“Don’t look so interested or they’ll read into it. You’re supposed to be a vapid city girl,” Henry whispers.

“No reason I can’t be interested in watching some handsome men spar.”

His arm flexes. Henry is an enigma. One moment, he’s taunting me. The next, he’s slitting a man’s throat for touching me. I know he doesn’t like me, but he certainly seems to think he needs me—for now at least.

I note the lack of guards stationed at the armory doors. At least I’ll be able to get access to more weapons if I need to.

“Shouldn’t you have someone stationed there for security?”

Henry pulls the door open and waves me inside. “We don’t have enough guards for that. We have other means of protection.”

I freeze inside the doors, the glow of magical booby traps cluttering the entryway. The one to my left is made of glowing orange light that shoots up and down in jagged bursts of lightning. The one on the right is a swirling red vortex. In the distance, I can see more of them, in almost every kind of magic. There must be at least a dozen in the corridor alone.

Henry’s hand on my lower back startles me. “What do they look like?”

“A deadly rainbow. How do we get in?”

He walks to an ornate stone plaque on the wall. “Come here.”

He presses his fingers to the sharp white stone, then draws away, letting a drop of his blood dribble on the stone below it. Then, he pulls a flask and a handkerchief from his pocket and pours some alcohol into the fabric. He wipes the stone point.

“This marker is enchanted. Once we are married, you’ll be able to press your finger here alone and get in. But for now, you’ll need my blood too.”

He grabs my wrist and presses my finger to the point. I hiss as it pricks my finger and he squeezes a drop onto the stone.

“Strength above all,” he whispers.

Our blood sizzles as the stone lights up. I turn and watch the magical traps disappear one by one and a heavy door at the end of the long corridor grinds open.

Henry snatches my wrist as my blood begins to drip onto the floor. I gasp as he takes my finger in his mouth and sucks gently. The heat and pressure soothe the sting. I should be disgusted, but the intensity in his gaze warms my blood. His pupils dilate as he pulls my finger free, the wound healed by his magic.

“Neat trick.” I mean for it to be a taunt, but I sound too breathless to pull it off.

He smirks and feeds my hand through his arm. We continue down the hall and through the stone doorway. It opens to a large storeroom with an arched wooden ceiling. Racks and racks of broadswords, short swords, crossbows, and longbows cover the walls down the entire length of the building. Mountain Haven might have been caught unprepared once, but they clearly won’t let that happen again.

It’s impossible to tell what Henry’s game is. I thought he’d be cautious about showing me where I can avail myself of more weapons, but he didn’t even hesitate to bring me here and show me how to get in. He must be trying to lull me into a false sense of security so I’ll let my guard down.

The few men in the room nod at Henry, then go back to their work sharpening blades and stocking arrows in quivers. On the far side of the room, a man dumps water from a small jar down the length of a blade. The runoff drips into a bucket below him. He holds the blade in place until it’s finished dripping, then hangs it on a hook on the wall. Finally, he puts a funnel in the jar, dumps the water inside, and restarts the sequence with a new blade.

“It’s well water,” Henry says. “As you probably noticed in the forest, it burns the Drained down to nothing.”

The wells hold sacred water, so it makes sense that it would burn the abomination of the Drained, but I’m shocked that we have never used it as a defense for the city. We’ve only ever thought of its healing properties. It never would have occurred to me to wield it like a weapon, but now I’m eager to get back and share. This could be the solution to protecting the city walls.

“I didn’t know until I saw you use it,” I whisper.

There’s judgment in Henry’s gaze.

“The well is only part of sacred ceremonies in Lunameade.”

He waves a hand to the wall. “We keep all the blades forged here dipped in well water so they’re ready for any attack.”

“How do you have access to well water?”

“You’re quite curious about that.” He continues to stroll down the central walkway.

I jog to catch up to him. “Can’t imagine why?”

“And I thought I wouldn’t answer.” He grins at me. “Unless, of course, you want to trade secrets. I’ll tell you where I get the water if you tell me why you murder men.”

I sigh. It’s not as if I thought it would be easy, but it would at least be nice if he didn’t get such pleasure out of goading me.

They must have someone sourcing them in Lunameade. I should tell Kellan about it—maybe them taking from the well without permission is corrupting the water that flows through the well. But before I tell him, I need to understand what they’re using it for. Kellan can be a bit quick to assume he knows what’s best, and if the well water can truly give an edge against the Drained, that’s worth knowing. Even more interesting is the fact that he offered to trade for this knowledge, which means Henry knows how they source it.

He shepherds me back toward the entrance. “How about I take you to see some art? We’re more than just brutes here. I promise.”

Henry whispers the magic words to a plaque beside the stone door, and it slides open. We exit the building. Instead of turning back the way we came, Henry leads me in the opposite direction.

The farther we go down the trail, the wilder and lovelier the scenery becomes. The trail narrows so that I have to huddle against Henry’s side to keep from getting tangled in the ragged vines and roots of overgrown forest. I squint into the wilderness. It’s too wild to be a garden. It looks like the forest has taken over this part of the fort.

“It’s the scenic route,” Henry says, noticing my assessment. “It might not look like much, but this is where the biggest part of the battle for the fort took place.”

I note the reverence in his voice and remember what he said about his sister dying. I wonder if this is where it happened.

“Why here?” I ask. The broken wall must be miles from where we’re walking now. I would have thought the violence would have been at the breach.

Henry hesitates as the trail opens up. The view takes my breath away. There are ruins of what must have been a lost outbuilding. Tingling cold washes over me like I’ve stepped through a specter of what once was.

Moss gathers in the claw marks scored into the crumbling stone and ivy strangles the iron gate that hangs from one hinge.

“Escape routes,” Henry says. “We have them here just like you do in the city. In case the Drained get in?”

I nod. In the city, we have similar strategic plans by gate and area that allow us to efficiently defend less territory in case we’re overcome.

“The last stand is at the manor here. The people were shepherded up here to higher ground during the attack. And this is where most of them fell.”

This is where his sister died.

“I’m sorry.”

His gaze snaps to me, like he thinks I’m teasing, but I mean it. Even if he thinks that my family had something to do with this, even if my family did have something to do with this, I can’t imagine losing a sister. Especially since it was just the two of them.

“Thank you,” he says finally. He scrubs a hand over his face. “Anyway, the reason I brought you here is not to relive our sad history. It’s to tell you that in your wandering, you shouldn’t stray beyond this point into the fort forest.”

I stare beyond the crumbling walls into the forest. “Why? What’s over there?”

“Hunt grounds.”

I glance back at him. “For game?”