I push the door to the Broken Barrel. Every head in the tavern turns. The patrons' faces shift in the unsteady lamplight, bones sharp one moment, gone the next.

  Behind the bar, a man thick as a stacked keg wipes a cloth across the counter. The rag makes a long, wet sound as he drags it across the wood. He pauses, then drags it back. He does not look up, but I can feel his eyes on me.

  The girl behind him freezes, bottle in hand. A fall of pale hair obscures most of her face, but not the fine tremble in her lower lip.

  The floorboards complain under my boots as I approach the bar.

  "A bowl of whatever's hot," I say. "And ale."

  The barkeeper grunts, a nod so slight I almost miss it. The girl scurries away as if released from a trap.

  I take a stool. Its legs wobble, protesting my frame.

  The fire hisses. A leaky cask drips. My own breathing is the loudest thing in the room.

  The girl returns, sliding a steaming bowl before me. Her hands shake, sloshing broth over the rim. For a moment, I want to reach out, to steady her hand, to tell her it's alright. I do nothing. She retreats, keeping the long plank of the bar between us.

  The barkeeper snaps his head toward the spilt broth, then to the girl. "Belladonna." A thick vein pulses at his temple. "The stock."

  She flinches. "Yes, Father."

  As Belladonna turns, her eyes fix on my dagger. She gasps, the blood leaving her face. Her head jerks from the blade to her father.

  Across the room, every patron who had been watching me turns toward the barkeeper. Waiting.

  He doesn't look up. The rag continues its slow circle on the counter. But his eyes stop moving. They lock on my dagger. He doesn't speak. He just waits. I unstrap Alistair's dagger and lay it on the wood. He follows the motion, but he makes no move to take it.

  Idiot. My fingers ache to snatch the dagger back. I force them to relax.

  A few stools down, ale spills from a drunk's mug, pooling around his fingers. He doesn't notice. His eyes are fixed on the dried black mud clinging to my dagger's hilt. Swamp mud.

  I lift a spoonful of the broth. It's thin, and tastes of ash. "Good soup," I say, my voice loud in the quiet. No reply. Just the scrape of a boot and cloth brushing across glass.

  "Quiet night," I say to the silence.

  The barkeeper meets my eye. "Most are." He turns away, resuming his work on an already clean glass. The lamplight catches the name stitched on his apron. Derrick.

  Their fear is a tool. Use it.

  As I search the faces around the room, a thought surfaces, clear and hopeful. Do they hear a voice, too?

  No. I have been inside the minds I have broken. Their thoughts were their own.

  A single word forms in the hollow space the hope leaves behind. Alone.

  The word lands, and a memory with it. Older than Alistair, older than Hugo. A stone room. Waiting for a door that never opened. No one came. No one ever comes.

  My lungs seize, a gasp without breath. The warmth in my blood vanishes. The sudden cold focuses me, and my hearing, already sharpened by this new skin, snags on low mutters from a nearby table.

  A man hunches over his mug. The hand he raises to his mug is missing a finger. It trembles. "He's not wearing a mask. The one who took my Martha wore a mask. Why isn't he wearing one?"

  His companion doesn't answer right away. His eyes jump from me, to the door, then back to his drink.

  He speaks, his jaw so tight the words seem to grind against his teeth. "Maybe they don't need masks anymore." He swallows hard. "Maybe they've gotten bold enough to show their faces."

  He shrinks back, voice fading to almost nothing. "It's one of them. No one else comes to Greyhollow. Not anymore."

  My spoon stills, halfway to my mouth.

  They have cast you a role. Play it.

  Fine. Let them have their monster.

  I let the hunter's instincts take me. My shoulders broaden. My spine straightens. Across the room, conversations gutter and die. A chair scrapes back as someone puts more distance between us.

  Derrick's rag pauses mid-wipe. He looks up. I lift my hand. The gesture takes three full seconds. I wipe a single, non-existent speck of dust from my shoulder. My eyes never leave his. For a heartbeat, he does not seem to breathe. A sob from a nearby table cuts the silence in two.

