“Marry me and I will give you such strong babies.” He slurs the words almost to the point of unintelligibility. It was all he said, and he sounded like a fool.

I cringe and shove—Wallis? Wallas? I can’t even remember his name—I shove what’s-his-name’s arm off my shoulders. He stumbles back with a laugh, almost bumping into a group of women dancing in the street and howling at the moon. They’re down to their silken nightgowns, a haze of red and orange glowing on their skin from unnatural moonlight and the open doors of the smithy.

They can twirl and dance. They can sing and cry. They’re as free as the hems that graze over their thighs. What would it be like to be one of them? What would I do? I don’t even know. The bonds around me are as tight as the clasps on the sturdy leather apron I wear. Keeping me buttoned up. Contained.

What’s-his-name reaches for me again.

I slap his hand away. “That’s enough.” Touching me could get him lashed at best; the drink is keeping his better sense at bay. He couldn’t even claim that he doesn’t know who I am. Everyone in this small hamlet knows who I am. I’m easy enough to spot by my rough, soot-stained hands. By my rolled sleeves and arms of dotted scars. My duty is seen as more sacred than that of many of the hunters themselves. For I am the one who will arm and armor them for years to come. I know the secrets of the forge.

I am the keeper of steel and silver.

He, like all of Hunter’s Hamlet, knows the only one permitted to touch me is the man the master hunter decides will be my husband. No exceptions.

Not even on what might be our last night alive.

“Is there a problem here?”

Last I saw, Driun was in the smithy, speaking with a young woman in the corner. But my twin and guardian is never far. He must’ve stepped out when he noticed I hadn’t returned from my errand to the back shed promptly.

“Not a problem, just a drunk.” I adjust my grip on the bucket of charcoal. The fueler lives down by the marshes—he’s one of the few laymen permitted past the line of salted earth and into the land of the vampire. He brought up a fresh delivery tonight before the revelries started. I’m sure he’ll be staying with someone in town tomorrow. He does for regular full moons; he definitely will for the Blood Moon. We all look after each other in the hamlet, especially when the vampires attack.

There are three fundamental truths of the mysterious and bloodthirsty vampire:

The first is that they subsist on human blood for sustenance and for their dark magics. Because of this, the war between vampires and humans has been raging since the dawn of time. Without the fortress and its thick walls that surround all of Hunter’s Hamlet, they would overrun the world with their thirst for blood and death.

The second is that the vampire have only one true weakness—silver. All other tools are merely meant to slow them, or give their victims clean deaths. Catching a vampire’s flesh with a silvered blade kills them instantly. It’s our only defense, and why those who know how to smith the silver are revered in Hunter’s Hamlet.

The final truth is that the vampires share one mind. The beasts that torment us month to month are little more than living golems that heed their lord’s will. If the vampire lord is felled, the rest of his spawn will follow. But he is protected by the Fade, coming only once every five hundred years with his dark knights to attack on the night of the Blood Moon when the Fade is weak and he can lead his armies in force.

Tomorrow the Blood Moon will rise in full and the hunters will try to use my weapons to kill him and save humanity. Everything could change in a single night, for better or worse, and no one beyond Hunter’s Hamlet has any idea.

The hunter that has been bothering me is aghast. “I’m not a drunk, I’m a noble hunter!”

“You can barely stand up,” I retort.

“Enough, Wolt.” Ah, that’s his name. “You shouldn’t be caught alone with the forge maiden,” Driun scolds.

“We’re, we’re not alone.” Wolt sways and hiccups. “See, all our friends are here!” He jumps into the group of dancing women, who accept him with open arms as if he really had been dancing with them all along.

In an instant his hands are on a brunette, running over the curves of her thighs, up to the swell of her stomach. Even the hands of a trained killer like Wolt can look elegant smoothing over silk. It pools between his fingers, spilling over as he hikes up her dress.

I can’t stop myself from wondering what it would feel like if it were me. My own thighs tingle, heat rising to my core. I don’t want Wolt. But I do want to know what it feels like to be touched. To be desired for more than my skill with a hammer and position in the hamlet. Wolt bites the woman’s neck as a vampire would. She moans, head rolling back, and I turn to the smithy before a flush rises to my cheeks. At least inside I’ll be able to claim the redness is from the heat.

“He didn’t do anything untoward, did he?” Driun gives a final scowl at Wolt and then catches up to me.

“Nothing other than being so drunk that his better sense has vanished.” I have no interest in getting Wolt in trouble. The hunters live hard enough lives as it is and tonight is a night of revelry, recklessness, and indulgence. Besides, he didn’t do anything worse than throwing an arm around my shoulder. “I doubt he even knew who I was.”

“He’d have to be pretty drunk to forget that.”

“He seemed it; you saw him with the other women.” I glance back over my shoulder. Wolt is stumbling off with one of the dancers.

