Turn which way? I risked looking up at the tower, they both had their arrows pointed behind me. My heart felt like it wasgoing to beat from my chest.Is a stupid gold nugget worth your life?that voice said again.Or your father’s?
My spine tingled. I felt the hunter’s presence behind me and took a sharp turn left. Corn leaves whipped my cheeks until I slammed into my father’s broad chest. He brandished his huge axe and without a word grabbed me by the back of my shirt and we dashed for the house.
“Go!” he rasped, pushing me. He knew I was faster than him, but I would never leave him behind. If we were going down, it was together.
We broke through the end of the cornfield and there was our log house. The thick metal shutters were already secured behind the windows. My mother stood in the doorway, one hand on her swollen belly.
She’s insane standing in the doorway. She stepped aside as soon as we reached the back steps, and we rushed in. The door slammed shut, my father secured the metal latch at the top then placed the wood board in the slat.
Booming fists slammed into the door, and I backed further into the house.
“Open the door!” the hunter growled. “Open! Open! Open!”
My mother put her hand on my shoulder and pulled me close to her side. Father stood in front of us with his axe in both hands, ready if the door didn’t hold.
A quiet cry and sniffle from the stairwell felt like a gut punch. My younger sister Kayda hid there in the shadows. The stairs creaked and my silver-haired grandmother came down faster than I’d seen her move in years and smacked me on the cheek. “Reckless girl. You could have been killed. Your father could have. If my son dies, wealldo.”
The sting hurt less than her words. Women didn’t often survive on their own out here.
“Quiet,” my father growled.
The pounding had stopped, but scraping nails on the metal shutter in the kitchen sent a shudder down my back. Then rapid tapping clicks at the other door where our shop was. “I smell her blood,” a voice hissed. “So sweet.”
The taunts and scratching and pounding went on for hours. I’d say it was a nightmare, but it was our reality. It had been years since I’d been so close to a vampire. My stomach ached. The nausea would persist all night probably. Thewhat ifswere already running through my mind. If I died, my family would mourn me of course, but if my father died with me... I couldn’t bear the thought. My brother was not ready to take on the care of my family. I didn’t even know where he was tonight. Probably staying with his lover, Erika, shirking his familial duties as he often did.
We stayed gathered near the kitchen until it finally went quiet. The silence lasted until my father’s deep voice rumbled, “Aesira.” My stomach dropped, and I slowly raised my chin to find his mountainous frame in the doorway. His head almost reached the top of it. I deserved whatever harsh words were about to be spoken. I waited for the beratement, the tears already brimming. The floorboards groaned under his feet as he pulled me into him and wrapped his arms around me. “Please, don’t ever scare me like that again.”
He didn’t ask what I was doing. He didn’t yell and scream, although part of me wished he would. Silent tears fell down my face as I hugged him back. My mother joined us, and with all the adrenaline gone my legs felt weak, and I sobbed. “I’m sorry,” I whispered.
Father kissed the top of my head and gave me a brief nod. The disappointment in his eyes cut me. “I know. To bed. Everyone.”
The walk up the stairs felt longer than usual, like wading through mud. Kayda shoved me into the hallway wall. “Theywon’t say it, but I will. What’s wrong with you? Why can’t you just follow the rules like everyone else?” she hissed. She was only a year younger, and it often felt like we were in competition with each other rather than friends. Ever since the incident with my hand, we’d grown apart.
“I was trying to help.” I reached into my pouch and curled my fingers around the gold nugget I’d found.
“Yeah, well, you didn’t. Father could have died trying to save you and it wouldn’t be the first time you cost someone their life.” She grabbed my hand with the glove I used to hide my scars and shoved it into my chest. “You’d think this would have taught you.”
My chest felt like it was crumbling. I couldn’t take seeing the anger in her. She was right. I pushed past her into my room and shut the door behind me. I fell face-first onto my pillow and screamed into it until my throat burned.
Tonight was just another reason I’d learned to enjoy being alone.
It wasn’t long before horrible screams in the Wraith Woods filled the night. Sometimes locks and shutters didn’t hold. Sometimes it was the vampires screeching like a pack of coyotes surrounding prey. Sometimes they just screamed. No one knew why. To scare us, I believed, or drive us mad enough to run out into their waiting teeth, or not let us sleep in peace. Living in the vampire’s hunting ground wasn’t a spot anyone wanted to be, but we weren’t given a choice.
I finally lifted my face from my pillow. The candle beside me flickered, casting long shadows on the walls. I got up and pulled off the fingerless, black leather glove on my left hand and tried to straighten my stiff fingers. As usual, my pinky and ring fingers stayed curled. I pulled out a jar of my mother’s salve and rubbed it on the rough, jagged scarring on the outside of mypalm. It only ached when the weather was cold. I was thankful for summer.
A scream, closer to the house than usual, racked me with a shudder. I hated that sound. If only there were a place where the beautiful bright sun never set. I would travel however far to get there, risking death for it.
I checked to make sure the metal shutters that covered my window were secure, then stuffed cotton into my ears and climbed into bed.
Out here inwhat we calledLothleton—the forgotten land—sleep was hard to come by most nights, but more so with The Sorting Rite tomorrow. This year I would be a part of it. Everyone my age that I knew looked forward to the event, but not me. I wanted to know what it was like inside Nighthaven, but the thought of thousands gathered to watch us perform a test made my stomach churn. I hadn’t slept well in weeks.
Minutes turned into hours. I dozed off a time or two, but soon enough I peered out my window at the sun rising over the red rock Dragonback Mountain. It looked truly like a massive, petrified dragon. Sometimes I imagined it sprouting wings and taking flight.
Ease filled my chest seeing the light. Fire beacons lit one by one, leading to the city walls of Nighthaven, miles away from here. Only the royal family and the privileged ducai and their families lived inside the protected region, while the rest of us were left to be hunted for our blood.
A deep green tunic hung in the corner of my room. It was passed down by my father’s mother, Grandma Esha—the one who’d slapped me. Usually she wasn’t a harsh woman, but ourland hardened people. She never had a daughter and, as my father’s first, she wanted me to wear it on this day.
I took it down from the hanger and slid my fingers over the white bone buttons. The puffed bell sleeves cuffed at the wrist. The floral embroidery around the collar and down the front was something we didn’t have in our everyday clothes. It was beautiful.
