There is a rack of casks similar to the one on the altar on the other side of the wall that’s now at my back. Wheat is so precious in Hunter’s Hamlet that only a rare bit is saved for the brew master—to ferment for the old gods on high holidays. These casks look the same as those in the brewer’s barn, but the smell is vaguely metallic. Familiar. I realize where I recognize it from and am suddenly wondering if this is how the Hunter’s Elixir is made. If these casks are full of elixir, then we have what we need. But where is Ventos?
My musings are stilled as I discover a passageway in the far corner of the room. The racks have been slid to the side, revealing a doorway. I hear hushed whispers and distant wheezing. The passage smells of must and something…ripe. Almost sweet? But in a horrible way.
Rot.
Carrion rot. That’s what the smell is. My stomach turns as I stand on the precipice, knowing I must descend into those depths and meet the horrors that await me.
I’m not ready. But I have no choice not to be. Ventos and Drew must be down there.
The passage becomes icier the deeper I go. The weeping on the walls turns to frost. Eventually, I end up in a room that is a duplicate to the main hall in almost every way—from its vaulted ceiling, supported by beam and buttress, to the ghostly outline of an altar at the far end. But unlike the hall above, this room is lined with even more rows of casks. There must be hundreds.
My focus is not on the fermenting elixir, however. Rather, I can’t take my eyes from the altar at the far end. Candles support a latticework of heavy cobwebs rather than flames. The altar itself is carved from stone, done with such extreme skill that the ruffles of a sculpted altar cloth look like they could flutter at the faintest breeze. The stone stitching looks as if it would feel warm to the touch, like real fabric.
The fabric parts at the front of the altar for a crest I have seen before. Two diamonds are stacked on each other, the top smaller than the bottom. Arcing around them is a sickle shape. It is the same symbol as what was on the silver door in the old castle of the vampir.
That’s not the only similarity to the vampir’s home. A stone figure stands above the altar, much like King Solos in the chapel Ruvan and I became bloodsworn within. The man wields the weapon of the hunters—a silver sickle—in one hand, and three leather-bound tomes are balanced on his other palm. A raven’s feather is pinned by a black brooch to his wide-brimmed hat. Sleek leather armor is carved to his body, a cowl lowered around his shoulders. His face is hard to see from my vantage, but I don’t need to in order to identify him.
Just like in the hall above, a cask is on the center of the altar. But this one is not bound in a cage. It sits out in the open, held together by plates of iron added over what appears to have been a very long time as some are thick with patina.
As incredible as it all is, my focus narrows on the two men positioned in the center of the room. I quickly dash behind a row of casks, peeking between them. Ventos kneels before the altar, his face bloodied. Not the face he’d stolen.Hisface. The ruse is up.
“How long have you been hiding?” Ventos snarls up at Drew, who’s looming over him. “You really thought you could undo the long night in a way that serves you?”
“Youwilltell me how you infiltrated my stronghold,” Drew says ominously. “One way or another.” He raises the cane. Its handle is a silver raven’s head with a wicked-sharp beak. “I grow tired of your dodging. This is your last chance.”
“I’ll gladly die for a true vampir lord. Not some coward who abandoned his people for the chance of stealing a crown,” Ventos wheezes. How did he become so bloodied? Drew couldn’t defeat Ruvan on the night of the Blood Moon. To trounce one of the vampir lord’s right-hand men without so much as a scratch…
The whistling of the silver-topped cane ripping through the air startles me from my thoughts. I leap from my hiding spot. “Drew, no!”
The cane freezes in place. He slowly turns. Our eyes meet and—my heart stops.
I don’t recognize him.
That harsh expression. Those cold and distant eyes. The tilted hunch to his shoulders, weighed further down by the glare of the raven still perched there so intently that its claws have pierced the leather vestments my brother wears. Dots of blood ring its black talons.
Drew is like my father was when he returned to us on that cold morning. He has the face of a man I know, I love, my family, but it is not the man I know occupying the flesh. Drew has been taken over by something evil. Something far more sinister than even Ventos’s stolen visage.
“Drew?” I say softly, hoping to see a glimmer of someone I recognize within him. I reach for my pinky ring to spin it and its absence sends a pang of longing through me. “Drew, it’s me.”
He slowly lowers the cane and, for a brief second, I see my brother. He blinks several times. “Flor?”
“Drew, I—” I don’t get to finish.
The cane clatters to the ground as he grips his head, screaming and writhing. Drew stumbles back. Ventos rises, lunging for him.
“Don’t hurt him!” I race forward. But I’m not fast enough. Ventos reaches him before I do, but he doesn’t grab for my brother. He grabs at the raven perched on my brother’s shoulder at the same time as Drew.
“I will not…hurt…her…” Drew grinds out, ripping the bird from his shoulder. Ventos holds it with his strong hands as the bird tries to fly away.
“Let’s see if you’ll show your real self before I pop your bird brain right off,” Ventos growls. I don’t pay attention to him. My brother needs me.
I’m at Drew’s side as his knees collapse. I brace myself, allowing him to fall into me, easing him all the way onto the floor.
“Drew!” I don’t know what’s happening to him, but I didn’t come all this way, we didn’t fight and struggle for our lives, just to have him die now on me.
A flurry of feathers slaps my cheeks. Talons rip at my skin. The raven has escaped Ventos’s grasp and tries to gouge my eyes out.
Ventos slashes for the bird with his sickle, catching right where its wing meets its body. But the sickle I made him was for show. It’s too dull to cleave wing from body in a single strike and the bird can still fly.
