I pause.
“We need to keep going,” Ventos whispers.
“I know.” The dream I had on the first night in the vampir castle returns to me along with a dull ache in the back of my mind. I see the outline of the white-haired figure in the ruins, even though he’s not actually there.
“Floriane.”
“I know,” I repeat and start forward again.
About three hours before dawn, the great archway is visible in the distance.
“That’s it?” He hums his question, staring across the salted earth to the fields that are dotted with farmers’ homes. Those are the brave few who put their lives on the line by living closest to the marshes to grow food and keep livestock for the whole town. His eyes settle on the slow rise that ends with the wall that envelops the town proper and the silhouette of the moonlight-washed fortress.
“Yes. Home.”
“I never made it this far on the night of the Blood Moon,” he admits. “I’ve spent the past year wondering just what the home of the people who’ve turned our lives into an eternal nightmare looked like.”
“Is it everything you imagined?” I ask dryly.
“Not in the slightest,” he admits. Ventos rubs the back of his neck. “It’s almost as pathetic as Tempost is these days.”
I should take offense, but I laugh softly. “I don’t disagree. We’re both living sad half lives in constant fear of the other…and for what? It’s part of the reason why I’m so convinced the curse needs to end. No matter who started it, or how justified they were or weren’t, it’s not helping anyone, anymore.” I scan the farmhouses for signs of life as we speak. We must make it past the salted earth quickly, so someone doesn’t see us, since Ventos can’t mist step across.
“The bloody curse never helped anyone to begin with,” he mumbles. I still feel like I don’t have enough information about those early days of the curse to agree or disagree. Even though Ruvan has told me some of the horrors Solos committed, something still isn’t sitting right with me. There are too many gaps in the history Jontun recorded when I begin to think about it too closely.
“The best thing we can do is end it. And then, hopefully, both vampir and human can go about their lives. We can reclaim a world we thought was lost to us forever.” A cloud slowly creeps over the moon, casting the world in shade. “We should move.”
“One second.” Ventos raises a small vial to his lips and drinks. His eyes are luminescent in the darkness as power flushes them. They fade, but not to their usual yellow hue. They’re stony—a hard and misty gray. Ventos’s flesh ripples out from the center of his face as though it has become liquid and is being blown around. His lips extend. His beard falls to the ground. His body shudders.
I watch as his bones crack and snap. His muscles melt away, deflating to become lean and thin. Wispy strands of dark brown hair grow from his bald scalp. The groaning of tendons stretching and tightening and the popping of joints fades. Ventos is gone, and another hunter stands before me in his place. Even his clothes were transformed into leather armor.
A shudder rips through me, creeping horror chasing its heels. This was what the Succumbed did with my father’s blood. The vampir had enough sense and wit—no, just instinct—to steal his shape and face. It feasted from his body and then hunched over him and performed this grotesque ritual to steal his skin, leaving his body a forgotten husk.
“Floriane.” Ventos shakes me lightly. “What is it?” Even his voice has changed. Everything about him has been reshaped, down to his vocal cords.
“It…this…” I push him away and stagger to the wall that barricades the marshes from the salted earth and Hunter’s Hamlet, upending the mostly empty contents of my stomach.
“Is it a side effect of so much mist stepping?”
I don’t look at him while I speak, nails digging into the stone. One bends back. One breaks. The pain is sharp and keeps me in the present and focused. It keeps me from falling deeper into the void my father left. “No. I’m fine.”
“You don’t look fine.”
“I said I’m fine,” I snap. Ventos’s currently human eyes are surprised. I sigh. This isn’t his fault, but where do I begin? “My father…had his face stolen. It was a Succumbed who did it. But… I—I… Just now was the first time I’ve seen a vampir transform into someone else and I wondered if that was how it looked when it happened to my father. I thought about the Succumbed eating him in the marshes to try and infiltrate us. Or maybe to reclaim a part of itself that it lost.”
Ventos rests a hand on my shoulder. But he doesn’t pull me toward him. He doesn’t demand I turn. “For whatever it’s worth… The vampir don’t steal faces to be wicked or deceitful. Honestly, we don’t even enjoy it. I certainly don’t. It’s painful and uncomfortable to be squeezed into another body. If I could spend the rest of my days without ever doing it, I would be content.”
I never expected Ventos to be a comfort…but he is. I glance over my shoulder. The strange face is less alarming now that I’m expecting it. I’m glad, however, that I don’t recognize whatever hunter it belonged to. This would be harder if I knew the man whose blood had been taken for it.
“I’m better now,” I insist to myself more than him. “We should keep going. We have to get back to Midscape tonight.” The thought of how haggard Ruvan looked when we were leaving makes me want to do this within an hour. If I’m wrong, and the Hunter’s Elixir fails to keep Ruvan strong, we need to start immediately planning what we can do next for him. I will not let him go off somewhere to die. As long as I draw breath, so shall he.
“You’re not going to hear me arguing,” Ventos says. “I hate the way this world feels; I want to leave as quickly as possible.”
“How this worldfeels?”
“It’s… I’m not quite sure how to put it. Callos would have a better description for it. But this world is quiet. It feels dead. The hum of magic that exists within living creatures is here, too, but it’s fainter. There’s not a whisper of greater power everywhere like what’s in Midscape.”
I try and think if I can feel a difference between this world and Midscape, reaching outward with my mind, my heart, and searching as I walk. Icanfeel a difference, but I can’t be sure if it has anything to do with magic. It might feel different because this is my home.
