“What does a curse anchor even look like?” I ask, wanting to be more helpful.But if it hasn’t been found by now… My chest grows tight.
“Callos says it can be anything—any object magic can tether onto,” she answers, coughing up dust as she perches at the top of a bookcase. “You’ll know it when you feel it, though. It’ll have thatzingof old, powerful magic.”
“My lord, what if it’s not—” Ventos doesn’t even have a chance to finish.
“No. I won’t entertain it. Itmustbe here,” Ruvan says, his voice stretched a bit with annoyance.
Must be? Or you don’t know what you’ll do if it’s not?I want to ask, but keep my mouth shut.
“Look again,” he commands.
So we do.
And again.
As the vampir hunt, I begin to read. I don’t understand the blood lore in great detail, yet. But I’m gleaning more information by the moment.
I’m not a scholar so my reading is slow; there is no time for such things in Hunter’s Hamlet. We learn practical skills and share practical information. Much of even our own history has been lost over the years—deemed unworthy of passing down through stories around the hearth. If it isn’t directly related to keeping us alive, what’s the point of exerting energy on it? The only history books I know of are kept in the fortress, reserved for the eyes of the master hunter.
I’m curious enough to keep slowly trudging along the lines of text, and various records begin to paint a picture. But even if I understand the words, half the meaning is nonsensical to me because I don’t know the finer points of blood lore. Still, there are a few things I can gather. One is that two people were keeping record. And the second…
“There was a human here,” I announce, pausing their search. I can glean as much from what I’ve read. And from my dream… The woman I saw last night didn’t have the gold eyes of the vampir. “A woman.”
“Of course there was,” Ventos grumbles. Every footstep he takes is heavier than the last, frustration at the lack of curse anchor weighing him down. “A human infiltrated us long ago, lurked within our walls, made a place only humans could get to with that blasted door that would kill any vampir that tried to open it, and cursed us. And I’d bet anything she was in cahoots with the first hunters.”
I just stare at him for a long second, waiting to see if the idiocy of what he just said dawns on him. When it doesn’t, I speak slowly to emphasize the point that’s been sticking with me ever since I first heard of this room. “A human infiltrated the vampir enough that they were able to…build a room in the castle?”
“Well—”
I point to the door. “That door isnoteasy to make. It’s solid metal and massive. And there’s a magic locking mechanism. That took ample time and resources to forge, much less install. And you think some human did that without your Vampir King noticing? Either the human had more power than the vampir or your king was extraordinarily inept.”
“How dare—”
“Don’t, Ventos, she has a point,” Ruvan steps in. “What else did you find?”
“She was looking for some kind of protective spell. Something that could be used to fortify and strengthen.”
“More like she was being used by a vampir who was the one doing the researching.” Lavenzia looks back at the table, poring over the notes.
“Well, whoever wrote these notes was working directly with the king of the vampir.”
“Which was three thousand years ago.” Ruvan frowns at the notes, as if they have somehow betrayed him. He crosses to me, standing a little closer than what I think was normal for us a mere day ago. “What does it say, specifically, about the king of the vampir?”
I bite my lip lightly, staring at a name. I recognize it. From Ruvan mentioning it, and from my dream last night.
“She was working with a king named Solos—”
They all go deathly still. Their change in demeanor is sudden enough that I’m silenced.
“You know him?”
“Know him?” Winny scoffs. “He’s a legend.”
“He was the last king before the long night.” Ruvan shifts, definitely closer than would be generally considered “appropriate” for two people in our circumstances. Oddly, I find his presence comforting. A line was crossed the moment he drank from me, a barrier between us removed. He squints with focus as he looks at the paper, as if trying to read it.
“There’s no way a human was workingwithKing Solos.” Ventos crosses his arms with a huff. “The king of the vampir would never lower himself to such a thing.”
“Lower himself?” I repeat softly. No one seems to hear but Ruvan. His silence is deafening. I try to pass it off as the conversation moving too quickly.
