to his wide-brimmed hat. Sleek leather armor is carved to his body, a cowl lowered around his shoulders. His face is hard to see from my vantage, but I don’t need to in order to identify him.
Just like in the hall above, a cask is on the center of the altar. But this one is not bound in a cage. It sits out in the open, held together by plates of iron added over what appears to have been a very long time as some are thick with patina.
As incredible as it all is, my focus narrows on the two men positioned in the center of the room. I quickly dash behind a row of casks, peeking between them. Ventos kneels before the altar, his face bloodied. Not the face he’d stolen. His face. The ruse is up.
“How long have you been hiding?” Ventos snarls up at Drew, who’s looming over him. “You really thought you could undo the long night in a way that serves you?”
“You will tell me how you infiltrated my stronghold,” Drew says ominously. “One way or another.” He raises the cane. Its handle is a silver raven’s head with a wicked-sharp beak. “I grow tired of your dodging. This is your last chance.”
“I’ll gladly die for a true vampir lord. Not some coward who abandoned his people for the chance of stealing a crown,” Ventos wheezes. How did he become so bloodied? Drew couldn’t defeat Ruvan on the night of the Blood Moon. To trounce one of the vampir lord’s right-hand men without so much as a scratch…
The whistling of the silver-topped cane ripping through the air startles me from my thoughts. I leap from my hiding spot. “Drew, no!”
The cane freezes in place. He slowly turns. Our eyes meet and—my heart stops.
I don’t recognize him.
