After about an hour, Drew’s presence draws near. He’s running at a breakneck speed through the marshes, the elixir helping propel his legs. I hold up my hand so the rest of my covenant can see, and my eyes meet the golden orbs of each of the other vampir.Hold, my palm reminds them,wait until the last possible second.
Drew emerges from the mists; a raven soars overhead, letting out a cry.
I drop my hand. We all drink.
The raven banks hard. With the elixir flowing through our veins Tersius can sense us; he’s going to try and flee. Luckily, it was easy to assume he would, and we are ready.
Winny pricks her finger and throws a dagger. Thanks to her blood lore, the woman never misses her mark. The weapon lodges through a wing and the bird lets out a cry, spiraling toward the ground. Lavenzia is there to meet the raven—she drives her rapier through the other wing, pinning the man-beast to the ground.
Ventos and I emerge as well. My armor lets off a faintly glowing light from the blood I’ve smeared on it, activating the magic within. I draw my dagger against the back of my exposed palm. My skin knits but my weapon is aflame with magic. I point it down at the bird.
“Enough struggling. You’ve lost, Tersius. This ends tonight.”
At his name, popping and snapping fills the air. The raven feathers disappear into mist that unravels to form the shape of a man. He’s ancient, harrowed, scrawny, and as naked as the day he was born. The full cost of the curse and time is laid bare on his flesh—a series of gnarled scars from bloodletting and the ravages of magic I do not want to understand. Lavenzia’s rapier is still stabbed clean through his arm. Winny’s dagger is in the other. No matter how powerful he is, he can’t mist step with that much silver in him. But for good measure, Ventos holds him at sword-point.
“So you know my name.” His voice is as thin as his skin, breathy from not being used for centuries. “But if you seek to kill me, then you clearly don’t know why I fight.”
“I know everything,” I lie. Certainly there are still gaps, but I know enough.
“If you knew everything, you wouldn’t dream of fighting alongside them.”
“I know the stories of King Solos and the early humans. But, perhaps more important to you, I know he stole your lover, Loretta.”
Tersius howls with laughter. His stomach and chest heave. We allow him to get out his amusement, even though it sounds like daggers on glass.
“Mylover? No, you clearly know nothing.” He grins widely, fangs on display. They’re slightly different from the curved fangs of the vampir. These are shorter, their points more triangular. His eyes are still emerald, only ringed in gold. A human turned vampir is a different creature altogether.
It’s the color of his irises combined with the wispy bits of his dark hair that have me filling in his cheeks, the well of his eyes, to sculpt the picture of a younger man. A dream returns to me with a sting of recollection. I’ve been a fool.
“She was your sister,” I realize.
“She was a magical scholar, the best of them all. She was the one who said we should go into the mountains for the Blood Moon festival. She wanted to see the magic. But it wasn’t enough. As soon asheread her future, she wanted to help them like a woman possessed.” He shakes his head, weak breaths straining against his ribs. “I was an apothecary; I knew the body. She couldn’t help the vampir without me.Iwas the true founder of the blood lore. I was the one to uncover its uses and applications and I reaped its benefits before they judged me for my brilliance.”
“You…you made yourself into a vampir,” I whisper.
He smiles wickedly. “I knew the cost of greatness. I accepted the price. But my sister was soft. She took my work and made it more palatable. She lowered the cost and democratized it.” All the stories of humans being brutalized make sense—they were, but not by Solos. By one of their own. Tersius turned against his own kind to develop blood lore to serve only himself. Two blood lores—one by force, one by free will. Tersius was the father of the former and his sister the latter, the one Solos would recognize. “So who did Solos give the credit to? The only woman he had eyes for. The bastard even named it after her.”
“Blood lore,” I whisper. “Loretta.”
The vampir might not have been ready for their king to be bloodsworn to a human, but that didn’t stop Solos from honoring her. That information changes my other assumptions. The halls of the castle, while secret, were immense. Solos was giving her everything he could, trying to find as many ways as possible to integrate her with society until they accepted her outright. He kept her close, where he could protect her. He likely was starting to introduce her to his attendants and advisers to win them over first—like Jontun. His archivist kept records of Loretta’s work and tried to frame them as best he could…they just didn’t have enough time.
“So you took her work—”
“It wasmywork,” he insists. “They just couldn’t stomach the cost. The vampir were weak, they will always be weak. But we—you and I, you have it too, I can feel the magic in you—we can be stronger. We are the next evolution of vampir and human. You’ve seen it, you felt it. Together our blood-lore-fueled armies will rule not just the mountains, but all of Midscape. We can usher in a new age.”
“You know nothing about me.” I brandish my weapon. “Now tell me how to break the curse.”
Tersius bursts with laughter again. “I was hoping you could tell me.”
“Don’t play dumb.”
“It’s not my curse.” He shakes his head. “I’ve been trying to figure out who made it all these years so I could perfect it. A brilliant design, clearly just not good enough to end the vampir. And not good enough to end me, as I suspected was the intent.”
“You thought the vampir made the curse to attack you,” I whisper. Tersius only smiles wider.
“You’re lying!” Ventos thrusts his broadsword toward Tersius’s neck.
“Someone else hates you as much as I do.” Tersius’s gaze roves around each of us. “And that enemy will live much longer than I. Whoever he is, he’s clearly very clever if none of us have found him yet.”
