Do I flirt with death frivolously? No. I am driven to fix things. I am a meddler.

  From the journal of Drago? Buh?scu

  With a gasp, Dragos jerked up, head spinning. Blood trickled off his lashes. He felt the tug behind him, phlox tearing around his fingers as something stronger took hold.

  It was a tug of war between plants, and he was the rope. Dragos twisted and frantically yanked his arms away, curling to reach his legs. He punched at the plants around his ankles, slicing through them. Scrambling, he got to his feet with a lurching of his stomach.

  The spongy floor leading to the trail wound around his feet, but it was weaker, slower than the plants in the basin. Heart pounding in his skull, he marched upwards, breaking away. The sense of isolation closed in like a storm, stealing the lightness in his step. Despite the new ache of a rattled brain, he’d felt good until he pulled himself up a few feet.

  Like a storm, a depression settled in. After the giddy race, he felt drained. He climbed perhaps thirty feet before he gave up and sat on an outcropping, looking over the basin. A longing set in. The taste of the mist. The wild race. The warmth of life all around him. Gone.

  Just a small descent away. One he didn’t dare make. Dragos had things yet to do, and flinging himself into madness wasn’t one of them, as much as he longed for it.

  The starlace in the box on his back could give it back.

  He didn’t have to go down…

  Stop.

  The voice in his head wasn’t quite his own. It sounded like Mirel as much as his own inner voice.

  Control is true freedom.

  Dragos nodded to himself and sat quietly for a moment. He tucked his iron-clawed gloves away into their pouch and closed his eyes. All the things he denied gave him strength. Weakness came from desire.

  “Do not be frivolous with your wants. They are often as not an obstacle and become that which controls you,” he murmured, hearing his own voice and wishing it were hers.

  A tear welled, and he blinked it away. Why did she have to die and leave him? Necaz… It was because of that Wolf. The one Pallula followed, though she was an Owl. His stomach soured.

  He glared at the mists. It was because of that, reminding him what joy could feel like. Overblown bliss, stolen away, hurt worse than never having felt it.

  Dragos pushed up to a stand and continued the climb. Slowly. Deliberately.

  When night fell, he settled on a ledge and waited it out, cloak wrapped tightly around him. The warm winds from below kept him comfortable, though he didn’t dare sleep.

  He finished his climb when dawn struck and found Zgavra waiting where he’d parted with it the day before. The creature’s claws gripped stone as its massive head lurched forward. “Half thought you wouldn’t be here. Well done, albstrig?.”

  The wan smile that crossed his face was answer enough. He had nothing else for it. The zmeu gently butted its nose against his chest. With a chuckle, Dragos patted it. He rounded the thick neck and took weary hold of its mane, bracing the foot with the boot on its shoulder.

  “Let’s go see what magic we can do with starlace.”

  “What you can do,” Zgavra said with a dry note. “I’m not getting near it.”

  “Fair enough,” Dragos sighed, sinking into place on its shoulders, grabbing its mane by the roots.

  The flight back was brutally cold on his foot, which had little left of the bandages he wrapped it in. When they got back to the derelict farm, he was too tired to do more than wash his wounds and apply salves before falling exhausted onto the mildewy bed.

  A ravening hunger woke him. He had a bit of hardtack left and sucked on it while lying on the bed. Not long after, Zgavra—back in its mimic of his form—banged through the door with meat wrapped in deerskin. It scowled at him when he looked up at it.

  “Your stomach is growling so loudly that it irritates me,” Zgavra grumbled, then set to work running through chunks of meat with wooden spits. It breathed fire to life in the hearth and leaned the sticks over it.

  A faint grin tugged on Dragos's lips.

  After he ate, he began the business of crafting a tonic for Chinhua. The zmeu glanced at the vial he pulled out and immediately left the burdei.

  The dose was key, but he had no idea where to start. After some intensive thinking, he tipped a drop of starlace in a chamomile healing tea with cium?faie and swirled the cup to blend it. Dragos spilled more hot water into it and then carried the cup outside with great caution.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  As the last rays glimmered like orange fire on the horizon, the tarp stirred.

  “I brought you some medicine,” he said, his voice softer than his steps. He wore bandages on his feet, cut from an old quilt he’d found. Not having boots felt vulnerable. It made him move more cautiously as he knelt beside the tarp. Running on thorns… could he escape her if she attacked him?

  Didn’t matter. He never intended to run, anyway.

  Chinhua crept out, hay stuck in her hair. He grinned and plucked a length out, twisting it between his fingers, and flinched at the feral hunger in her eyes. Instead of attacking him, she took the cup he offered and sniffed it. Her nose scrunched up.

  “It should make you feel better. Not perfect, but, over time, better. But,” he paused, “you might have a reaction.”

  Her eyes tilted up from the cup. “What do you mean?”

  “What do you see when you look at me?” Dragos didn’t know how to answer her question, except to make a comparison.

  “Delicious life. Handsome man. Sadness. Re—”

  “No.” He held up a hand and suppressed a wry smile. “I mean, what do you see around me?”

