"Who is she to you?" I asked.
"A friend." He said no more.
"And who are you to her?"
"I do not know. Perhaps I will never know." He raised his cup in a toast. "To Kayla."
I nodded. "To Kayla."
Then I left the man to his drink and sorrows. I did not know him, and that worried me. But he was an enemy to Levi and a friend to Kayla. That would have to be enough.
As I walked back to the castle, I surveyed the repairs on the main hall. Winter had arrived, and that made the gathering of stone and wood harder than ever. Supplies were short and work slow. It would be a long time before Stonehill could be as it once was. Perhaps that was fitting. The place felt wrong without Arianna. Maybe it would only be put right when she returned.
"There." Dean's words pull me back to the present. Back to the cold and snow and search. "Look there." He points down the hill at something.
I follow his gaze down to piles of gray wood one could barely call houses. "A Fae village. So?"
"It's empty," says Dean. "Utterly empty."
I look again, and see that he is right. There is no sign of life, not outside the huts or within. There is not even a hint of prints in the snow. Strange. Like most things these days. But perhaps it is a clue.
We descend the snowy slope and scour the village for people. I find a wooden horse and a doll made of cloth, but I find no children. I find needle and string and a hammer for building, but I find none to use them. All I find is the smell. Like embers and ash. The smell of burning though there is no fire. The feel of smoke in my chest though the air is clear. Something unnatural happened here. Something dark.
When I come upon the village center, I notice something grey sticking out from the snow. A bone. I dig through ice and sheets of white until I find more. They make a circle. A circle of bones. And in the center, a carcass. A dead goat cut open. Baron howls into the cold wind, disturbed by the power that remains.
"A ritual took place here," I say, further examining the scene.
Dean hears me and jogs to my side. "You think the Fae cast a spell?"
"Perhaps," I say, finding strings and beads.
"They must have done something wrong. Conjured something that turned on them."
I shake my head. "This was a dark ritual. A blood sacrifice. Whatever these people conjured, they intended to do so."
Dean looks around, his eyes spooked. "So you mean, these Fae… these Fae are gone… because they sacrificed themselves?"
"I believe they knew the cost, yes." I stand, brushing my hands clean of snow.
"But why do it then? Why give your own life?"
I shrug. "Perhaps Metsi told them to. Perhaps she convinced them the sacrifice would win the war."
Dean scans the nearby houses. "So you think Metsi started this ritual. Why? For power?"
"Or knowledge." I walk around, searching for anything else unusual. "I have seen such rituals before, at the base of the Grey Mountain. Shamans would call for wisdom of the future. Sometimes, for the strength to defeat rival tribes. The Outlanders would always make a sacrifice to summon the power. The power they called the Darkness."
"And yet," says Dean, "in all my centuries of ruling, I have never seen this dark power."
"Your realm isn't on the outskirts," I say.
And then I see it.
Footprints.
Someone survived.
They ran.
I follow the tracks, Dean and Baron at my heels, until I reach a shack at the back of the village. I try the door and find it barred from within. So I smash it open. Inside, there is nothing but darkness. Nothing but shadow.
"Hello?"
A whimper. Weak. Fading.
"Hello?" I run in, looking, looking for the sound. "We mean you no harm. We only want to—"
Baron sniffs the air and runs forward. I follow, and I find her. I find the little girl crying in the corner, clutching a doll to her chest. I reach out to her. "We only want to help."
The girl doesn't move. She only looks up. Into my eyes. And she screams.
Chapter 3
THE WRAITH
Fenris Vane
"There are monsters in the world, Arianna. They are real. I am real."
—Asher
It takes hours to coax out the barest of details. But eventually, she opens up. Her name is Romana. Her father was the smith and her mother training to become the village elder. She would train one day as well. If things had gone differently.
"They came from the mountains," says the Fae girl, no older than ten, sitting by the fire, wrapping her arms around her legs. "They raided our village. Killed the butcher and stole our food and our jewels. Next few days, more of us died from hunger. We heard of more raids in the neighboring villages. The vampires were killing and taking all in their path. They said someone called Salzar led them. They said he was a monster with four arms and hooves for feet."
The girl trembles, and I wrap my cloak around her, keeping her sheltered from the cold. "Thank you," she whispers, her voice a soft, frail thing.
"Here," says Dean, passing her the roasted rabbit he caught and cooked earlier as I set up camp.
"Thank you." She puts the food to her mouth and nibbles slowly. After a moment, she seems to shake less, and her voice seems stronger. "After a few weeks, we started doing better, we did. Hunters brought in food again. And pa started forging weapons. In case the vampires came back." She looks up at us, as if remembering what we are. Then she looks back down at the food in her hands and bites her lip. "Are all vampires mean?"