Sure enough, my wound is already mending. I wipe away the blood and there’s only a thin red line where it was, a few droplets still beading in two spots that close over.
“Her eyes,” Winny says with a scowl.
“What about them?”
Rather than answering me, Winny looks to Ruvan. “You gave her blood.”
“She needed it to survive and I’m keeping her alive at all costs. She can handle my power.” Ruvan’s tone is not to be questioned. He releases me. “Come on, we need to keep moving. We have to get to the loft by nightfall.”
“We haven’t been there in ages; do you think it’s still safe?” Lavenzia asks.
“They generally lack the coordination to climb ladders. So even if it’s not, there should be so few that it’s easy to remedy.” Winny shrugs.
“Or there’s the worst kinds there,” Lavenzia mutters under her breath.
“It will be fine.” Ruvan glances over his shoulder as the thudding on the door behind us grows louder. “Let’s not linger.”
We move.
My heart pounds with every step. I want more. More fighting. More blood. For the first time, I feel like a hunter…and, now that the rush of battle has faded, I realize I don’t like it.
I stare at my palms, splattered with inky blood. I’m not made for death. My hands itch to create. This need within me…it’s not my own. Where does it come from? I stare at Ruvan’s back. Him? No, I felt it in the hamlet before I ever met him. The elixir. Is this the hunter’s madness? Fear tries to root within me and I nip it in the bud. Perhaps it is the madness, perhaps not. But I have more important things to worry about for the time being.
“I have to admit, you’re decent in a scrap, Riane,” Ventos says at my side. I must not be able to hide my surprise at his statement, because he tries to smother laughter and, mostly, fails. “Though I suppose vampir blood is the reason for most of it.”
“I’m fearsome enough without it,” I try to bluff. Ruvan casts me a look that I can’t decipher. Or maybe…that I don’t want to decipher.
He knows, a sinking feeling in my gut assures me. He knows of your deceit.
We pass by a mercury glass mirror and I slow to pause before it. Just for a second. Just long enough to see my eyes ringed in gold. Black veins bulge from underneath my tawny skin. I look jarringly similar to how I appeared in the first mirror I was shown here.
“How…” I whisper. But just like the cause of Ruvan’s skeptical glances, I know the answer to this, too.
“It’s the blood lore attached to the bloodsworn. We have marked each other’s blood, we share life and energy, so I can give you a fraction of my power,” Ruvan answers. It prompts me to walk at his side once more. I can hear faint groaning in the distance. There are more battles to come before we make it to the aforementioned loft. “And, to that end, I would appreciate it if you kept running headfirst into danger to a minimum.”
“I don’t know what came over me,” I murmur. I pull down on my cheek, inspecting the gold ringing my eye. “I’m like the night of the Blood Moon, aren’t I?”
“You are.”
“That means—” The words strangle me. But I force myself to speak them anyway. For the first time there’s something almost reassuring radiating from Ruvan, pulsing toward me through this bond we share. “It means the Hunter’s Guild really is engaging in vampire blood lore, doesn’t it?”
“Yes. A human shouldn’t be able to become a bloodsworn as easily as you have—your blood already had the imprints of blood lore upon it. My magic should not flow to a human untouched by lore as it has to you. You were marked by the art of the vampir before me and you will be forevermore.” He looks at me from the corners of his eyes with disapproval and concern.
“Marked,” I repeat, rubbing between my collarbones.
“Everything we do, all we experience, marks our blood. We are shaped by all we have been, could have been, are, and are not. And you had blood lore upon you before you met me.” Ruvan turns to face me. “Your precious fellow hunters were slowly turning you into one of us to kill us.”
“You’re—you’re—” I can’t say it. The word is gummy in my throat.
“Wrong?” Ruvan tilts his head slightly, lips quirking into a frown. He leans forward slightly. “You can’t say it, can you?”
I swallow thickly, silent.
“Do you know why?” His voice drops. “Because you can’t lie to me. I’m right, and you know it as much as our bloodsworn oath does.”
My eyes widen slightly. But he doesn’t gloat. Ruvan eases away, regarding me thoughtfully as a thousand thoughts race through my mind at once.
If the Hunter’s Guild is engaging in the blood lore—the magic of the vampires—to create stronger hunters, what does that mean for Drew? Do the ends justify the means? Is it necessary to become a monster to kill one? If they could and would do it to make the Hunter’s Elixir, then why would I think they wouldn’t do it to curse our enemies, too?
Perhaps there is something more to this curse they speak of. Maybe it even does come from Hunter’s Hamlet. Drew would know.
Drew. My chest aches. I press my eyes closed, favoring the darkness behind my lids rather than the darkness of the hall for a second. What if they used the vampire lore on him to heal him? Will that make him that much closer to becoming a vampire? What if he’s part of one grand experiment that will go on because I stole his destiny and the vampire lord is alive?
They would never do that!I can hear in my mother’s voice. In Davos’s at our dinner table.
Yet…the truth is before my eyes. There’s more to the hamlet than I have ever known, and even if I don’t want to find out because it terrifies me, because it threatens all I’ve ever found comfort in, I must. No matter the cost.
The sound of monsters in the distance is welcome. I let out a noise of frustration and charge ahead, a blur of silver and power. I want the magic to burn away these thoughts. I want to use it to survive and think nothing of the implications.
I want to ignore everything that is smudging the simple, neat lines that have always divided my world.