  I hear her breathe a name. "Rosa." Then, as if the words are stones in her mouth, "The Flesh Tax." She twists her deep blue wool cloak into a tight knot. "She was barely old enough."

  "Grace, hush." A scarred woman reaches across the table, her fingers digging into Grace's arm.

  Behind the bar, Belladonna flinches, and a glass slips from her grasp. It shatters on the floorboards. No one moves to clean it.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  I let the broken silence settle, then clear my throat. The sound makes a man spill his ale. Every head snaps toward me.

  "This Flesh Tax," I say, my voice even. "How often is it collected?" I turn to the woman with the scarred face.

  A short, harsh sound tears from her throat, more like a cough than a laugh. "A Collector asking about his own bloody tax? That's rich."

  I don't raise my voice. I don't need to. "Tell me. How long has it been since you've had something to laugh about?"

  The clatter of mugs and the low drone of conversation stop. She stops smiling. Her blue eyes fix on my throat and stay there.

  Derrick leans across the bar, his expression sharpening. "Collectors don't ask questions."

  His apron smells of lye and old meat. I could count the pores on his nose, the flecks of grey in his beard.

  A smile touches my lips. I lean closer. "Perhaps it's time we did."

  I let the silence do its work. "There are worse things than questions in that forest of yours. I met one on my way here. Nasty-looking thing."

  An old man by the hearth shifts. His red robe is a heavy, light-swallowing wool. The firelight catches only two things. The gold embroidery on his shoulders, and the milky cataracts in his eyes. "The Twisted One. Best to leave it be."

  I turn my head toward the old man. "And why is that?"

  "It's forbidden." His voice is thin and dry, each word an effort. "To harm it."

  "Forbidden?" I press. "By whom?"

  A tankard slams down on the bar, inches from my hand. I don't flinch. Derrick is not looking at me. His stare is fixed on the old man, a warning harder than stone. His cheek hollows as he bites the inside of it.

  The old man shrinks back into his chair, knotted hands tightening on his cane. He shakes his head, a tired motion. "He who gave that order does not forget. And he does not forgive."

  For a long moment, Derrick does not move. Then, without breaking his stare with the old man, his other hand snakes out and sweeps my dagger from the bar. He is telling the entire room that this topic, and the swamp it came from, is now closed.

  I take a slow sip of my ale. Around me, the patrons do not resume their hushed conversations. They drink. They stare into their mugs. Eventually, an uneasy truce settles over the tavern. Quiet, isolated conversations begin to sprout in the corners of the room.

  Grace leans towards her scarred companion. "They say another's gone, Vera. From Ashenbrook this time. A mother. Her name was Catherine."

  Catherine. For a heartbeat, the reek of ale is gone, replaced by the ghost of baking bread. A tremor starts in my hand, threatening to spill my ale. I will it still.

  Across the bar, Derrick's polishing cloth stills. His eyes fall to my hand, then snap back to my face. A thought tightens the skin around his eyes. Then it is gone. He resumes his work.

  Grace hunches forward, her eyes darting to me before she speaks. "They're breaking the pact, Vera. In secret. That woman in Ashenbrook. It was the Collectors. It has to be. They're the Snatcher."

  Vera's hand finds Grace's arm. It's the grip of a hawk on a sparrow.

  "The pact is a contract," Vera says. "It's cold. It's cruel. But it has rules. One from Greyhollow, one from Blackthorn. Morvain territory. That's it." Her stare is fixed, intense. "The Snatcher is just a bedtime story to scare children."

  A frail laugh escapes Grace. Her arm yanks back, breaking Vera's grip. "You call that a rule? Ashenbrook is a stone's throw from the border. You really think a line on a map is going to stop them if they're hungry?"

  Vera glances at Grace, her expression hardening. She leans in. "It's Aeloria. That's southern territory. They wouldn't dare provoke a war over one extra body. It's not logical."

  Grace flinches, her shoulders hunching as if the words themselves had edges.

