Chapter 31 The Maker
THE MAKER
Iwoke again to find the sun gone from the window. In its place, the golden hour draped the room in warm light and deep shadow. Every sound still struck too sharply, reverberating in my skull, but the searing agony from before had ebbed, leaving only a dull throb in its wake.
I tried to rise, but one hand would not obey. An iron cuff bit into my wrist, bolted to a heavy ring; a thick chain threaded from it into another ring set in the wall.
“You devil! Let me go!” I screamed, throwing sound into the empty room in the hope the sorcerer—if he lurked nearby—would hear. Footsteps answered, slow and deliberate, then the hard click of a key in the lock.
Beaten, raped, stabbed, and hurled from a cliff hours before—and this was my reward. The world tilted; bile rose hot in my throat. He had bound me like an animal. My hands trembled against cold iron, and fury flared where fear had been.
He walked into the room and sat on the bed beside me.
I jerked back, yanking on the cuff until it clattered against the wall.
Frustration welled up, and a desperate cry tore from my throat.
“Who are you? Why am I chained here?” My voice cracked as I squirmed against the sheets.
“I need to go back to my village—to Dani, to Anca, to Buna—“
He raised a hand to silence me, then laid it gently over the one not bound in iron. His face was grave, and had I not been his prisoner I might have mistaken it for tenderness.
“I am called Serban. The chains hold you for your own safety,” he said, as if that explanation alone should make it bearable.
“You do not yet understand what change has been wrought upon your body, nor the hunger that comes with it. Until you learn to master that hunger, you are a danger—to yourself and to those around you.”
His voice was low and honey-smooth, his accent shaping each word into something both foreign and strangely familiar.
He spoke in riddles. My own safety? I pushed myself upright, kneeling on the bed.
The chain allowed little slack, the iron biting into my wrist—cold, unyielding against the softness of the linen.
“Control my hunger…what do you mean?” I spat at my captor.
He rose from the bed and stepped beyond its edge before turning back to face me. With deliberate precision, he unfastened the cuff of his shirt, letting the sleeve fall loose, then lifted his wrist toward his mouth.
His dark eyes glowed—fierce, possessive—holding mine so completely I could not have looked away even if I'd tried. Slowly, his lips parted, revealing teeth white as sun-bleached bone against the warmth of his skin.
Then came the shift. His upper row aligned and altered, lengthening with unnatural grace until two teeth gleamed—sharp enough to pierce.
The world tilted. Dizziness swept through me. His words echoed back—my own safety—control your hunger—not because he had forced them into my mind, but because of their sheer absurdity as I watched this monster, this devil, unveil himself.
But I knew now what he was. Buna had told me of the strigoi—how they drank blood to live and walked the earth in darkness.
Terror swept through me; whatever bravery I had drained away.
I shrank back, pressing into the bed. Then he lowered his head, and with one swift motion sank a fang into his own wrist, his eyes never breaking from mine.
The tang of blood—sharp, sweet—hit my nose, and hunger roared through me, thirst rising like fire in my veins.
A force not my own seized me, propelling me toward him with the speed of flight before thought could catch me.
The chain, forgotten instantly, snapped me back onto the bed.
I hissed—at the shackle, at him, at the monstrous thirst that was no longer his alone but mine.
“Now you understand the need for restraints, my child,” he said, using that term again.
Child, me.
Maker, him.
Feed.
Yes—this was what he had meant. I needed to feed.
A moan tore from me, half whimper, half plea, as I strained against the chain like an animal. Iron bit into my wrist, but I barely felt it. Some part of me still begged, still reached—though I knew I could not get closer, could not touch the very thing my body screamed for.
My mind and body split apart. My mind knew I was chained. Knew I could not reach him. My body did not care. It had one purpose. One purpose only.
Blood.
He stepped closer to the bed. The scent hit me—warm, tinged with iron, alive. Saliva spilled from the corner of my aching mouth. When I tried to catch it with my tongue, I felt them—two teeth descending, lengthening. Mine. Like his.
His eyes never left me. Curious. Measuring. Waiting.
The last of my confusion drowned beneath the thirst, and he saw it.
He came nearer and extended his arm. Revulsion flared—but my hand shot out anyway. I seized his wrist and dragged it to my mouth. A sob tore through me. I tried to pull back. I tried to resist.
