Raiskin didn’t question why Anoniel was at the forge early, filling it with charcoal for the day’s work. Nor did he notice the bags of soot stashed away with broken tools in need of repair.

  The day passed in relative silence, broken only by the ring of hammers and the roar of flames. Anoniel let the rhythm carry him, letting muscle memory speak for him as he worked on the final two knives of Mr. Hambel’s order.

  The forge’s heat made his blood boil, sweat cutting paths through soot-streaked skin. The last of his Veil, mixed with soot, barely masked the golden shimmer beneath.

  More than once he felt like someone was watching him, but when he looked up the only thing he saw was the daily traffic outside the shop.

  Anoniel offered to finish the cleanup at the end of the day as Raiskin handed him his pay. It wasn’t the first time Raiskin had trusted him to close up shop, and he waited for the human to disappear through the door that led to the upstairs apartment he shared with his wife and sons.

  Moving quickly, Anoniel finished the paring knife and placed it with the rest of the order before doing a second sweep of the forge, adding to the hidden stash among the broken tools. He sighed as he opened his pack and retrieved his coin purse. Iron City hadn’t been a wise choice to winter in.

  Four months of work and he had only managed to save twelve gold coins. Last year, when he wintered in Simbasa, he had managed forty.

  He turned one gold coin around in his hand, the dim moonlight glinting on the embossed face of the pompous fool who thought himself king of the mountains now.

  How far will this get me before I need to stop again?

  Stashing everything in his pack, he slung it over his shoulder and locked up. He kept his head down as he rushed through the city, looking up only enough to avoid bumping into people. But he couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was watching.

  A few roads away from Cirelic’s shop, the streets thinned. Then came the crying—sharp, brittle, and close. Along with the sickly sweet scent of their despair.

  A shiver ran through his spine as he stood there, frozen. Hunger rising like a lazy cat from a nap deep within him. How long had it been since he’d given in to that hunger? Anoniel closed his eyes, breathing in the scent of the overripe strawberries. Reliving it, hoping the memory would dull the hunger enough to make it to the shop.

  The feel of the woman’s skin against his. The taste of her despair after losing her husband in a farming accident. The uncertainty of whether she could manage the farm on her own.

  He’d been chased off the farm after being found in her bed, forced to leave behind everything but the clothes he had worn that night. But he had been full. Satiated in a way only strawberry despair could satisfy him.

  The child’s cries grew closer as he followed the ephemeral red dragon down a narrow alley, unable to stop his footfalls or the beating of his heart.

  How long had it been since he left that farm?

  How long since he had fed?

  Hunger and mind stumbled.

  The little boy from before clung to his mother, her emerald eyes glazed like glass as they looked up into the starry sky. Unseeing in Ravenock’s Embrace. Fangs glistened in the boy’s mouth, blood coating his lips and chin. Blood smeared across his fingers, streaked his shirt, marked everything he touched. The metallic scent filled the air so strongly that it must have been suffocating for the boy if Anoniel could smell it.

  Memory flashed through his mind as he stepped forward. Another small boy, deep in the Eternal Forest. A man he had once thought indomitable, kneeling before him in his mind as he knelt before the small boy. Those first words were spoken so gently in a voice like gravel. The first Anoniel had ever heard. He repeated them, holding his hand out to the boy.

  “What’s your name?”

  The boy looked up. Tears and snot mingling with the blood. His voice broken into hiccupping sobs as he looked from Anoniel’s strange eyes to his outstretched hand.

  “K-Kaelen…” he managed, placing a small dirty hand into the larger dirty hand.

  Anoniel couldn’t stop the hunger, only restrain it, as his magic latched onto the boy. Feeding on his despair. Chiseling the worst of it. He watched as the boy’s wails softened to sobs. The pain still there, but easier.

  “My name is Anoniel. Would you like to come with me?” he asked. He glanced back down the alley at the sound of footsteps and drunken laughter.

  Kaelen paled at the sound. “They’re coming for mommy…” he whispered.

  “Then come with me,” Anoniel urged.

  “They’ll hurt her again…”

  Anoniel shook his head and smiled gently. “She is with the Black Raven. They can never hurt her again.”

  The boy sniffled back a sob. “What do I do…?”

