The chalice is empty and I hand it back to Callos. On instinct, I press my fingertips into the base of his throat, where my mark is on him. I try and pour something of me into him—something more than the blood I gave.
I’m already suffering the absence of my brother and distance from my home, don’t make me suffer your loss too.
Ruvan’s eyes flutter open and I breathe relief. His skin begins to fill out once more. The gray seeps away. His usual pallor returns. Even the rosy hue of his cheeks and dusk of his lips is back. His eyes are lustrous pools of molten gold once more and yet his expression is one of heartbreak and sorrow.
Our worlds narrow onto each other and, for a second, we breathe in tandem. He has returned to me and I to him. My fingers twitch and I fight the suddenly insatiable urge to pull him to me. To crash my mouth against his. To hold him until we fall into a deep and dreamless slumber.
“How long was I out for?” He sits, rubbing his temples lightly. I ease away to give him space, trying to exhale the tension as I do.
“Only a few hours,” Quinn answers. “At least, that would be my assumption based on how you were last night and when I found you.”
“A few hours and I feel like death.”
“Looked like it, too,” Winny chirps, but her voice is void of its usual songlike levity. She’s trying to lighten the mood, but misses the mark slightly. Worry has taken root in all our hearts.
“It’s getting worse.” Ruvan voices what we’ve all just seen. What we already knew.
I open my mouth to object, but Quinn cuts me off.
“It is,” he says gravely. None of the others are able to look at Ruvan.
“I won’t succumb yet; I still have work to do,” Ruvan says, determined. “We haven’t even had time to go through all the records. The curse anchor wasn’t in the workshop, but I’m sure those records will lead us to it.”
“And what will you do if they don’t?” Ventos demands to know.
“I’ll keep hunting.”
“Until you become a Fallen or, worse, a Lost?”
“I will work until the last moment if that’s what it takes to free our people from this long night!” Even though Ruvan is seated in bed, he suddenly seems to consume all empty space in the room. The very foundations of the castle seem to tremble at his voice.
“I don’t want to kill you.” Lavenzia is the one who finds the bravery to speak in the wake of Ruvan’s rage and frustration.
“What?” I whisper. None of them hear, even though I’m searching each of them for a truth other than the one being presented before me.
“No other lord or lady has expected it of their covenant,” Ventos says solemnly.
Ruvan avoids their pointed stares and murmurs, “We’re so close, I can feel it… I must keep working.”
“If you push to the point of the curse taking over, you’re likely to become a Lost, and we’re not strong enough to kill you,” Callos says, matter-of-fact as he cleans his spectacles. “You have to know your limits, for all of us, awake and still slumbering.”
Exactly what they’re talking about finally hits me—he’s expected to go off to die, to end himself before the curse can end him. I think of the needles in the collars of the hunters. The expectation to take one’s life before they could become a monster exists here, too, and my heart crumples at the realization.
Ruvan says nothing. He stares at his hands, curling and relaxing his fingers. He’s like a mirror to how I was when I first arrived. I never imagined that between us I would be the strong one.
And I’m going to need every bit of strength I ever had.
I see his frustration, uncertainty, the need to do something when all seems hopeless. I know the pain and frustration he feels all too well and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. But Callos is right: Ruvan is limited right now, he must take things easier.
I, however, have no such limits.
“There might be a way to prolong Ruvan’s strength in fighting the curse,” I say. All eyes are on me. What I’m about to suggest is a long shot, I know it is. But it might be our only choice—if blood is strength, and blood lore is blood made even more potent, then Ruvan needs strength through blood lore. And there’s none stronger than, “The Hunter’s Elixir.”
Ventos is at my throat, fist balled in my shirt. “You would have him drink something the hunters made?”
He barely manages to speak before Ruvan’s hand is on his wrist. Ruvan’s knuckles go white as he grabs and twists with an immense strength his body doesn’t show. Ventos winces, and his grip goes limp. I breathe freely again. Ruvan pulls Ventos’s hand away from me, but holds it and the man in place as he says almost too calmly, “You touch her again and there will be consequences.”
The room is stunned to silence, myself included.
