“Right? Anyway, the Turkish puzzle rings have interlocking bands, but its English cousin, the gimmal ring, was meant to be taken apart—one ring for each of the betrothed to wear until they could be married.”
“Separate rings...,” Huck murmured.
“That fit together,” I said, twining my fingers together. “What if Vlad Dracula’s ring wasn’t one single band? What if it was three bands that fit together like a puzzle?”
He blinked at me. “That would mean Rothwild’s ring is real.”
“AndLovena’s is real.”
“And there’s a third ring out there that fits with them....”
“Is it possible?” I asked. “You tell me. You’re good at this sort of thing. You’re the one who can take apart a watch and fit it all back together.”
His brow furrowed as he considered this. Then he rummaged inside his coat pocket and pulled out a battered pack of gum. After unwrapping three sticks, he twisted the foil wrappers into circles, molding them carefully with deft fingers. “This is how the one in Fox’s photographs is shaped, yeah?”
“Yes,” I said as he laid it on his knee. Then he quickly molded a second ring.
“This is sort of how the one in the museum looked,” he said, and he gingerly slotted the foil bands together.
We both stared in amazement at his crudely engineered model.
“A third band would fit up inside these two,” Huck said, pointing with the tip of his pinkie. “Where the space is between the kinks here on top.”
It worked. It was possible.
“Three bands, one ring,” I murmured, taking the foil model from his fingers. “Apart, their power is dormant. Remember? Lovena said she sensed a sleeping power in her ring.”
“One that you heard in Sighi?oara,” he said.
I nodded. “Maybe that was just the tip of the iceberg, so to speak. All the stories about Vlad’s insane bloodlust—all the impalements and dipping bread in blood—maybe when Vlad wore the three rings, he was...”
“An all-powerful killer who slaughtered tens of thousands?”
“The Impaler,” I said, heart beating rapidly with excitement. “All the people that Father mentions in the journal who’ve owned the ring over the years—mass murderers. The three bands together must activate its power and cause bloodlust in the wearer. Father’s research in the journal matches up with the description in myBatterman’s Field Guide—it was a war ring, originally intended to make Vlad’s father unstoppable on the battlefield in order to aid the Holy Roman Empire’s efforts to win land over the Ottomans. Maybe when Vlad’s ring made its way back to Turkey in the late 1800s, as Father says in the journal, that’s when the Turkish sultan had it divided into three bands, each one sent separately to different families in Romania. Separated, the ring’s power is diminished.”
Huck took the foil bands back from me and held them up in front of the fire. “Christ alive, banshee. How come Fox never saw this?”
“Maybe I’m smarter than he is.”
He huffed out a breath, amused, and crumpled the foil bands into a ball before tossing it into the fireplace. “Maybe you are. And Fox never heard the ring in Sighi?oara like you did, or maybe he would have known it was real. Then we wouldn’t be stuck in this horror cabin with literal wolves at our door.”
I couldn’t tell if he was teasing me. Maybe he’d only said he believed me back in Sighi?oara just to placate me outside the Dracule?ti museum? I stole a look at his profile, light from the fire dancing over his face, while my head swam with bone rings and wolves. It was enough to make me question it all myself. Had I heard heartbeats in the museum, or was I just suffering from exhaustion? Were there actually three rings that fit together like a puzzle, or was I grasping at straws? Had my father made the decision to track down the ring alone to lead Rothwild away from us, or had he selfishly abandoned us like unwanted luggage, uncaring about anything but the prize of another treasure?
I understood at that moment why people said worry is burden, because all of this felt heavy enough to weigh me down. I didn’t want to think about it anymore. Not where my father was. Not the rings. Not whether Huck and I felt the same way or if we’d be separated again. Any of it. I only wanted to get warm and stay that way. Basic survival. That was far easier to manage.
Mentally and physically exhausted, we used clothes from our luggage to construct a makeshift pallet on the floor in front of the fireplace, and we lay down in our coats side by side, trying to keep warm. After I closed my eyes, I felt Huck’s fingers between us, feathering over mine, gently urging. Asking. I turned my palm upward, and he twined warm fingers with mine. We clasped hands in silence, and then he tugged me closer.
“C’mere to me,” he murmured, gathering me against his chest, my head on his shoulder, the wool of his coat scratchy under my cheek. His arms wound around me, and he was warm and solid, and my God, he felt good! I was terrified he’d hear my heart thundering wildly—until I realized it washisheart I was hearing.
We clung to each other while the wind howled around the cabin, until a deep peacefulness spread through me. This was everything I needed, right here. This comfort. This tiny bit of joy. This light in the darkness that told me everything was going to be okay.Wewere going to be okay. Somehow.
But as I drifted off to sleep, a stray thought bubbled up to the surface.
Rothwild had one bone band. Did Sarkany have a second band, stolen from the Dracule?ti museum? And if there were, indeed, three bands of bone, and the final one was in the possession of the Zissu twins, that meant my father could be headed to them right now, unaware of all this.
I hoped to God we made it to him before anyone else did.
JOURNAL OF RICHARD FOX