  The sounds were getting louder, and Anoniel could make out the sounds of men calling out for the woman. Damn it all…

  Kaelen yelped and struggled as Anoniel picked him up, rushing deeper into the alley. At the first alcove, he dipped inside. Flattening himself against the bricks as he shushed Kaelen.

  “Damn… I was hoping for another round before the bleeding got her…”

  Anoniel listened intently as the men left. Thank the gods they’re drunk… He looked down at the small boy in his arms. He was crying again softly, but clinging to him tightly.

  “Let’s go collect stories for your mother,” he said softly, stroking the boy’s hair as he left the alcove. The hair was dirty and smelled of soot.

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  As he hurried quickly through the dark streets, the feeling of being watched finally subsided.

  Cirelic was slow to answer the door after Anoniel banged on it, his eyes darting around as he waited. Heart pounding in his throat at every noise. When the door finally opened, he pushed past the werewolf and slammed the door shut. Locking it as he dropped the bags of soot on the floor and headed straight for the back.

  “What are you doing?” Cirelic demanded.

  Anoniel ignored him as he looked around the back room. It was cluttered wall to wall with shelves and a large central table with jars of ingredients scattered around a cauldron and an open book. Pink smoke rose from the cauldron in lazy wisps, the burner underneath it set to low. Most of the shelves were packed with jars and potions bottles, some empty but the majority were full. One shelf near the table was overflowing with worn books.

  Thick pillar candles were on every available surface, giving the room a faint sweetness under the scent of herbs.

  Cirelic pushed past him, grumbling under his breath as he grabbed a candle and opened a side door hidden between two shelves. “This way,” he said.

  Anoniel followed him into a small, tiled room with a large stone wash tub set into the floor. Shelves built into the wall held towels, bars of soap, and jars of something thick with various flower petals suspended in them.

  “Set the boy down,” Cirelic said as he used the candle to light the candles set around the tub. “Then take this and light the stove under the water tank just outside.”

  Anoniel didn’t question, just attempted to set Kaelen down next to the tub.

  Kaelen’s small hands refused to let go of his coat and shirt. His face buried in his chest.

  “Damn angels…” Cirelic grumbled. “Might as well give him blood.” He opened another door, letting in the spring night chill briefly as he went outside.

  It wasn’t long before he came back in, holding the candle up to the jars on the shelf. Muttering to himself before he disappeared back into his main workroom. He was gone long enough that Anoniel sat on the floor with Kaelen in his lap. When he offered the boy his wrist to bite, Kaelen refused.

  Never saying a word as he kept his face buried.

  Quiet sobs shaking his thin frame.

  Cirelic didn’t say a word when he returned with a small bowl. He set it on the side of the tub before he turned the lever on the faucet. “Good… Not too hot,” he said with his hand under the running water. Plugging the drain, he picked the bowl up and poured its thick contents into the tub. He then rinsed the bowl under the water and riffled through the shelf that held various bars of soap. All wrapped neatly in waxed parchment.

  He turned to look at Anoniel and Kaelen before nodding to himself and set it next to the tub.

  “Get undressed,” he said.

  It took both of them to coax Kaelen out his clothes. Well… Force him out of them. The child screamed and cried when both Nephilim and werewolf got frustrated and cut the rags off. And he clung with more strength than a normal child his age would have when Cirelic tried to pry him off.

  “He needs to get naked, too,” Cirelic growled.

  “Wait… What?!” Anoniel demanded.

  “You’re both getting in that tub.”

  “I don’t need the bath!”

  “You’re covered in blood! And the boy might as well see what you hide.”

  The damn werewolf had a point. Anoniel didn’t think dropping the kid off at an orphanage or doorstep would work. And if Cirelic couldn’t even pry him off Anoniel, he couldn’t leave him with the werewolf.

  What in the hells was I thinking?

  Anoniel grumbled as he started stripping out of his clothes with Cirelic’s help. He’d had to do some awkward things in his long life.

  Sticking his hand in a goat to help it birth a kid.

  Helping a doctor remove an axe handle from a man’s backside after his wife found him in bed with a man.

  Or that one time a woman broke off her engagement after her father died, threw herself in Anoniel’s arms in front of the poor guy, then tried to get back with him the next morning after Anoniel fed on her despair.