I could not. My fangs sank into the wound Serban had already opened, piercing deeper. Heat flooded my mouth. I drank. And drank.
When he tried to pull away, I only tightened my grip.
“Stop,” he said firmly.
I whimpered at being denied, the blood dripping down my chin. I tried to wipe it away with the back of my free hand.
Sated, at least for the moment, I tried another tactic. “Please let me go…I have to get back to my husband and daughter…”
He lifted his eyes to mine, and I saw sorrow flit across his face like a shadow.
“No—no—what do you know? Tell me.” I cried.
He sat again next to me, his lips set in a grim line. “I sent a man to your village, Magda. To ask around. He said your husband and daughter died when they set fire to your home.” There was pity in his eyes. “They are gone. Nothing is left for you there.”
No. No—he lies. He must. Not Dani. Not Anca—her little lungs, smoke would choke her, but Dani would have saved her. He promised me. He swore he would keep her safe. He swore.
The fire—was it our cottage? Someone else's? He was trying to break me, that's all, to bind me tighter. If I ran now, I would find them in the woods, alive, waiting. Dani's laugh, Anca's small hand curled around mine. They were there. They must be there.
But the smell—smoke clung to memory, charred wood, hair singed. I could hear it—crackling, the walls collapsing. No, no, no. My fault. If I had stayed. If I had fought harder. If I had never let Dani love me, if I had never brought this curse to his door. My daughter—my baby—gods, I wasn't there.
“Did you do this? Did you watch them burn? I will tear the black heart from your chest, I will drink you dry.” I screamed at him pulling again against the iron cuffing my wrist.
“No, Magda. I found you after those men left you—”
I cut him off and sound died in my ears.
“Get out,” I begged the room, the chain biting into my wrist as I writhed.
For a breath I expected him to slither back into my mind, to unravel me into that soft obedience he could coax; instead he stood there—distant, composed, sorrow carved across his face.
Let me keep the pain, I told myself: let me taste the loss of the man I had failed to love in time, the man whose whole heart I'd given away to another.
And my child—small, innocent—who bore the consequence of every wicked choice I'd made.
The click of the door locking when he left me echoed in my head. Alone with the weight of my pain, I thought that erasing my memory might have been the truest mercy. Instead he walked away and left me to the slow burn of torment.
I wept myself empty, the tears dried but the pain still throbbed raw and open inside me.
I sat crumpled in the corner of the bed, hollow as a husk, and only then did I notice—I was clean.
At some point, while my mind had been veiled in that unnatural sleep Serban forced upon me, my torn and blood-stiffened gown had been taken and replaced.
Was my body not my own? Had it ever been? Last night had shown me the truth—in the eyes of men, I was an empty vessel, existing only for their pleasure. Some took their pleasure and offered something in return—attention, perhaps even love. Others took with violence, and repaid me with death.
Even this man had taken something. Perhaps he believed it kindness—tending my body, dressing it decently—but without my consent, it was only another trespass.
The ceaseless cadence—the lock turning, his blood against my lips, the darkness he summoned over me—blurred waking and sleep. Every sound was too sharp, too loud, setting my head to ache. Cruel mornings burned into nights, nights into a week or more, until time unraveled completely.
The sound of the lock turning echoed again—still too sharp for my aching ears—yet it had become a herald, a grim announcement of his presence.
He entered with casual grace, long limbs moving with deceptive ease, his frame lean but powerful, his shoulders broad enough to fill the space.
From his pocket he drew another key and reached for the iron cuff at my wrist. The lock snapped open with a higher, sharper pitch than the door's, and the distinction sent a shiver through me.
My cell may have been outfitted with fine linens and soft rugs, yet I was still a prisoner.
The bed frame groaned under his weight when he sat, the sound striking through my skull like a hammer on iron. His hands folded loosely in his lap, but his face betrayed him—eyes shadowed, mouth drawn with weariness—as he looked at me.
“The sun,” I said at last, my voice raw, foreign to my own ears. “It burns my eyes in the mornings, but not yours.” I nodded toward the window, though the light had long since fled. Only the cold night pressed through the casement now, a draft that should have prickled my skin, but oddly did not.