“What about the hunter’s madness?” I ask.
“One drink of the elixir will not cause madness. It’s built up over time.” Drew’s eyes become distant. He has seen his brothers- and sisters-in-arms succumb to the madness of the Hunter’s Elixir, a bloodlust and thirst for battle unlike any other.
Over the years, he’s hardened before my eyes, hammered into a man I hardly recognize sometimes. It makes me all the more desperate to be close to him. It’s part of why I agreed to let him train me at all. I didn’t share in his notions that we might be able to escape, or even bend, our fate if we became strong enough, as tempting as they might be. No, these nightly trainings have happened because I missed my brother.
He continues, “Besides, I suspect the madness has nothing to do with the elixir at all, and more with what we see and must do in the Fade Marshes.”
My knuckles turn white as I grip the vial. All our combat practice suddenly seems so foolish. I’m a forge maiden, not a hunter. I’m supposed to make weapons, not use them. This has all gone too far. “Please, don’t go tomorrow. Stay here in the city and protect us. Don’t make me have to use this.”
“I’m going so you won’t ever have to fear the vampire again.” My fool of a brother steps forward and places both his hands on my shoulders. “I’m going with the vanguard so that vampires won’t make it here.”
The vanguard. Drew will be on the front lines. My heart begins to race.
“Don’t, Drew,” I say hastily. “Davos loves you—”
Drew snorts softly.
“You’re the brother of the forge maiden; he will let you stay as part of the town’s defense if you ask to defend me. You don’t have to go so deep into the marshes.”
“Ihave to.” His voice has dropped to a whisper. Even though we’re alone, he glances around. “Davos wouldn’t let me stay in town because he has prepared me for this night since I joined the hunters. I’ve been chosen for a special mission, Flor. I can end this.”
“End it?”
“End it all.” Drew hugs me tight. It’s like the hugs Father would give before the full moon. But this time… I know this is the last I’ll see my brother.He’s saying goodbye.
“Please don’t go,” I beg. My throat is gummy. Eyes are burning. “I don’t care about any special mission or old stories. There will never be an end. We will always be hunted. So stay here and live with me.” My insecurities and fears are multiplying. I am the fool Mother always warned of and I give in to desperation when I say, “Don’t make me get married off to whatever hunter Davos pleases. How will I know it’s someone decent if you’re not there to intervene?”
Drew releases me. “I willneverlet you live a life of misery.”
“But—”
“Tomorrow,” he says softly. “When the Blood Moon thins the Fade and the vampire lord himself leads his legions through it, I will be ready and waiting. I will kill the vampire lord—the mind of the hive—andIwill put an end to this endless war.”
My heart seizes in my chest. My throat is too tight to say anything else. I knew the vampire lord would come. But…I never imagined my brother would be the one poised to attack him head on.
“You can’t,” I whisper.
Drew wears a sad smile. “Not even a bit of confidence for your older brother?”
“Older by minutes,” I say on instinct. He chuckles. “Please, I—”
“The decision is made. I’m doing this for all of Hunter’s Hamlet. But also for you. If the vampire lord dies, then you won’t need to be a forge maiden any longer. Hunter’s Hamlet will be like any other town. You won’t have to work here every day. You won’t be married off. You and I could finally go to the sea.”The sea, the symbol of that all-encompassing dream of the world beyond the walls.
“I have all I need here; I don’t need the sea.” It’s a lie. One I’ve told myself so many times since I was a girl that I believe it more and more the older I get. Time has a way of snuffing dreams. “I need you and Mother safe and the forge hot.”
“You wanted to go to the sea when we were children,” he counters.
“We were seven. Things were simpler then.” I shake my head, wondering just how we could be so alike and yet so different at the same time. Drew was always fighting—fighting for more, for Hunter’s Hamlet, for dreams I stopped dreaming long ago.
“You could be so much more, Floriane,” Drew says softly.
“All I want is not to see another one of our family die.”
“Then promise me you’ll protect Mother, so the only thing I must focus on is keeping myself alive and killing the vampire lord.”
When he puts it like that… “Fine. But you must come back.”
“I will.”
