My rage endured in a way I'd never known before. Perhaps it was because I felt responsible for those living in The Stag, and someone had tread on those in my care. My hatred for humanity's cruelty bore a dark fruit, that night.

  From the journal of Drago? Buh?scu

  Viorica had a visitor that night. Dragos took the opportunity for what it was. Perfect.

  He slipped into the cloakroom in the front hall and snatched unremarkable scarves of dark cloth to hide his features. A long, midnight cloak caught his eye, and he threw that on over everything.

  He’d commissioned new boots, but they had yet to arrive. Woven grass shoes and thick wool socks would have to do. At least they were common. One thing he could not do was bring evidence of the deed back with him, if he was successful with his game.

  It wasn’t a game. What he set out to do was deadly serious. He should have felt guilt or fear. Nothing touched him except for the cold calculation of his actions.

  He’d do what no one else would.

  Fane had mentioned where the pig was staying. Dragos had found Fane to be a wealth of odd and interesting information when the man shared his thoughts. He mostly joked, or teased, or deflected. As his own cohort’s teachings were ‘wisdom and secrecy,’ he could hardly fault the man.

  Everyone had things they’d rather not share and reasons behind them.

  Dragos slipped out, and the zmeu was there. The night glittered darkly, snow caught the spare starlight where the city’s chimneys plumed clouds of black. The zmeu was but one of these, with its unsettling curls of smoky ribbon floating above the side door. Orange eyes glimmered.

  He did not have to speak. Zgavra said nothing. The monster drifted away, a snake in the shadows, and Dragos followed.

  Following narrow streets to the foreign quarter, where the riotous colors of the Caravanserai dominated most of the buildings near the market, the zmeu paused in the blackest part of the narrow alley. Even in the winter, the faint stink of night soil battled with woodsmoke for supremacy. The Caravanserai was the temporary home of hundreds, be they merchants, peddlers, or foreigners wintering in Sigovara.

  The zmeu’s eyes swiveled, and the Unspoken whispered, “Wait here.”

  It slithered away, dispersing as it went. Dragos lurked, hidden from casual gaze in the middle of the night. Yet, left alone, he began to question what he was doing. He lifted a hand and looked at the faint silhouette of the leather glove with its vicious and freshly sharpened talons.

  Was it his right to mete out justice?

  Even with all the layers, he’d begun to shiver in that cold stone hollow of an alley. Wind slipped to nip at him, stinging his eyes. Perhaps an early judgment for what he was about to do. His breath dampened the scarf drawn about his face. He considered pulling it off, but there was enough to identify him without being so obvious. Only ‘lula had eyes like his. Bright and cold as ice.

  A woman in a disheveled dress slunk out of the inn that Fane named as the temporary quarters for Torres-Cruz. Behind her, a broad man followed, steps just a bit unsteady. Drunk. The woman resembled Maria enough that Dragos blinked. Lean, not in the least bit conventionally attractive, with sun-baked skin and eyes that turned downward at the corners.

  She walked straight towards the alley. Dragos's heart skipped a beat. Was he to be found out in his hiding place? He backed up a few soft steps until he saw the flicker of orange in the woman’s eyes.

  Zgavra!

  The man had a bullwhip coiled on his belt and a wicked look on his lecherous face. The zmeu’s plan fell into place. Torres-Cruz. Dragos hadn’t met the man. He did what he could to avoid the crowd that came to The Lady’s Stag unless Viorica asked. Mirel’s teachings caused him to choke on the excess, luxury, and entitlement of Viorica’s guests after too much exposure.

  His teacher had no tolerance for indulgence or vanity.

  When the two entered the darkness between buildings, where the faint torchlights of the Caravanserai’s warmth and welcome ended, the man shoved Zgavra with a violence that staggered the creature. Zgavra struck the wall and grunted, then spun, a look of faux-horror on its face. Torres-Cruz smirked, his hand falling to the strap that held his bullwhip.

  He couldn’t wield it well in such a narrow space, but Dragos had seen the marks of what he’d done with it before he’d cracked it. Dragos kept his head tilted down, stilled to nothing more than a heartbeat as the zmeu gasped and flung its hands up to fend off the man, who pulled his whip free and curved the leather like a noose.

  “Shhh, stay quiet, and I’ll pay you well,” he rumbled.

  The scent of wine and heat hit Dragos's nose.

  It was a trigger pulled, a counterweight cut loose. They were a mere ten paces away, and then they were five. And then two.

  Torres-Cruz looked up at the crunch of feet on snow, eyes widening. Dragos fell upon him like a shadow, snarling like a wolf. The claws raked the man’s face. Four wide gashes opened. Torres-Cruz reeled, staggering towards the light. The whip fell.

  Dragos grabbed the man’s heavy jacket collar. He didn’t have the weight to stop the man, but he could alter his trajectory.

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  With a twist, the man flew into the wall. His claws slid from the man’s thick neck. Dragos raked the man’s shoulder and then, with a vicious grin, slammed his fist into the small of the man’s back.

  All before Torres-Cruz could do more than grunt and flail a hand.

  The momentary doubt had fled. Dragos was as predatory as the man he punished, holding nothing back. If he stopped, he’d fail.

  It felt very wrong and very good, braided together to create something he’s never felt before surging in his veins. The pit of his gut quivered, pulling away, while the cruelest parts of his heart looked on with cold satisfaction. Torres-Cruz slumped, the damage done so fast and brutally that the man seemed to have fainted.

  Hunger for justice spurred him further. Dragos grabbed him by the jacket collar again and dragged him back into the alley, through the spillage of people’s chamber pots.

