Maybe I was seeing that in myself today, too.

I couldn’t tell if it was a good or bad thing.

“I’m coming with you,” Farrow said.

I didn’t look at him. I grabbed the axe from the wall and threw my pack over my shoulder. “Fine,” I said. “Then let’s go.” And I slammed the door behind me.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

We galloped hard through the morning. My horse, the one Vale had given me, was strong and fast. Farrow’s, however, was not used to running for so long and over such uneven terrain.

“Don’t slow for me,” Farrow called after me, and I let out a rough, wild laugh that I was grateful he didn’t hear. I never planned on slowing for him. I’d ride as fast as I could.

I felt like a fool.

A fool because I had spent all this time worried about the dangers my relationship with Vale would pose to me, my sister, my town. But it had never occurred to me that I would be dangerous to him.

Thomassen had gone after Vale with several dozen men, Farrow had told me as we ran—young and strong ones. They’d brought weapons and explosives and fire. And they’d brought the most dangerous things of all: desperation and rage.

The acolytes believed that Vale was the reason for the curse. They’d convinced themselves that slaughtering him, offering his tainted blood to Vitarus, could end the plague. They convinced themselves that they could only save themselves, save their families, through this murder.

It didn’t matter that Vale had lived here far longer than the plague had. It didn’t matter that we had sacrificed to Vitarus many times before, and it hadn’t worked. It didn’t matter that they had no evidence that Vitarus even remembered us at all—even remembered he had damned us.

No, logic doesn’t matter in the face of fear and emotion. Logic falls to its knees before hatred, and hatred flourishes in fear—and my people were terrified.

I was terrified, too.

I knew Vale’s blood so intimately, now. I knew what it would look like spilled over the steps of his home, spattered over the faces of the people who came to kill him. I’d dissected many animals, many cadavers. I knew what Vale would look like with his guts pulled apart.

I raised my eyes to the sky. The sun was now high, beating down on my back and forehead through the tree leaves.

That, I did not know. What would happen to a vampire in daylight. I thought that after all I had seen, known things were the most terrifying. But this—this unknown—made me sick to my stomach.

I smelled the fire before I saw it. Burning flesh—in a plague, one recognizes that scent innately.

Finally, I saw the gates of Vale’s estate glint through the tree branches, open and gently-swaying in the breeze.

I kicked my horse and tore through it.

Behind me, Farrow shouted my name, and I ignored him.

Because before me, there was only blood.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Vale had fought them.

The house was bleeding. Blood dripped down the white stone face, pouring from a broken window on the second story, where a limp body hung draped over broken glass, a sword dangling from his motionless grip.

Blood painted the front steps of the entryway—smears of it, pools. Handprints on the door, on the handles. Strokes of it ran in rivulets down the pathway, collecting in the spaces between the brick pavers. It sank into the rose bushes. Into the grass.

Was it horrible that I wasn’t horrified? Was it horrible that I was relieved?

Because it was all red blood—human blood. Blood that belonged to the lifeless bodies strewn around the property. So many I couldn’t count them. A massacre had happened here.

Farrow had told me that Thomassen had come with two dozen men. Surely few of them remained.

Maybe Vale had escaped. Maybe he…

But then, as my horse slowed to a trot beyond the gates, I saw it: the black blood mixed in with all that red. Smears in the grass, along the path. More of it down the path to the back of the house.

Too much of it.

I kicked my horse into a run toward the back of the house, ignoring Farrow’s calls after me.

And when I saw him, my heart sank and leapt at the same time.

For some reason, the phrase that flew through my mind was, Vale.

My Vale.

Only a handful of men remained alive, but Vale was so injured that he wasn’t fighting anymore. They had dragged him outside. He was on his knees in the garden, white and red flower petals around him. His head was bowed, black hair covering his face. His wings were out, the white feathers gorgeous in the daylight sun—gruesome contrast to the spatters of black blood and the open burn sores spreading across them.

He looked up as I approached, revealing a face mottled with blackened burns.

His eyes widened.

I didn’t even let my horse stop before I was dismounting, running, running—

I threw myself over Vale, tumbling to my knees before Thomassen.

“Stop! Enough!”

The world stopped. The priest, and the four men behind him, leaned back a little, like they had to take a moment to figure out if I was really here.

A rough touch folded around my wrist from behind. Concern. Restraint. It said so much.

“Mouse…” Vale rasped.

His voice sounded so hollow. It reminded me of Mina’s. Close to death.

I didn’t look at him, though I was so acutely aware of his form behind me, the faint warmth of his body where my back was only inches from him.

Instead I met Thomassen’s gaze and refused to relinquish it. The acolyte wasn’t injured, though blood smeared his robes. Had he stood back and let the others do all the fighting? Waited until they wore Vale down enough to step in and make the final blow?

“Stop this insanity,” I said.

His confusion fell away in favor of hatred again. He gripped his sword, eyes briefly falling to my axe—gods, did it even count as an axe? It was barely more than a hatchet—before returning to my face.

“Step away, child,” he said. “Don’t do anything foolish.”

“If you kill him, then you’re killing all of us.”

The priest scoffed, lip curling. “We should have done it the moment the plague began. Perhaps a sacrifice of one of the heretic goddess Nyaxia’s children would have been enough to end it. Maybe it would have been enough to appease Vitarus.”

I wanted to laugh at his foolishness. I wanted to scream at his ignorance.

“Why is it so difficult for you to understand that Vitarus doesn’t care about us?” I spat. “He has taken a thousand lives from us. Ten thousand. And that hasn’t been enough to appease him. Why would this one be any different?”

“You’re not a stupid girl,” the priest sneered. “A strange one, but not a stupid one. You know why. Because of what he is.” He jabbed his sword toward Vale. “Because of who he worships. Because of the goddess who created him. Look around you. How many of your brethren has he killed? And you expect us to let him live?”

I looked into the eyes of the men around him, and I didn’t see brethren. I saw people driven to ignorance and hatred. I saw people who were willing to kill whatever they didn’t understand just for a chance of a chance that it would help them.

Nothing would stop them from killing Vale.

They would happily kill me, the strange spinster woman that never had laughed at their jokes or indulged their mindless conversations, to get to him.

I liked solving problems. But I was now stuck in a conclusion decades in the making, helpless.

Behind me, Vale’s breaths were ragged and weak. I would have thought that he wasn’t even conscious, were it not for his grip on my wrist, still strong, even as his blood dripped down my hand.