The door of the forge opens. Moonlight dances with lamplight as a cloaked figure slips in. I do not sound an alarm because I know the man at a glance.
“Everything looks good,” Driun appraises.
“I’m glad to have your approval.” I hop up onto one of the tables. “I really didn’t think you’d be able to come tonight.”
“I had to.” He sits next to me and we linger in comfortable silence for a few minutes. “Listen, we don’t have much time, so tomorrow—”
“Don’t. I don’t like that tone.”
He continues anyway. “Tomorrow, it’ll be up to you to protect Mother.”
“I know.”
“Do you still have them?” He sticks to the point. Relentless, my brother.
“Of course I do. One here—” I nod toward the forge tools “—and one in the house, just like you told me.” I shift uncomfortably. “But wouldn’t it be better to give them to the fortress? Couldn’t the hunters use all the weapons you can get?”
“Thanks to you and Mother, we have more than enough.” He pushes off the table and crosses toward the racks of tools. The wood on the side of the rack is loose where it meets the wall. Wedged behind it is a sickle. Driun had told me to make it in secret.
Then he insisted I learn how to use it.
He holds out the hilt to me. “Keep it on you in the coming hours.”
“Mother will see.”
“It’ll be too late for her to do anything.”
“She’s just going to love us breaking the law.” I roll my eyes, fingers closing around the cool metal. Driun releases the familiar weight of the sickle into my palm. I wonder if any other forge maiden has been so comfortable with a weapon in her hands. I doubt it. We’re to be protected and kept off the battlefield at all costs. Resources are too precious for everyone to have weapons. Everyone has a role and is given enough for them to fulfill the duties of that role. No more or less.
“She’ll be grateful if the need arises.”
“She will be cross with both of us the second she sees it.” The hunters have claimed both my children, I can hear her saying. Lamplight glistens off the wicked-sharp blade. I’ve been honing it for weeks leading up to tomorrow. As if I could make it so sharp that I could cut away my worries.
“I have something else for you.” Driun hovers, looking both uncomfortable and intense at the same time.
“What?”
He fishes into his pocket and produces a small, obsidian vial. “Here.”
“What’s this?” I turn the strange vessel over in my hands, placing the sickle on the table next to me.
“The reason I was late to sneak out and the reason I had to come.” Driun inhales slowly, as he always does when he’s working up the courage to say something he knows I won’t like. “If the vampires reach the town, things have gone awry. The remaining hunters here will need all the help they can get. And…and I can’t go out into the marshes tomorrow without knowing you and Mother will be safe.”
“No one is safe in Hunter’s Hamlet.” I huff bitterly. Our lives are spent locked in combat, trying to fight away vampires and our own fear.
“This is why you have been training.”
“And I’m still not good enough to face a vampire.”
“You’re better than you think. And with this, you’ll be unstoppable.” He nods to the vial.
It dawns on me what his gift actually is. Chills run up my body, starting from the hand holding the vial. My skin puckers to gooseflesh.
“No.” I thrust it toward him. He takes a step away. “No, no.” I jump off the table; he steps back. “You cannot—”
“I have.”
“If you—if anyone—if it’s discovered that you took this from the fortress and gave it to me you will be hanged.”
“If you and Mother aren’t here for me to return to then I’ll wish I was dead anyway,” Driun says severely.
I stare at the vial in my palm and whisper, “Hunter’s Elixir.” It feels forbidden for me to even say. It is very illegal for me to be holding.
“A powerful brew at that.” He shifts his weight, looking briefly uncertain. But it passes before I can try and capitalize on it enough to give back the vial. “Davros said this particular elixir was rare, stronger, something he was saving only for tomorrow. It came from a special font deep below the fortress. So I know it will make you strong enough to defend Mother and the forge.”
“And if I’m discovered with this, or having drunk it, I’ll be hanged, too.” I shake my head and give him a glare. He’s gambling with our lives.
“No one would ever hang the forge maiden. Plus, how would they know? Only drink it if you’re staring down the dead eyes of a vampire. Otherwise, keep it secret and give it back to me the morning after the Blood Moon.” He says it like it’s so simple.
“What about the hunter’s madness?” I ask.
“One drink of the elixir will not cause madness. It’s built up over time.” Driun’s eyes become distant. He has seen his brothers- and sisters-in-arms succumb to the madness of the Hunter’s Elixir, a bloodlust and thirst for battle unlike any other.
Over the years, he’s hardened before my eyes, hammered into a man I hardly recognize sometimes. It makes me all the more desperate to be close to him. It’s part of why I agreed to let him train me at all. I didn’t share in his notions that we might be able to escape, or even bend, our fate if we became strong enough, as tempting as they might be. No, these nightly trainings have happened because I missed my brother.
