No one notices my white knuckles; they’re too busy cheering. The wedding of the forge maiden is a huge affair in Hunter’s Hamlet. We have precious little to celebrate, so when there is an excuse, the hamlet indulges deeply.

I keep my panic, my worry, within. I won’t be the one to squelch their joy. Not due to childish notions of getting to choose my husband for love, or desire, or attraction, or any of the other reasons someone is drawn to a partner. I have my duty. I have an obligation, and all of it is far more important than anything I would want.

“Into the night,” Davros says, turning.

“Good hunting,” the rest of us respond as the master hunter leaves with his loyal soldiers.

“The bellows, Flora,” Mother says, gentle but firm. “And since you have a hammer in hand, help me with a few sickles; the fortress can never have enough.” Her eyes dart from the tool to my face. Her expression softens into a sad smile. She knows what my future holds all too well. It had been hers too.

And she had fallen in love with Father, in time.

I can see them together in the forge. Sweat shines on their cheeks. They share a smile reserved only for the two of them. Father is nimble and light. Mother is strong and sturdy. He was her shield, her his sword. They were two parts to one being, one entity.

The image is briefly replaced by the shell of my father stumbling unnaturally toward the smithy without his sickle—that was how we knew he was dead.

I shake my head, scattering the thoughts, and set to work.

Before I know it, the last reveler has wandered away. It’s just Mother and me left, as it always is at the end of a long day. The coals are turning orange-red and the shadows are lengthening.

“That’s enough for tonight.” Mother pats the horn of the anvil, returns her hammer to its peg, rolls her shoulders, and then stretches her wrists. No matter how long we do this job, there are still aches and pains that come with it. Every strike reverberates up through the elbow and into the shoulders. The core is worn ragged. Knees ache. The smithy demands every part of the body.

“I’ll clean up.”

“Thank you.” Mother rests a hand on my shoulder. “What Davros said earlier about your marriage…”

“I thought nothing of it.”

She smiles. She knows I’m lying. “I wanted you to know that I had no prior knowledge he would bring it up. If I had, I would’ve told you.”

“I know,” I say softly. For years it’s felt like it’s just her and me—ever since Father died and Driun left for the fortress. We work together every day. Share dinner every night. She’s the only one who really understands my circumstances.

“After we survive tomorrow, if the vampire lord is not slain, then we’ll talk more about your nuptials. I won’t send you in blind. And I’ll do what I can to find you a smart match.”

“Thank you,” I say earnestly.

“Of course.” She leans forward and kisses me on my forehead, even though I know it’s coated in metal dust and soot. “Now, take your time. We’ll be cooped up tomorrow night and have preparations come dawn, so enjoy this time for yourself.”

Mother knows me too well.

I run my hand along the smooth top of the anvil after she leaves. My nails stick on the grooves of the softer metal of the horn. It’s still warm from her work.

Home.

Every month the vampires come to try and take it all from us. But, according to the old stories, the infiltrations month after month are just glancing blows. The real fight is tomorrow. Driun has been telling me not to dwell on my possible demise for the past few months, but how could I not? Just like the old stories warn, the moon grows ever more ominous, a faint pink darkening with each night. It can’t be ignored.

I set to cleaning. First, I sweep up the scale, then rake the coals, piling them toward the back. It’s odd to think we won’t be stoking them in a few hours come dawn. Then I head to the back.

In the back of the forge is a vault built into the thick walls. I check and count the silver within, making sure all the bars are stacked in the particular way that Mother likes them. Then, I lock the door with the spinning dials smelted onto its front. The numerical lock is a strange contraption designed by my great-great-grandmother. She kept its workings a secret to the grave. Every forge maiden has left their mark—a great work left behind. Mine still remains a mystery.

Perhaps I’ll figure out how to make my own unique lock and replace this one. No one alive knows how to fix the one smelted into the door. But the benefit is that no one but our family has any idea how it works and how to open it. Fear marries desperation to breed poor decisions, Mother always says. We must protect the silver, for it is our only defense against the vampires. A defense that grows more finite by the day.

