What if he was a Valok?

  Old Man Hendrick loved telling that tale on the darkest winter nights—the one about the blood-sucking creatures that lived in the high caves, waiting for foolish young maidens to wander too far from home. The Valok, he would whisper, his eyes gleaming in the firelight, were once beautiful beyond imagining. That was their curse, you see. They had been so vain, so consumed by their own loveliness, that they struck a bargain with the devil: eternal life in exchange for eternal hunger. They could only maintain their stolen beauty by feeding on others. On young women. On virgins, specifically.

  "They don't just drink your blood," Hendrick would say, lowering his voice until we children had to lean in to hear. "They drink your essence. Your youth. Your glow. Your—" and here he would always pause for maximum effect, "—your maidenhood, in every sense of the word. A Valok can look at a girl and simply take what makes her lovely. And once they've taken it, she's left as nothing but a hollow shell—wrinkled, grey, empty, while the Valok grows ever more radiant on her stolen beauty."

  The older girls would clutch each other, half-squealing with horror and fascination.

  "They prefer untouched maidens, you see," Hendrick would continue, warming to his subject. "The purer the blood, the sweeter the steal. They can smell it on you, they say—that clean, unspoiled scent. Draws them from miles away. And they're terribly picky. Won't settle for just any girl. They want the prettiest, the youngest, the most innocent. They have standards, these creatures. Centuries of existence gives them a refined palate."

  I remember one winter night, after particularly too much mulled wine, Hendrick had launched into an entirely new level of detail that had my mother covering my ears while the other adults howled with laughter.

  "They have a hierarchy, you know," he'd bellowed over the protests of the scandalized mothers. "The most beautiful Valok get first pick of the maidens. It's like a market day for stolen beauty! They line them up and—"

  Whatever came next was lost to my mother's hands, but the damage was done. For years afterward, I couldn't look at any handsome stranger without wondering if he was mentally calculating how many virgins it had taken to achieve that particular jawline.

  And now here I was. Alone. On a mountain. With a creature of impossible beauty who had spoken to me in a voice like wind through pines and had eyes that held the light of distant stars.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  Oh gods. In the silence, a new, even more horrifying thought clawed its way to the front of my mind.

  What if the healing wasn't kindness at all? What if it was... bait?

  He walked through the village, tending to the sick, asking nothing in return. But gained their trust—their absolute, unquestioning trust—then maybe, just maybe, they would send their daughters up the mountain to him. Not to be healed. To be the payment for healing. The girls would climb willingly, thinking they were bringing offerings or thanks or simply curiosity, and then—

  Wait. No maiden had ever gone missing. No girl had ever gone to the mountain.

  I stopped that thought cold. The villagers told stories of boys who came back broken, of men who climbed and never returned, but never once had anyone whispered about a missing girl. Not one. If the Valok were real and this was their game, surely someone would have noticed daughters disappearing. Surely my own mother would have warned me if maidens had a habit of vanishing into the peaks.

  Unless they didn't vanish. Unless they came back, but different. Hollowed out. Drained of whatever made them lovely, leaving only shells behind.

  I thought of the girls in the village—the pretty ones, the ones the boys whispered about. They all seemed fine. Flushed and healthy and irritatingly cheerful. If any of them had been secretly drained of their beauty by a mountain vampire, surely, I would have noticed. Surely, they would look less... annoying.

  But then my thoughts snagged on something else entirely, veering wildly off course like a goat spooked by its own shadow.

  What if my mother's madness wasn't madness at all but the result of—no, that was ridiculous. She was old and worn and nothing like the fresh-faced maidens in the stories. Even if the Valok had once fed on her, she would have been young then, maybe even beautiful before the years and grief carved their lines into her face. But that would mean she had come up here, had met him, had—

  I pressed my palms against my eyes, willing my brain to stop.

  This is absurd, I told myself firmly. You are standing on a mountain, having just accused a divine being of existing, and your immediate concern is that he might be a beauty-stealing vampire who preys on virgins?

  Yes. Apparently, that was exactly where my mind had decided to go. If I survived this, I was going to have stern words with Old Man Hendrick and his drunken storytelling.

  I lowered my hands and forced myself to meet those impossible, star-flecked eyes again.

  He was still staring at me. Waiting.

  I opened my mouth—probably to say something incredibly stupid, something along the lines of "I hate Valoks! In case you're wondering, my blood is probably rancid. One sip and you'll be uglier than Old Man Hendrick's backside" or "Please don't steal my beauty—I've only had it for fourteen years and I've grown quite attached, emotionally speaking"—when the corner of his mouth twitched.