“Thanks for not being too hard on him, Flor.” Flor, short for Flora. Only my brother and mother use the nickname. “It’s just how things are the night before the Blood Moon.”

“Should all the hunters be drunk to the point that it might impair their ability to hunt tomorrow?” I arch my eyebrows at him. Driun mirrors the movement. We’re almost the same height and of similar build. We share the same black hair and eyes as our mother. Looking at him is truly like looking into a mirror and seeing a more masculine version of myself.

“We have until sunset to nurse our heads and stomachs, and the Hunter’s Elixir to aid us. No second day ache is stronger than the elixir.”

“Tomorrow isn’t like a regular hunt.” And seriously it didn't seem like it, the atmosphere that hung over that day was strange.

“No one knows that more than us,” he says with a note of severity.

I shrug rather than arguing further. Driun lets it drop. We enter the smithy side by side.

The smithy is one of the larger buildings of Hunter’s Hamlet, set off slightly from the rest of the clustered cobblestone structures cramped together like too many teeth in a vampire’s mouth. Unlike the other thatched roofs of the hamlet, its roof is slate, like the fortress’s. Wooden awnings cover the front, welcoming us inside. The forge is at the center of everything, wooden tables stretching out from it. Usually they’re covered in tools and blades. But tonight they’re covered with food and flagons.

This is the hub of Hunter’s Hamlet, as everyone needs the work of a blacksmith, at some point, and tonight is no exception.

The brewer has brought a cask of ale and tapped it fresh. Farmers have gathered around, sipping on the fruit of their labors. The milliner is spinning stories to children up far past bedtime. And thrumming underneath the din of it all is the beating heart of Hunter’s Hamlet—the smith matron, the shield of Hunter’s Hamlet. My mother.

Mother’s hammer rhythmically rises and falls. Her dark hair escapes the tightly braided bun she wears at the nape of her neck, clinging with sweat to the sides of her face. Even now, late in the night before the Blood Moon, we’re still hard at work. There’s still much to be done.

“By the way, who were you talking to before?” I ask Driun as we weave through a gaggle of gossiping elders.

“When?”

“Earlier. Over there.” I gesture toward the corner. Whoever the young lady was, she wasn’t waiting for Driun to come back.

“I’ve spoken with a lot of people tonight; you’ll have to be more specific.” He knows exactly what I’m talking about and is being obtuse.

“Fine, keep your secrets. But if I saw then Mother did, too, and I can promise you’ll have a harder time dodging her questions.”

“It’s just a woman, nothing serious.” Driun rubs the back of his neck.

“Mother is going to lay into you if you keep up this ‘nothing serious’ business with every lady in the hamlet.” I drop the bucket by the forge and shovel in some of the charcoal, moving to work the bellows to alleviate a burst of frustration. Driun can touch, and dance, and feel all he wants. But me… I pull the bellows even harder.

Mother spares me an appreciative glance before promptly returning to her conversation with the tanner. Whatever they’re discussing must be important, because her expression is severe. Could it be there’s something wrong with the last batch of leathers we sent for the hunters to wear tomorrow? I’m instantly trying to recall every clasp and buckle I made, every pauldron and needle. Did I hammer a defect into the metal without realizing?

“I’ve no complaints from anyone I’ve been with.” Driun shrugs. “I’ll settle down eventually, whenever I decide.”

“Must be nice to just decide whenever you want to be with someone or marry them,” I mutter under my breath. I might gracefully accept my role for the betterment of Hunter’s Hamlet around everyone else. But Driun is the one person I don’t need to be graceful in front of.

“I shouldn’t have phrased it like that. I’m sorry, Flor.”

I shake my head and sigh, trying to ease the tension in my shoulders. “It’s true.”

“But it might not have to be for long.”

My heart skips a beat. “What do you mean?”

“I’ll tell you later.”

“But—”

“Normal time.”

“Nothing about tonight is normal,” I hiss. Our voices have dropped to a whisper. I can’t believe he’s talking about our midnight training within earshot of so many. “Look at how many people are here; we’re not going to have time to—”

I don’t get to finish because I learn what made Driun so confident we’ll be able to sneak a moment alone.

The smithy falls to a hush. Even Mother’s hammer is silent as she rests it on the anvil and plunges the iron she was working into the almost white-hot coals I’ve stoked in the forge. All eyes have turned to the silhouette in the doorway, outlined by a pinkish, festering moon.

This gnarled and fearsome man is Davros, the master hunter, the man whom our world would be lost without.

His clothes are finely made of velvet. A rare material reserved for the master hunter himself as it can only be procured outside the hamlet. His hands are folded atop a walking stick adorned with the silver head of a raven—one identical to the large bird perched on his shoulder. I fight a chill that runs down my spine at the sight of the raven.

The black eyes of the master hunter. They were finely observed in the dark.