  A streak of blood blackened the snow, trenches dug by the man’s deadweighted bootheels drew lines to the spot Dragos left him. The man wouldn’t die in the alley if discovered. But he would die. Slow, sick, and aggrieved with infections.

  If he was not discovered, he would freeze to death before morning. Either result satisfied Dragos.

  Zgavra let go of the woman’s figure and form, becoming smoke once again. It looked on with the same cold apathy Dragos felt.

  Except—part of him was horrified. Disgusted. He’d done something terrible. His chest constricted, his hands clenched, icy blood slicking his gloves.

  He turned away from the living corpse and murmured a warding against Torres-Cruz. The man’s spirit was already troubled from his habits, and the likelihood he’d become strigoi upon his death was high. Dragos took a moment to pull one bloody glove from his hand and drew iron filings from his pouch. He threw them over his shoulder at the unconscious, bleeding figure in the sludge behind him.

  With a nod to the zmeu, he walked to the other end of the alley.

  “Let’s go back,” he whispered.

  The monster formed as it rose, its ethereal claws wrapping around Dragos as one would hold a small child. Were anyone to have seen, it would have been the stuff of fairytales. A figure in blackest night, lifted by clouds that transformed into a long, serpentine dragon, great wings realizing themselves as it grew and ascended into the smog.

  They came down on Viorica’s rooftop moments later.

  Dragos slipped into the unlatched window of his office and lit a candle. He’d gotten blood in more places than he’d intended. The borrowed cloak, the jacket, the scarves, all speckled with gore. He took the garments off and laid them aside.

  First, his gloves were cleaned meticulously and left by the windowsill for the oil to soak in before going back in the pouch. The other things were taken down to the laundry.

  By flickering candlelight, he washed the dark clothes until they squeezed pure water and hung them to dry. Pacha appeared to watch him, tail swishing thoughtfully. The cat didn’t ask questions, merely observed him, before rubbing once against his leg and wandering off again.

  Returning to his office, he sat but could not relax. The prince’s horses were still in the stable, the casual coach he used for these ‘unofficial’ visits still tucked beside. Dragos leaned his cheek against the icy window.

  A hollowness settled in. Zgavra had remained by his side, silent, curled like a band of incense that lingered long in still air. He glanced at the beast, hovering there.

  “What have we done?” the words blurted from his lips.

  “Vengeance,” Zgavra replied, orange eyes flickering contentedly. “You’re not a rabbit or a fish, Dragos. It’s in your nature. Don’t be so horrified.”

  Dragos bowed his head. Despite the words, and the truth in them, he felt ill. It was one thing to think of it. Another to do it. Mirel would call this a growth in wisdom.

  “I miss her sometimes,” Dragos sighed.

  She was hardly what he imagined a mother would be, or should be, but she did teach well.

  “Who?” Zgavra asked, its gaze flicking to the door.

  “Mirel,” Dragos murmured, pressing a fingertip to the frosted glass. He watched the glaze creep back from his finger, as if he were a monster, too terrifying to share space with. Nerostit?.

  Zgavra snorted softly. “The little screamer? You’re well rid of that cerel. It would have died on your journey.”

  Dragos nodded slowly. He thought of her, the child he’d named after the woman who raised him. The girl whose name had been usurped by another. He sighed, watched his breath puff a hint of vapor, and murmured, “I hope she’s well.”

  “No doubt in my mind she is. You’ll never need to worry about her. The Croitoru will spoil her.”

  A door closed softly somewhere. Footsteps whispered past. He perked at the idea of the prince leaving. It was early for him; the prince stayed until dawn when he came. He’d avoided meeting the man thus far and hoped to continue the trend.

  Sure enough, the prince and his small retinue appeared in the garden, headed for the coach. Still, Dragos waited. Watched the dim shadows of figures against snow, the dangle of lanterns swinging in hand, and the coach lights lit. Tack rattled, wheels creaked, the horse gate opened.

  The house’s night watch locked the bar behind it, by the flicker of their lanterns, and headed back to the gatehouse.

  Dragos slipped out of his office and found an empty entertaining room with a banked fire to sleep in. The idea of sleeping in a bed still warm from anyone else, even a prince, made him choose solitude. As he curled up in blankets, the chill of the room barely cut by Zgavra’s breath upon the hearth’s kindling, he considered things.

  It wasn’t the prince. He knew what Viorica was from the start. It was the cold look in her eyes when she made the decision to mildly punish the transgressor.

  He couldn’t bear to see her.

  No matter. He fixed her error.

  Dragos would adore her and forgive her. He’d merely been stung by the bee that guarded her honeyed ways. They had too much between them—their pasts, their understanding of each other’s secret natures—for a hard-hearted choice to come between them.

  In the morning, he intended to find her.

  She found him, first.

  Dragos had just begun the descent when the whisper of her silks caught his attention. He paused as she rounded the banister, skirts caught in her hands, elbows out, delicately painted lips twisted when she looked up at him. Her footsteps sped up. She ran up the stairs without a hint of the grace and controlled motion he’d grown used to.

  “Dragos!” she snapped, her eyes glittering with anger.

  His mouth fell open as she raced toward him, but no words escaped.

  No. There was no possible way she’d know. How? Dragos steeled himself to deny everything as Viorica charged up the stairs.

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  (zmyeh-oo): Shapeshifting dragon

  Cerel (TSEH-rel) [rolled r]: Infant/young child. Living human form of Copiii ceruli

  Nerostit? (neh-ross-TEE-teh): Calruthian word for all things unnatural or strange, synonymous with Unspoken. Places, events, and situations can be referred to as this, as well as beings