“You’re family.” Ruvan folds his arms. I purse my lips and it’s all the affirmation he needs. “I didn’t kill him, and I heard his heartbeat when we left. But whether he bled out before help arrived, I cannot say.”
I exhale a small sigh of relief and touch the ring on my pinky. There is a chance Drew survived. It’s better than nothing. Drew is strong. He’ll be fine. I would know if he wasn’t, I try to tell myself.
“He’s my brother,” I admit it despite myself, compelled by an unknown force. Perhaps it’s because Ruvan already sussed out that he was family and, given his age, it’s clear Drew isn’t my uncle or father.
“I’m sorry.”
“You’re not.” I glare up at the lord. Jerking my face toward him puts our noses almost touching as he leans in. My heart hammers and I can feel tension in the air. I wonder if one of us is going to give into futility by trying to attack the other. My insides squirm at the idea of tumbling with him again against the stone. Of exchanging blow for blow. Of pinning him down and looming over him, triumphant.
“I am.” Ruvan gives me a firm stare. Oddly…I sense sincerity coming from him. But why? “You and your brother are as victim to this circumstance as I and my covenant are. None of us laid the foundation for all this bloodshed, all this death. But we are the ones who must continue to bleed for it.”
“Your people thrive off it.”
“Do we look like we’re thriving?” he says coolly, leaning closer. I can feel angry power vibrating the air around him. “Tell me, from what you have seen, is this the mighty vampire horde you were expecting?”
I open my mouth to retort and come up short. I want to say yes. But I don’t know what to make of this strange world and the few vampires within it. The old stories, passed down longer than time has been counted in Hunter’s Hamlet, tell of the bloodthirsty vampire lord and his legions of mindless death bringers, ready to lay waste to humanity every five hundred years when the Blood Moon rises if not for the hunters.
None of the stories unfolded around a small group of friends in a lonely, decrepit castle.
“Tell me…” His attention returns to the armor as he leans away, tension evaporating. “What have your hunters done with our fallen following the Blood Moon years past?”
Now is my chance to learn about them. “We’ve left them to burn away in the sun.”
“Ah, of course, not a proper burial.” He grimaces.
“We do not bury monsters.”
“Do I look a monster to you?” The question is quiet, filled with sorrow, longing—yearning, even. But for what? What does he keep wanting from me?
I study his face, the high swell of his cheekbones, his thin but firm lips. The sharp hook of his nose and the square of his chin. He’s almost…too perfect. Uncomfortably so. Unbearable to look at and for it…I can’t look away. I can hardly fight the urge to touch him.
“I have seen your true form. I know how monstrous you are,” I whisper.
“My true form? That—that—” He seems at a loss for words and shakes his head. “How are you so dense? That is not my true form. This is. Were it not for the curse, sapping my strength, my power, my body itself, this is how I would look.” He runs his hand down his front, his long fingers catching on the open lacings of his shirt, pulling them open slightly more. Never have I been more focused on the length of a man’s body. Never have I been alone with a man at all for this long. The second I realize it my insides are squirming. “It is the curse your kind placed upon us that turned us into monsters.”
“We don’t have that kind of power,” I manage to say.
“Humans did once. And it seems your ilk has stolen some of our blood lore to preserve it.”
“I didn’t even know I had magic in my blood,” I counter. The fallacies in his logic are adding up to be too much to stay silent on—even if I know I likely should. “How do you think all of Hunter’s Hamlet is sustaining some kind of secret curse? And if we did have that power, why wouldn’t we use it to fight back against you monsters?”
“Ah, monsters, there’s that word again.” He takes a step closer, into my personal space. It’s a small movement, but enough to make my senses alight. “Those who have Succumbed to the curse might seem that way as they have sunken below the threshold of cognizance and have resorted to base instinct. Yes, they are monsters, as you say. But they are also victims. Your hands are just as bloody as mine. And we were both born into cages not of our making.” His brow softens slightly and his lips part, just barely giving me a glimpse of his wicked-sharp fangs. He would look almost human in this moment of emotion, were it not for that reminder of his wickedness. Ruvan continues to search my face. What does he want? My sympathy? My forgiveness for all he’s done? “But we can fix it. You and I. We can find our freedom from this unyielding nightmare. If you can just put your blind hatred aside long enough to see the truth before you.”
Freedom.
That almost forbidden word of yearning. Of want. The thing that I craved so desperately from birth that I had to teach myself not to so I wouldn’t go mad. Could such a thing really exist for me?
No. No. He’s lying. There is no freedom for any of us. Only death. To think there could be would be ripping open a new wound.
Nothing cuts deeper than hope.
“You have nothing to say?” He shakes his head in disappointment. I am adrift, washed away into an ocean of sorrow originating from him. “Why did I expect anything more from you?” He motions to a table of silver sickles, daggers, and swords. “Take what you need to defend yourself. Anything you want is yours. Prepare for the battle of your life so we may be done with each other as quickly as possible.”
His words of battle should make me afraid, but my focus is solely on the weaponry. Swords… My family hasn’t forged swords in centuries. The sickles are lighter and require less material. And what the hunters sacrificed in range with sickles, they gained, and more, in speed.
But I do wonder what I might make if given the choice…if I had all the resources in the world. If I didn’t have a town to protect. What would I make? I’ve never asked myself that before.
“These are old,” I whisper.
