“That you see yourself as trapped…and yet your people are the ones who hold the curse on us.” He takes a step forward, hands open as if pleading. “If it’s that bad for humans, too, then why would the hunters not release us?”
“So the vampire could go and attack the rest of the world?” I plunge the sword into the hearth.
“The rest of the world? We wantnothingto do with your world, that’s much the point. We want to be free to live our lives here in Midscape, where we belong.” He looks to the still-shuttered windows—looks through them and out to something beyond. “I’ve never seen outside this city. And unlike your hamlet, I don’t have everything I need. I want so much more. I want to see the dances of the fae court or hear the siren duets at new year. I want to see plains so vast that the horizon swallows them.” His voice has gone soft with wonder and wistfulness.
I try to ignore the ache at what he said. There’s a dull throbbing in me, like a call to all that lies beyond metal and heat—to a world meant for knowing. A world I clearly haven’t given half as much thought to as he has.
“You need blood for your magic,” I weakly counter.
“We could find blood enough in Midscape if we were not confined by the curse. Sure, human blood is the most potent, but others would suffice. We were doing it during our moon festivals long before the dryads made the humans.”
I search his face, wishing he could be lying. But I can feel the truth in him as keenly as the heat of the forge…or the tingle at the base of my neck. This would be so much simpler if I could write it all off as him misleading me. Because if he’s not…if he’s not…
Then he’s just a lonely, desperate man standing before me, begging for tenderness Hunter’s Hamlet never allowed me to grow into.
“I need to focus on this work,” I say softly, and put my back to him. “I only have a day to make the necessary adjustments.”
Ruvan lingers, and for a moment it seems like there’s more that he wants to say, but he doesn’t. Instead, he says, “I’ll tell the others to bring their weapons of choice; prioritize those.”
He goes to leave but hesitates halfway through the room. I can feel it. I can feel him. His every movement threatens to prickle my skin into gooseflesh. I had hoped that this keen sense of knowing attached to him would fade the more time that passed following our oath, but it only seems to be growing.
“And Riane, you look tired. You should be sure to get some rest; you’re going to need it.” He leaves me with that.
The vampire lord is right, I am tired. But it’s the sort of tired that sleep will do little for. What I need is that which is already before me.
CHAPTER14
The hammer is a meditation.
Strike. Pause. Inspect. Straightening blow. Heat. Repeat. Cool.
There is a rhythm to the forge throughout the year—planning in spring, stocking in late summer when the traders arrived, forging hard through fall and winter. Drew always said he hated those late months. That was when we would get ahead for the coming year while the weather was cool and the smithy was all the more lovely to be in as a result.
For the longest time I thought it was because my brother was lazy. How could he not enjoy the smithy when the world outside was piled high with snow? But then he became a hunter, and a lazy man does not hoist the sickle.
So, one Yule, as I stood off to the side of the town square—forbidden to dance, of course—with Drew keeping me company even when he could dance with any eligible lady he desired, I asked him why he hated it outright. He told me that he hated the smithy in those cold, long nights not because he didn’t want to work, but because the constant striking of metal rang painfully on the inside of his skull—a relentless noise that lingered even long after he went to sleep and brought an ache in the morning.
I didn’t understand his resentment for the noise then.
I still don’t.
To me, these sounds are a heartbeat, echoing across my ancestors. We have all shared it, and many more will share it in the years to come. Or perhaps not. Perhaps, as the vampires put it, this long night will finally draw to a close. Hunter’s Hamlet will wake from the nightmare it has existed within. We will reemerge into the human world, bleary-eyed and hopeful. We can see the sea, and distant cities, and maybe even grassy plains so vast the horizon swallows them whole.
The vampires come to me, one by one. Everyone but Ventos.
Lavenzia brings Ventos’s broadsword—the one thing he was unable to carry earlier. I’m surprised to find I don’t mind her company. She’s silent as she sits by the window, staring out at the cold mountains turned platinum in the moonlight. Silent companions are the best kind because they don’t distract me from my work.
Winny is the next to come, with dozens of little daggers that weren’t in the armory when Ventos was collecting things because she “doesn’t trust them out of her sight for long.” She has a bow for her fiddle now, and she draws it along the strings deftly. I almost think that she is playing to the beat of my strikes because every time I change up my rhythm, Winny’s playing changes, too. Light and fast, slow and soulful. The duet has me fighting a smile.
They come and go, silent guardians, or perhaps jailers. I pay them no mind regardless. I have a job to do, one that keeps my hands busy, muscles strained, and brow dotted with sweat. I think I am the closest to happy that I can expect to be here.
But it comes to an end, as it always does.
When dawn breaks, I’m wiping soot and metal from my hands. I admire my handiwork. It’s then that I realize just how much I completed. More than should have been possible. I’ve forged like this before, lost to the world. But even at my most productive, even at my strongest, I couldn’t complete this much in the span of a day and still feel this good.
It must be the bloodsworn magic. The vampire power and strength that still surges within me. I touch the hollow between my collarbones. My work feels tainted by—
Him.