Those who enter Hunter’s Hamlet by way of the fortress gate and join our community are never allowed to leave thereafter. That is part of our sacrifice to keep the world safe from the vampires. No one goes in or out, vampires included. Space for humans to slip through means spaces for vampires to pass. The single path through the fortress is the only, tightly guarded, connection to the outside world.

The only exception to sequestering is for the master hunter. He is permitted to leave through the outer gate to engage with the traders the other hunters call from the walls. There are some things we cannot produce on our own, namely iron and silver.

According to Driun, the Apelius Trading Company that transports rare, raw silver from the distant north has not come to the port town near us for almost a year now. Mother and I have begun to worry that they might not ever return. There have been many dinners spent discussing what we will do if the veins of silver in those faraway mines have run out. She has already begun consulting the old family records for ideas on how to more efficiently smelt down the existing, but broken, weapons and recast them into the crescent moon sickles that the hunters wield without losing the silver’s potency.

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.

He continues, “Besides, I suspect the madness has nothing to do with the elixir at all, and more with what we see and must do in the Fade Marshes.”

My knuckles turn white as I grip the vial. All our combat practice suddenly seems so foolish. I’m a forge maiden, not a hunter. I’m supposed to make weapons, not use them. This has all gone too far. “Please, don’t go tomorrow. Stay here in the city and protect us. Don’t make me have to use this.”

“I’m going so you won’t ever have to fear the vampire again.” My fool of a brother steps forward and places both his hands on my shoulders. “I’m going with the vanguard so that vampires won’t make it here.”

The vanguard. Driun will be on the front lines. My heart begins to race.

“Don’t, Driun,” I say hastily. “Davros loves you—”

Driun snorts softly.

“You’re the brother of the forge maiden; he will let you stay as part of the town’s defense if you ask to defend me. You don’t have to go so deep into the marshes.”

“I have to.” His voice has dropped to a whisper. Even though we’re alone, he glances around. “Davros wouldn’t let me stay in town because he has prepared me for this night since I joined the hunters. I’ve been chosen for a special mission, Flora. I can end this.”

“End it?”

“End it all.” Driun hugs me tight. It’s like the hugs Father would give before the full moon. But this time… I know this is the last I’ll see my brother. He’s saying goodbye.

“Please don’t go,” I beg. My throat is gummy. Eyes are burning. “I don’t care about any special mission or old stories. There will never be an end. We will always be hunted. So stay here and live with me.” My insecurities and fears are multiplying. I am the fool Mother always warned of and I give in to desperation when I say, “Don’t make me get married off to whatever hunter Davros pleases. How will I know it’s someone decent if you’re not there to intervene?”

Driun releases me. “I will never let you live a life of misery.”

“But—”

“Tomorrow,” he says softly. “When the Blood Moon thins the Fade and the vampire lord himself leads his legions through it, I will be ready and waiting. I will kill the vampire lord—the mind of the hive—and I will put an end to this endless war.”

My heart seizes in my chest. My throat is too tight to say anything else. I knew the vampire lord would come. But…I never imagined my brother would be the one poised to attack him head on.

“You can’t,” I whisper.

Driun wears a sad smile. “Not even a bit of confidence for your older brother?”

“Older by minutes,” I say on instinct. He chuckles. “Please, I—”

“The decision is made. I’m doing this for all of Hunter’s Hamlet. But also for you. If the vampire lord dies, then you won’t need to be a forge maiden any longer. Hunter’s Hamlet will be like any other town. You won’t have to work here every day. You won’t be married off. You and I could finally go to the sea.” The sea, the symbol of that all-encompassing dream of the world beyond the walls.

“I have all I need here; I don’t need the sea.” It’s a lie. One I’ve told myself so many times since I was a girl that I believe it more and more the older I get. Time has a way of snuffing dreams. “I need you and Mother safe and the forge hot.”

“You wanted to go to the sea when we were children,” he counters.

“We were seven. Things were simpler then.” I shake my head, wondering just how we could be so alike and yet so different at the same time. Driun was always fighting—fighting for more, for Hunter’s Hamlet, for dreams I stopped dreaming long ago.

“You could be so much more, Flora,” Driun says softly.

“All I want is not to see another one of our family die.”

“Then promise me you’ll protect Mother, so the only thing I must focus on is keeping myself alive and killing the vampire lord.”