That’s what the townsfolk refer to the bird as. It has a name; Driun told me it once. But I promptly forgot it. The name was as uncomfortable as the bird’s gaze. A fitting name that sounds like shrill cries and sharp nails on stone.

The old stories say that not one master hunter, dating as far back as the fortress itself, thousands of years, has been without a raven. When one master hunter dies, the raven takes to the skies. Then, when it is time for a new master hunter to be masked, a raven returns to perch on their shoulder. Some claim it has been the same raven for every master hunter since the first stones of the forge were laid. Driun says the raven is so revered in the fortress that it is usually the one to choose the next master hunter from worthy candidates. Others in the hamlet go so far as to think that the creature is an ancient god in the shape of a beast, defending Hunter’s Hamlet against the vampire scourge.

If that is true, the old god does a poor job of it. Because even though the vampire lord himself can’t come through the Fade, he still sends monsters every full moon to attack, to remind us that he is there, waiting. And the rumored divine could clearly do nothing to prevent the impending Blood Moon.

“Hail, Hunter’s Hamlet,” Davros says in that weary way of his.

“Guide and guard us,” the room intones in response.

“Tonight’s revelries seem to have been a delight.” Davros smiles. I think the expression is intended to be fatherly, but to me it always looks wicked. There’s a gleam to his eyes that deeply unnerves me. Driun has never found my unease surprising.

Davros is baptized in the blood of our enemies, he says. The man has seen more vampires, more of his kin live and die, than any of us.

And none of us are strangers to bloodshed in Hunter’s Hamlet. Death keeps a summer home in this forsaken place.

“But the night is growing thin,” Davros continues. “And I must recall my hunters to me.”

Men and women slowly step away from the crowd, as if in a trance. They are the hunters and have the scars, both visible and not, as a testament to their bloody work. I want to grab Driun’s hand. To ask if he’s sure he’ll be able to come later. I can’t stomach the thought of him marching out tomorrow evening without a chance to speak to him alone just one more time. Even though I don’t know what I want to say yet.

What do you say to someone before they march off to certain death? What could I tell him that he doesn’t already know? What words would be enough to encapsulate everything? He was always the clever one with finesse. I’m useless if I can’t hit my problem with a hammer.

But I let him go.

I have no other choice.

He has his role and I have mine. They were given to us before we were born, determined solely by our family name and sex. No matter how much we might hope, or dream, or begrudge, neither of us can escape the path laid before us.

“Is there anything more you need from the forge?” Mother asks Davros.

“No, you have already done more than enough to protect Hunter’s Hamlet. Without your weaponry, wall fortifications, and assistance with our leather armor, the hunters would be going out underneath the Blood Moon in a sad state,” Davros says as the hunters gather round.

“It is our family’s honor to see the hunters and the hamlet prepared for every hunt, this one especially.” Mother lets her eyes drift to Driun with a sad smile; it’s an expression I’ve seen her give him often, one of both pride and worry, fear and joy. Even though we knew becoming a hunter was his destiny, as much as mine is the forge, neither of us looked forward to him embarking on that path. It is not a life with longevity. But we knew why he had to leave the house and join the fortress. We understood.

That is the way of things in the Runeit family: the eldest daughter is the forge maiden and the eldest son heads to the fortress. Every family has their traditions and their role to play in Hunter’s Hamlet. There is security when we are all in our place. It is the promise and sacrifice we’ve all made. So after Father died it was merely a matter of time until Driun assumed his position in society.

From that moment on, Mother and I have been waiting each month for Davros to arrive and tell us that the vampires have claimed another member of our family. But, miraculously, month after month, Driun has returned. Maybe this month, even with the Blood Moon, will be no different. It’s a fool’s hope and I know it. But all hope is foolish in Hunter’s Hamlet.

“Speaking of your family’s honor…” Davros’s eyes drift to me as he trails off. His eyes shine and the taste of bile rises in the back of my throat. “Following tomorrow night’s hunt, there will be even more cause for celebration. It is time to cement our forge maiden’s future, so that the smithy continues to run hot for generations to come.”

“I will do as the master hunter bids.” I dip my chin and keep my face as blank as the masks the hunters wear when they go out to the Fade Marshes.

“May the bell toll for a wedding in the coming week.” Davros taps his walking stick for emphasis. Driun is fighting a scowl. I think he hates this topic even more than I do.

I can imagine what he’ll say later. How dare Davros speak about you like you’re not there, in front of everyone. How dare he speak of marrying you off like you’re some prized mare. But my fate is no secret. The forge maiden is always married before twenty. That’s just the way of it, the tradition, the necessity since any of our lives might end come the next full moon. I’ll likely be with child before the end of the year and the idea has me cold, even standing next to the forge.

There’s excited murmuring among the eligible male hunters. They leer at me. I grab one of the hammers by the forge on instinct, keeping it at my side.

I might be the forge maiden, but I am no delicate flower. I am as cold as silver. As strong as iron. I will bend for destiny, but not for any man.