After Father and I came down the mountain, things were... chaotic. There was my hand. Father’s arm. And Huck, who’d been revived after Rothwild’s poison but not fully recovered. How we got to the hospital was a blur; Lovena helped, and she and Father yelled at each other a lot. Did you know a finger could be reattached if you saved it? I wish I had. Now my left hand had three fingers, a thumb, and twenty-three stitches. I also had Father’s blood inside me, because I’d lost a bit too much. If you’re going to hack a cursed ring off your own hand, I’d advise doing it closer to a medical facility.
But hey, maybe that was just the morphine talking. I’d get another syrette injection once we boarded our train, then another tomorrow—pain-free until Paris, at which point Father said I’d get to tough things out. Lucky me.
Though Lovena sat with us in the hospital after that horrible night, the elusive Zissu brothers had vanished. Gone. Sayonara. Adios. When we returned to the shop to collect our things, we found our luggage but nothing else. Shelves were cleared. Antiques gone. No sign of them or their curiosities. Just a business card on the counter with no address and a scrawled note on the back that said: “Noroc bun.” Good luck.
“Their shop moves from place to place. I’ll find them again one day,” Lovena said with a shrug, as if it was perfectly normal for the brothers to disappear overnight.
To be fair, this was probably the least mysterious thing that had happened on our trip, so I didn’t question it.
Lovena offered to drive us to Bucharest, but her car was small. Besides, she was still looking for Lupu. The wolf dog hadn’t returned to her, which made me wonder if I’d seen a mirage in the cavern. Or maybe the creature was descended from the old Dacian wolves who looked after the people here.
A lot of unexplainable things happened that night. It was probably for the best that the cavern didn’t show up on any maps. Maybe one day the Black Church would close off their underground tunnel and Castle Barlog would fall to ruins completely and never be seen again. Just a local fairy tale.
Wouldn’t be the worst thing.
We said our farewells to Lovena and promised to keep in touch. She slipped something into my pocket when she hugged me.
“What is this?” I asked, peeking inside to find a tiny black feather pressed between a folded sheet of waxed paper.
She shook her head discreetly, eyes flicking to my father. “Just a little something from my crows to help guide you. Safe travels, little empress. Don’t forget your homeland. Wherever you go, you can always return.”
Now that Rothwild was gone, this prospect was more appealing. When I told her this, she just shrugged and said, “Anything can happen here. That’s what makes it interesting.”
With that, I couldn’t argue.
After leaving Lovena, we spent one day traveling from Bra?ov, and most of the next having our clothes laundered while we waited for money to be wired from the States. I had to break it to Father about my tutor stealing our traveler’s checks back in Istanbul. He was... less than happy. But less mad than he should’ve been. Nearly dying in a fiery cavern changes your perspective.
Right now Father had disappeared somewhere inside the Bucharest railway station. He was on an errand to send one last telegram while I dealt with the baggage porter. As I finished, I spotted Huck strolling toward me on the platform, flat cap pulled down over the scabbed-up occult symbol that had been carved into his forehead the night of his poisoning. We hadn’t spent any time alone together since... well, since he was kidnapped from the tavern in Bra?ov. What with everything going on and all of us being injured and sick and traumatized. Surviving. A lot of somber faces between the lot of us over the past couple of days, so it was good to see him smiling now.
Really good.
“Jackpot, banshee,” he said as he approached, holding up a small stack of newsprint pages. “A very friendly railway worker let me rip up two weeks’ worth of old newspapers that were headed for the trash bin. Here.”
Romanian crosswords, each neatly torn and folded into rectangles, just how I liked them. “Thank you,” I said, smiling back at him. “These will last me till Paris.”
“Or at least until we hit Vienna. That’s when we’ll get the French newspapers. Speaking of, is that our train, there?” Huck asked, nodding toward a line of blue Pullman cars. When I confirmed it was, he said, “I hope the restaurant car is stocked, because I smell bread somewhere, and it’s making me hungry.”
“Feeling less queasy?”
“My nose thinks so, but to be perfectly honest, I’m still a touch weak and rickety,” he said, one hand pressed to his stomach. “Who knew poison was such a powerful appetite suppressant?”
“Minor annoyance versus the alternative. You could be dead.”
“Takes more than a couple of brutes in robes and a psychopathic occultist to bring this lad down.”
“Never doubted it,” I said.
“That makes one of us, because I was sure I’d be meeting my Maker, banshee. I never want to see another wicked sorcerer as long as I live,” he said, scratching the marks on his forehead briefly before tugging the brim of his cap down.
A couple of harried travelers strode by us, talking to a conductor in a blue uniform with a clipboard. When they’d passed, Huck asked me in a softer voice, “I’ve not had the chance to ask you... What was it like to put on the ring? Did you...? I mean, was it like when we saw the bone band in Sighi?oara? Or worse? It was worse, wasn’t it? Fox said you were not yourself.”
I could still hear the sound of the ring’s magic. The altered vision. The feel of the dragon inside me and the rush of power. The dark pleasure of it. It was like a bad dream, one that haunted the corners of your mind for days and days....
But mostly I thought of my mother’s face. And as I stood next to Huck, stuffing his folded crossword puzzle pages into my coat pocket, I felt Lovena’s crow feather, and the hope it gave me pushed away the nightmarish memories.
“It was probably a bit like what you went through when you were poisoned,” I told him. “Being manipulated by dark forces is not the best way to spend a trip overseas. Let’s never do that again.”
“Aye, I’ll raise a glass to that. We’ve learned a lot on this trip, the two of us,” he said, squinting one eye at me. “Firstly, don’t get kidnapped by occultists trying to take over the world through mayhem and murder.”