  Chinhua shifted beneath the tarp on her shoulders. She rose up, gaze flicking around him. “Bright black. Dark silver. Sparkling like dust motes, but they’re not. They’re…”

  “Tiny spirits. Harmless, too small to matter to anyone, but drawn to the energies inside us. The scars left on our souls by cel?lalt t?ram lure them like moths to flame,” Dragos explained, easing to a stand. He put space between them and paced, because her gaze was too alluring.

  Her smell wasn’t. She wore the same bloody dress as the night before. It didn’t seem to bother her, but it stank like torn guts and rotten blood.

  “You’re bright black. I’m hoping that the starlace in the tea will help balance you, like I’ve balanced myself.” He winced as he stepped. Would his feet ever feel whole again?

  Chinhua’s chest heaved. It was the first time he’d seen her taken a breath, other than to speak. Her head rocked back as she spilled the cup’s contents down her throat.

  “I’ll find you a dress. We’ll wash you up,” he said as he paced before the open barn door, arms crossing and uncrossing.

  The cup spilled from her fingers. Chinhua crumpled from her kneeling position, curling up around herself. A low, shuddering groan spilled from her lips.

  Dragos found himself on his knees beside her, brushing her hair back to look at her pinched face. Alarm made his fingertips tingle. “What’s happening?”

  “Everything hurts!” she cried. “It burns!”

  He caressed her head, feeling sick. Why couldn’t he just get it right the first time? She’d have to go through it over and over until… There was no surety that she’d ever be able to control the bloodlust. Life, death, and everything between held no guarantees.

  Her hand crept along his knee and clutched his thigh, commuting her pain. He hissed softly at the bite of her fingers but stayed where he was. This pain was his fault. All of it was. He should have been able to recognize what was wrong with the well sooner, somehow. They could all have lived if he’d been paying more attention to his instincts instead of his infatuation.

  “It will be alright. We’ll try again,” he murmured. It was all he could offer.

  Chinhua whimpered, eyes bright when they opened. The claw of her hand softened and slid up his leg as she uncurled. She unfolded and pushed up, creeping closer. Her gaze fixed on his, and she murmured, “Hungry.”

  Dragos almost offered himself. The stench of her, the wrongness of her new revenant nature didn’t change the allure of letting her do what she wanted. He deserved it.

  But—he couldn’t help her if he was dead.

  Dragos twisted and kicked back, but her grip on him was strong. She lunged, her momentum thrusting him on his back, on the ground. He snapped a hand around her throat as a second row of teeth slid down from her gums.

  “Feed me,” she murmured, her voice changed by the extra teeth in her mouth. Lisping, yet still sweet to his ears, despite the overbearing stench.

  “Heal you,” he grunted, grabbing her arm before she slashed at him with elongating fingernails.

  A tear wobbled in her eye and fell to dribble down his cheek.

  A figure loomed over them.

  Black claws wound in her hair and tore her from Dragos's restraining grasp. Orange eyes glared down at him. The zmeu growled, “Idiot. Your kind heart will get you killed before you achieve greatness.”

  It held Chinhua up by her hair. She slashed at it, but the hard scales of its humanoid body wouldn’t give in to her assault. Chinhua spun on her toes, teeth snapping, lashing out at the zemu, who treated her like an unruly puppy.

  He flung her away to crash into a post. She hit, fell, and sprang up instantly. With a desperate glance, she raced out into the night.

  Dragos sat up and barked, “Follow her! Keep her from killing someone!”

  The zemu hesitated. For a moment, Dragos thought it would argue, so he raised a finger and said, “Now is not the time. Later. For now, go. Please.”

  The creature’s form vanished into smoke and blew out the door as if on a zephyr.

  Dragos brushed the wet trail off his cheek. It felt like evidence to him. The treatment could work.

  Still, he couldn’t escape the knotting in his stomach or the racing thump in his chest. Slowly he got up and walked back to the tiny little hovel in the ground, the cup in hand. A shriek in the distance got his heart pounding again. He scanned the deepening twilight but saw nothing. Heard nothing beyond the song of crickets and the rustling of summer wind.

  She was off on a hunt.

  Hunting wasn’t a problem. It was what she wanted to hunt that was. If he couldn’t heal her, animals would never be enough for her. Eventually, she’d want human blood. The smarter the animal, the more enticing it was to a Sangestriga.

  That was what she was.

  He’d avoided naming her, hoped she’d be something less dire. A sickness washed over him as he continued across the yard to the door. To have survived the Umbregrin the way she did was nothing short of miraculous.

  The darkest miracle there was.

  The door creaked open and he stood in it, the warm firelight pushing back against the oncoming night. Unable to think about anything but Chinhua. She’d been so sweet, kind, and free. Now… If he couldn’t temper her hunger, she’d likely be the death of him.

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  Albstrig?: White witch. Barn owl. A pale ghost or evil spirit.

  Zmeu: Romanian dragon shapeshifter.

  Burdei: A type of pit-house or half-dug out shelter, combining sod house and log cabin build concepts.

  cium?faie: Thornapple. Highly toxic, only used with strict medical knowledge, not to be consumed on a whim.

  Cel?lalt t?ram: The other realm, the spirit realm, where never living spirits are spawned.

  Umbregrin: the dark spirit river.

  Sangestriga: Calruthian word for vampire.