When he puts it like that… “Fine. But you must come back.”

“I will.”

“Swear it. Swear that when the sun’s light hits the bell tower following the night of the Blood Moon you will be marching home.”

“I swear I will come back.”

I grasp him tightly. As tightly as I’m holding on to my emotions. He’s sworn it to me. He’ll come back.

Yet, my heart knows the truth. Maybe it’s because we’re twins. Maybe because he’s a hunter like Father was. Maybe I just know from being born on the soil of Hunter’s Hamlet that death is already in the air.

He might swear he’ll return, but…

He’s lying.

Days after……

Today’s the first day in my life that the forge was not lit.

Usually, every morning, Mother is the first to rise. She heads downstairs and puts the kettle on for tea, then she heads to the smithy and begins to wake the slumbering coals in the hearth, stoking them into high flames to create a bed of heat for us to work from. The forge glows an angry orange as if in contempt that it must wake before even the sky. By the time I make my way downstairs, I can feel the heat all the way at the kitchen window, and Mother is already working the bellows. Before the sun rises, we are ready to melt silver and steel together to make the special alloy that only we can craft.

But today, the house is quiet.

All of Hunter’s Hamlet is filled with the most horrible, deafening silence.

I’m up before Mother. Not utterly unheard of, but on top of everything else it’s a reminder of how strange the day is. I stare out my window at the quiet streets. There’s no smoke from the baker’s chimney. There aren’t laborers trudging out to the fields that fill the gap between town and the Fade Marshes. The only people outside are before their doors, beginning to hang on their eaves the delicate silver bells we have spent months smithing.

Mother and I join them.

We don’t say much. The hunters have told us what to do to prepare and it is not so different than any other full moon. There’s only so much we can do to prepare for vampires, even less for the vampire lord himself. The old stories are vague on what to expect from the ruler and hive mind of the vampires—some say he’s a winged monstrosity, others claim him to be able to draw the blood from all living creatures within his sight with a mere thought. I’m not sure what I believe, other than that he’s certainly the cause of every bit of hardship and loss in Hunter’s Hamlet.

What Driun said weighs on me as the hours tick on. His words—his lies—were sharper than the sickles I forge. Sharper than the weapons I have hidden in the main room downstairs. I look to the fortress, as though I could catch a glimpse of him, but he’s behind those high, thick walls. Not for the first time, I wonder what’s going on within all that stone.

But hunters’ affairs aren’t meant for me. I haven’t taken the vows of a hunter. I will not wear a mask tonight. I am the forge maiden and my place is here as much as his is in the Fade Marshes. We can’t change our roles, no matter how badly we might want to.

The bell tolls.

The bell tower of Hunter’s Hamlet stretches up from the center of the main square. It is as old as the fortress, said to have been built thousands of years ago, at the same time as the walls that surround all the land of Hunter’s Hamlet. One of the hunters serves as the bell ringer. I always thought it was a pointless task. None of us forget when the full moon has come. We certainly don’t need a ringing reminder each dusk before full moons to be in our homes. Every toll is worse than the last.

I lower my hands from the silver bells stretched over our door and look to Mother. She stares at the bell tower. At three stories tall, it’s the second tallest thing in the hamlet. The tallest is the fortress at four, which I’m certain is the highest structure ever built by human hands. Mother’s features are as hard as the iron we hammer and betray no emotion. I mirror her expression. We cannot be delicate.

“Do you want to go see the procession?” I ask.

“Of course.” She shakes her head, as if trying to banish the worried thoughts that I know are there. There will be no banishing them, not tonight.

We join the rest of Hunter’s Hamlet, heading for the main road that cuts through town. I’ve never seen so many people in one place being so silent. There’s only the sound of our boots on the cobblestone streets. I hear weeping coming from one of the windows we pass underneath. It does not quiet.

The main road stretches from the fortress to the center square and bell tower, and then on past the lower wall of Hunter’s Hamlet. It cuts through the farmers’ fields and heads north through the salted earth. Then, it goes past the realm of my knowing and into the Fade Marshes. No one knows what’s at the end of it. No one has made it that far into the lands of the vampire and lived to tell the tale.