Her words caught mid-rant, and color drained from her face. She opened her mouth, then closed it again, visibly swallowing her words. Rynna said nothing. She was too tired for masks today.
“Oh! Mistress Rynna. My apologies, I didn’t see you there. Back already? Is Mr. Joshua with you?” the tavern woman stammered, her voice a notch too high.
Once more, Rynna didn’t answer.
Instead, she let her gaze settle meaningfully on the empty cup in front of Malachi, then dropped a handful of coins onto the table with a soft clink.
“As you please,” she said, then snapped her lips shut before bustling off.
She returned moments later with several full jugs of wine and an extra cup, which she placed quickly on the table. Then, just as swiftly, she vanished again, leaving behind only the scent of bread and spiced wine in her wake.
“Aww, Ryns’, you didn’t have to chase her off like that,” Malachi said with a sigh. “I liked watching her bounce and jiggle about.”
“Letch.” She reached out without thinking, smacking the back of his head.
He chuckled, filling both cups with a heavy hand. The wine sloshed over the rim of hers, dripping down the side. Taking a sip, she let the warmth slide down her throat and settle deep in her chest as she sank into the chair’s worn curve. And soon, their rhythm clicked into place, sarcasm traded like coin, irreverence worn smooth by time. This was familiar. This she could handle.
She swirled the wine in her cup, watching the way the red caught the light, somehow too dark, too rich. Like blood left too long in the air. Her gaze drifted, unfocused, and for a moment, the tavern around her blurred as memory stirred in the corners of her mind.
A couple of years ago, Josh and Malachi had found her wandering the lush, tangled jungles of the eastern subcontinent. She’d been coming down from the high of a long, blood-soaked binge among the warring fae—dancing with death-lords and playing house where war was a game and violence a seduction.
It had been winding down, as those games always did. And she had known, deep in her bones, it was time to go. She never stayed too long. It never ended well when she did.
In the humid green heart of the realm’s jungles, she'd sought quiet. A buffer. Something to dampen the Hunger that pulsed endlessly through her veins. The war had wound her tight. The taste of blood had become too natural, too easy. She’d needed time to remember what it felt like to be near people without fantasizing about peeling them open.
It had been multiple millennia since her disastrous encounter with the vampire bitch who had rewritten the script of her existence. And still, the Hunger reigned. It was always there, waiting for her to let her guard down.
Control had to be fought for, maintained, and constantly monitored. One slip was all it would take. One moment of weakness, and everyone around her would die. Horribly. Worse than the villages she’d razed with the Horsemen or towns wiped out in a conflagration every couple of hundred years. Civilizations had buckled beneath the weight of her rampages. Cities wiped clean. Names lost to time.
Even Malekar hadn’t been able to stomach what she’d become for long. She’d ridden with him on and off for many years after she was changed, but it didn’t last. He had left quietly one night and never returned.
When the horror cleared, shame always followed. And she would disappear into the deep corners of the world—caves, mountains, ancient temples swallowed by jungle—anywhere far from people, far from witnesses. She would bury herself in silence and isolation, sometimes for centuries, letting the remnants of what she'd done rot her from the inside out.
It was during one of those disappearances, hiding out somewhere between forgotten rivers and overgrown ruins, that she encountered Malachi and Josh—two humans who would upend everything she thought she understood about herself.
At first, she’d only seen them as prey.
They came bickering through the underbrush, loud and clueless, arguing over a waterlogged map. She had been lounging in the trees above her camp, unseen, deciding whether to let them wander into one of her traps or just drop down and tear out their spines. But as they moved closer, something shifted.
The Hunger, which normally beat in time with her heart, began to retreat.
She didn’t notice right away. It was too subtle, more of a loosening than a vanishing, like a weight had been lifted. But with each step the men took toward her, the usual noise in her head, the drumbeat of want and blood and need faded.
She blinked into the sun-dappled clearing, confused. It wasn't until the stillness grew too large that she realized what had happened. The Hunger had recoiled. It wasn’t gone, but somehow blunted. Muted. She nearly fell out of the damn tree at the realization.
As she scrambled for balance, the shorter one glanced up, directly at her.
He didn’t flinch. He didn’t even look surprised. Instead, he nodded, as if he'd known she was there all along.
His companion yelped in shock and dove into the bushes, but the short one just smiled. Calm. Easy. Like they weren’t being stalked by a predator whose idea of fun involvedweeks-long slow bleeds. And in that smile, she saw something she couldn’t explain. Something terrifying in its gentleness. Not magic. Not glamour. Something deeper.
The Hunger didn’t disappear, but next to that smile, it felt…irrelevant.
“Hello there, Miss!” he’d called up, as if they were all friends already. “Would you mind coming down? We’re a bit lost, I’m afraid, and could use some help.”
And from that moment on, her path had changed its course.
Like Malachi and the band of other misfits who had gathered around Josh over the years, she stayed close. Wherever he went, she followed, because while she was near him, the gnawing agony dulled to a tolerable throb. And the shame, the bloodlust, and endless ache of what she was fell behind her, diminished into something manageable.
