CHAPTER1
“Marryme and I will give you such strong babies.” He slurs the words almost to the point of unintelligibility.
I cringe and shove—Walt?Waldor?I can’t even remember his name—I shove what’s-his-name’s arm off my shoulders. He stumbles back with a laugh, almost bumping into a group of women dancing in the street and howling at the moon. They’re down to their silken nightgowns, a haze of red and orange glowing on their skin from unnatural moonlight and the open doors of the smithy.
They can twirl and dance. They can sing and cry. They’re as free as the hems that graze over their thighs. What would it be like to be one of them? What would I do? I don’t even know. The bonds around me are as tight as the clasps on the sturdy leather apron I wear. Keeping me buttoned up. Contained.
What’s-his-name reaches for me again.
I slap his hand away. “That’s enough.” Touching me could get him lashed at best; the drink is keeping his better sense at bay. He couldn’t even claim that he doesn’t know who I am.Everyonein this small hamlet knows who I am. I’m easy enough to spot by my rough, soot-stained hands. By my rolled sleeves and arms of dotted scars. My duty is seen as more sacred than that of many of the hunters themselves. For I am the one who will arm and armor them for years to come. I know the secrets of the forge.
I am the keeper of steel and silver.
He, like all of Hunter’s Hamlet, knows the only one permitted to touch me is the man the master hunter decides will be my husband. No exceptions.
Not even on what might be our last night alive.
“Is there a problem here?”
Last I saw, Drew was in the smithy, speaking with a young woman in the corner. But my twin and guardian is never far. He must’ve stepped out when he noticed I hadn’t returned from my errand to the back shed promptly.
“Not a problem, just a drunk.” I adjust my grip on the bucket of charcoal. The fueler lives down by the marshes—he’s one of the few laymen permitted past the line of salted earth and into the land of the vampire. He brought up a fresh delivery tonight before the revelries started. I’m sure he’ll be staying with someone in town tomorrow. He does for regular full moons; he definitely will for the Blood Moon. We all look after each other in the hamlet, especially when the vampires attack.
There are three fundamental truths of the mysterious and bloodthirsty vampire:
The first is that they subsist on human blood for sustenance and for their dark magics. Because of this, the war between vampires and humans has been raging since the dawn of time. Without the fortress and its thick walls that surround all of Hunter’s Hamlet, they would overrun the world with their thirst for blood and death.
The second is that the vampire have only one true weakness—silver. All other tools are merely meant to slow them, or give their victims clean deaths. Catching a vampire’s flesh with a silvered blade kills them instantly. It’s our only defense, and why those who know how to smith the silver are revered in Hunter’s Hamlet.
The final truth is that the vampires share one mind. The beasts that torment us month to month are little more than living golems that heed their lord’s will. If the vampire lord is felled, the rest of his spawn will follow. But he is protected by the Fade, coming only once every five hundred years with his dark knights to attack on the night of the Blood Moon when the Fade is weak and he can lead his armies in force.
Tomorrow the Blood Moon will rise in full and the hunters will try to use my weapons to kill him and save humanity. Everything could change in a single night, for better or worse, and no one beyond Hunter’s Hamlet has any idea.
The hunter that has been bothering me is aghast. “I’m not a drunk, I’m a noble hunter!”
“You can barely stand up,” I retort.
“Enough, Wallice.”Ah, that’s his name.“You shouldn’t be caught alone with the forge maiden,” Drew scolds.
“We’re, we’re notalone.” Wallice sways and hiccups. “See, all our friends are here!” He jumps into the group of dancing women, who accept him with open arms as if he really had been dancing with them all along.
In an instant his hands are on a brunette, running over the curves of her thighs, up to the swell of her stomach. Even the hands of a trained killer like Wallice can look elegant smoothing over silk. It pools between his fingers, spilling over as he hikes up her dress.
I can’t stop myself from wondering what it would feel like if it were me. My own thighs tingle, heat rising to my core. I don’t want Wallice. But I do want to know what it feels like to be touched. To be desired for more than my skill with a hammer and position in the hamlet. Wallice bites the woman’s neck as a vampire would. She moans, head rolling back, and I turn to the smithy before a flush rises to my cheeks. At least inside I’ll be able to claim the redness is from the heat.
“He didn’t do anything untoward, did he?” Drew gives a final scowl at Wallice and then catches up to me.
“Nothing other than being so drunk that his better sense has vanished.” I have no interest in getting Wallice in trouble. The hunters live hard enough lives as it is and tonight is a night of revelry, recklessness, and indulgence. Besides, he didn’t do anything worse than throwing an arm around my shoulder. “I doubt he even knew who I was.”
“He’d have to be pretty drunk to forget that.”
“He seemed it; you saw him with the other women.” I glance back over my shoulder. Wallice is stumbling off with one of the dancers.
“Thanks for not being too hard on him, Flor.”Flor, short for Floriane. Only my brother and mother use the nickname. “It’s just how things are the night before the Blood Moon.”
“Should all the hunters be drunk to the point that it might impair their ability to hunt tomorrow?” I arch my eyebrows at him. Drew mirrors the movement. We’re almost the same height and of similar build. We share the same black hair and eyes as our mother. Looking at him is truly like looking into a mirror and seeing a more masculine version of myself.
“We have until sunset to nurse our heads and stomachs,andthe Hunter’s Elixir to aid us. No second day ache is stronger than the elixir.”