  But undressing with a child he just collected from the streets was not something he had ever imagined he would do. It left a strange feeling in his chest as he remembered the first night after his father found him.

  He glanced at the tub with its water and flower petals, remembering the frown on Hadrik’s face as he tried to wash the golden shimmer from Anoniel’s skin.

  Anoniel shook the memory away and stepped into the hot water in the tub. There was a slightly oily feel to water and he could smell lavender, chamomile, and rose in the steam that rose from it. As he lowered himself, faint copper stained the water as it started to wash away the veil that he’d applied to his skin from the waist up.

  Pink mixed with the copper in the water as more of Kaelen was submerged. The tub was deeper than Anoniel was used to, rising to just past his nipples, and longer than he was tall.

  Hells, any tub he could comfortably sit in was something he’d long ago accepted as a fleeting dream. When you stand head and shoulders above most people, only the Elkin could make you feel small.

  Black mixed with the pink and copper as water was suddenly poured over his head. Black and copper streams lining his golden skin. He glared at Cirelic, who shrugged as he dunked the bowl into the water again and dumped it over their heads.

  “I know how to bathe,” Anoniel grumbled.

  Cirelic ignored him, poking Kaelen’s shoulder. “Want to see something pretty?”

  Kaelen ignored him, his tiny arms clinging tighter to Anoniel’s shoulders as he buried his face into the base of his neck.

  Anoniel reached for the wrapped bar on the side of the tub and unwrapped it. It was a creamy brown color and when he sniffed it he frowned.

  “Milk and honey? This is too expensive,” he said.

  Cirelic stopped him when he tried to rewrap it, taking the bar and dunking it in the water before rubbing it along Kaelen’s back. “I don’t charge kids or those in need.”

  Kaelen tightened his grip on Anoniel, tensing at Cirelic’s touch.

  “Am I in need?” Anoniel asked as he took the bowl and pouring water over Kaelen’s head, his fingers rubbing through the tangled hair to help the water rinse the soot from it. A frown creased his eyebrows as the color refused to change as he washed the soot from it.

  The water was already murky from everything that had coated their skin, the soap, and whatever Cirelic had added to the water. The werewolf had moved to rubbing the bar of soap on Anoniel’s back, near Kaelen’s face.

  “I’ve heard the rumors about you from the pub down the street,” Cirelic commented. “Filled the orders for Maiden’s Mercy… I doubt you know the first thing about kids.”

  Anoniel grunted as he peered closer at Kaelen’s hair. “Get me clean water,” he said, handing the bowl to Cirelic.

  Cirelic rinsed the bowl under the faucet before he refilled it and poured it over Kaelen’s head. The boy squirmed, whimpering softly and snuggling closer to Anoniel. He ignored the squirming as he watched the water run clean from the black hair.

  Both men shared a look before Cirelic grabbed one of the candles in the room, bringing it close to Kaelen’s hair.

  Anoniel held a lock of the child’s hair between two fingers as blood-red strands glittered in the light, mixed with strands of pure black. Anoniel had seen the coloring before. Centuries ago in a village on the edge of the Eternal Forest.

  Dhampir soldiers that had once served in Lord Frostfang’s army with the blood-ebony hair of the Briar bloodline. When the vampires fell, they had taken dhampirs and their families out of the mountains and hidden themselves away in the border between the mountains and the forest.

  Hadrik had been a child at the time, youngest son of Lorthin Loren’dal’Smith. The finest blacksmith Iron City had ever produced. Hadrik had had the black hair of Frostfang himself, but with the golden blond highlights of the Loren bloodline.

  As Hadrik had passed on Lorthin’s teachings to Anoniel and his dhampir brothers, Anoniel had watched those proud soldiers of the Briar bloodline pass on their skills to their sons. They had even included Anoniel when he had approached them as a young boy, curious of the small world he had found himself in.

  He clenched his fist, tightening his own arms around the frail boy that clung to him. Pushing the memories away before he fell deeper into them.

  “There’s a bounty on his head,” Cirelic said into the silence.

  “I know,” Anoniel answered.

  “But he’ll be useless to Castile.”

  “As a vampire, yeah,” Anoniel said. “But a basinae’s seed is just as good as any other dhampir’s.”