“Multiple trips are for the weak.” Ventos chuckles.
“But the silver.”
“I can manage.” Ventos puffs his chest.
A snort of laughter escapes me, distracting me from my preparation of opening the smithy back up.
“Is the human laughing at me?” Ventos is somewhere between shock and anger.
“I wouldn’t dream of laughing at the fearsome vampire.” I roll my eyes away from Ventos. Ruvan sees, judging from his huff of amusement.
“You, too, my lord? You wound me more sharply than a silver blade.”
“If my words were silver blades you’d be long dead.” Ruvan leans against the anvil. The fire highlights the sharp lines of his jaw with striking orange lines—as if he’s glowing from within like a blisteringly hot piece of iron. I tear my gaze away from his stolen face and cross to the weapons Ventos brought.
A large hand covers mine as I reach for a sword. “You’re really going to improve them?”
I stare up at Ventos. “Unhand me.”
“Answer me.”
I grit my teeth but manage to say, “Yes. Sharp enough to cut that hand clean off if you don’t remove it from my person.”
He releases me. I take the sword with a glare, return to the forge, and plunge it into the coals. This one is particularly bad; the whole thing is off-center from the grip. I’ll hammer it back into rough shape before it meets the grinding wheel.
“I don’t trust you,” he says to my back. He’s just itching for a fight. I can feel it. An ill-advised part of me wants to give it to him, even though I can’t thanks to being Ruvan’s bloodsworn.
“And I trust none of you,” I say.
“Good, why would you? After all, we killed dozens of your kind on the night of the Blood Moon.”
“Enough,” Ruvan says firmly. We both ignore him. Ventos has struck too much of a nerve for me to see reason. I’m just seeing the same red as my brother’s blood.
“How many did you kill?” I whirl in place, my knuckles white around the hilt of the sword.
“A good many.” Ventos tilts his head back smugly. “And we didn’t lose one of us.”
I think of the armor I saw earlier, void of bodies. “What’s the point of it all? Why do you hunt us?”
“To survive.”
“We should not have to die so you can live!” My voice echoes off all the stone and metal.
“Then to punish you for all you’ve done to us.”
“I said that’s enough,” Ruvan says firmly, moving to stand between us. “Both of you.”
Ventos continues to ignore him. “I hope you lost important people. Either to that forsaken guild, or to you personally. I hopeyouhurt. I hope you all bleed. I hope you feel an ounce of the pain that you have caused my kind.”
As Ventos speaks, he slowly approaches me. Even though Ruvan is still wedged between us, that mountain of a man tries to loom over me, poisoning the air around me with his hatred. Hatred that is mirrored within me and growing.
“Worry not, I have known pain every day of my life,” I assure Ventos. My voice is more frigid than the mountaintops that surround us.
“Your suffering is hardly the equivalent of a day compared to what our kind has endured and will endure. You could live in agony for a hundred lifetimes and it would still not be enough to atone for the long night.”
“Ventos, stop. You get us nowhere by alienating her.”
“I never asked for her help to begin with!” Ventos glares at his lord. “When you thrust this arrangement upon us, did you even think of how your covenant might feel? Or did you even care?”
