“He is close enough with the Elf King that he might be granted permission to bring his armies across the Fade if you tell him of my plans.” Tersius’s face relaxes slightly; his voice becomes pleading. “Don’t you see? I’m doing…I’m doing this for us. For our people. We will claim Midscape and I will be a benevolent ruler. You can sit at my side and help me, just as you always have. Why can you not trust me?”
“I don’t know who you are anymore.” Loretta rips her hand from his and goes to grab the books.
“You will not touch those!” Tersius shoves her. Perhaps it’s the rage surging through him. Perhaps it’s his newfound power making him stronger than he realized—stronger than he can compensate for.
He barrels into her with the force of a charging boar. Loretta barely lets out a gasp as all the wind is knocked from her. It’s not a cry. It’s not a howl of agony as her ribs collapse inward. Her eyes widen slightly. She hardly realizes what’s happening.
She’s thrown like a ragdoll into the gate behind her. There’s a sharp crack followed by a smear of blood. She’s propped up, impaled on the ironwork as her head hangs limply.
There’s a long moment of silence.
“No,” Tersius whispers. “No, no!” He rushes over, trying to lift her face. Tears stream down his cheeks. But the softness quickly vanishes, replaced by rage. “I told you…I told you not to go. But you had to. Why did you have to?” He shakes her and then suddenly releases. Loretta falls to the ground. Tersius backs away, as though he’s been burned. “It’s his fault,” he whispers. “The Vampir King…the one who twisted your heart against mine. This is his fault.” Tersius begins to laugh.
The world shifts.
We’re back in the underground hall of the hunters’ fortress. Tersius reverently places the three books on the statue of himself for safekeeping. He positions tools of ritual on the altar.
He makes the elixir from Loretta’s blood and his own.
I blink, and things are different again.
Tersius addresses a small crowd underneath the bell tower of Hunter’s Hamlet.
“Do you see? Do you see now? The Elf King lied about the Fade keeping us safe from the powerful magics of Midscape. They will come and they will kill us all if we do not kill them first. We must protect our land or we will perish at their hand, just as my dear sister did,” Tersius shouts to a group of young hunters. “Kill them. Kill them for humanity—for our future.”
The memories are becoming hazy, the blood is running thin. The images blur.
A battle of fire and silver.
Solos is outnumbered. Loretta was a secret. He couldn’t bring his army to defend his human lover. Only the small contingent of sworn guards who knew about her—the few he sent across the Fade to “collect the humans who ran away.” Men and women who all took the secret of the true founder of blood lore to the grave with them.
I follow Tersius into the fog. We race through the crimson night. Deep within me is a thread, pulling me forward. Pulling me to a tower, not far from the secret entrance to the Castle of Tempost, a stopover on the road that was cleaved in two by the Fade.
Solos is there, wounded and fleeing.
Tersius launches into an attack. He and Solos exchange blow for blow. Despite Tersius’s earlier fears, they’re surprisingly well matched. His elixir has worked. But not well enough to win.
They’re both bloody, wounded.
Dying.
Tersius grabs the carcass of a raven from the muck of the marshes. He bites into it and his skin rips. Bones crunch. Feathers sprout from where there were once none.
He flies away.
“Damn you, curse you,” Solos growls toward the sky. He turns to the dagger in his palm, the dagger he had been using to fight, a dagger with the same luster as Loretta’s blood silver. “A curse upon you. A curse of vengeance, a curse wrought in blood for blood.”
Solos retreats into the tower.
I jolt awake.My heart is racing, but not faster than my feet carrying me back deep into the castle. Down into the passageway that leads through the Fade.
I know who laid the curse…and I know where—and what—the anchor is.