  The man beside me sets his mug down with a heavy thud that cuts through the chatter. He looks at Vera, his voice a low rumble. "And what logic was there in the mine, Vera?"

  He doesn't wait for an answer. "Before the road closed, I sharpened the picks for a new crew in Blackthorn. Good steel. Good men." He pauses, letting the silence settle. "The picks came back. The men didn't. The Council called it a cave-in." He shakes his head. "Nobody wanted to admit something else might be down there. Bad for business."

  The drunk beside him shivers. "S'not the mine, Ward. It's the forest. Evershade. It calls you. Promises you things."

  Ward scoffs. "Gods, Rory, not the whispering trees again."

  Rory takes another swig, looking Ward dead in the eye. "My cousin got lost in there this summer. We thought the Snatcher had him. Came back three days later with a twig in his hair and a new outlook on life. Said he was in love."

  Rory raises his mug in a toast. "The family's real happy for him. They're to be wed come spring."

  Ward just stares at him for a long moment, then turns his back. Rory's expression doesn't change, but his hand trembles just enough to make the ale in his mug slosh.

  In the corner, a frail old woman stands, her sudden movement commanding the room's attention despite her fragile frame.

  Her husband puts a hand on her arm. "Maud, don't."

  Maud ignores him, her voice steady. "My husband saw the Queen ride through this village seventy years ago. Said she looked the same then as she does now. That kind of longevity requires payment." She looks around the room, her eyes burning. "Her tower in Islyr glows for a reason. What if she's the Snatcher? Taking people for her experiments?"

  I listen as they spin their tales, forcing ale past the tightness in my throat.

  "Forget the Queen," Ward grunts, dismissing Maud's theory with a wave. "The real trouble didn't start in some northern tower. Started right here, we all know that. Moved south to Larkvale, then Riverfield, now it's at Ashenbrook. It's creeping north again. That's what we should be worried about."

  Rory squints at Ward. "If the Snatcher has been in the south all this time, why are we the ones hiding?"

  Maud's voice cuts through the low drone of the tavern. It isn't loud, but every head in the room turns. "Because the story that started it all still keeps us awake at night."

  Her eyes lose focus, fixed on something none of us can see. "Those mine disappearances were easy to explain away. But what happened to that young man from Blackthorn five years ago." Her voice thins. "That was different."

  Young man from Blackthorn. Five years ago. It's him. Eli. They all remember.

  "That was when we understood. Something was hunting us, and the road between our towns became a wall."

  Her words dig up a memory I didn't know was buried. The bottom of a deep, dark place. No way out. Water seeping into my boots. And the Voice, a presence in my mind where before there had only been silence. It was a quiet intrusion, a pressure like a thumb pressed against my brain. 'You are empty now. Go and be filled.'

  I shudder, pulling my cloak tighter. The memory of the cold water is so real it feels like my boots are wet right now.

  A heavy silence follows. Ward breaks it. "We hide because we learnt our lesson," he grunts. "The south has not."

  Derrick sets down the mug he has been polishing. The click draws every head.

  His eyes sweep past Ward and land on me. "All that travelling," he says, his voice low. "It makes you a target."

  Grace shrinks from the pressure of his focus. "Or it makes us sheep in a pen."

  Ward slams his empty mug on the bar, making Grace jump. "Better a sheep in the pen than a headless chicken in the road." He looks around the room, meeting every eye. "We know our neighbours. How many strangers pass through a southern town in a day?"

  Five years ago. That's when the road from Blackthorn became a wall. Alistair was just a lad then. How many here would recognise the man he's become? None, I'd wager. So what drove him to break five years of quarantine? To walk the forbidden road?

  What did you die for, Alistair?

  An ache spreads from the pit of my stomach.

  He died for me.

  I watch them. Vera, her face unmoving. Ward, staring into his empty mug. Grace, twisting her blue wool cloak into a knot. Maud, her hand white where she grips her husband's arm.

  The ache in my stomach deepens, a cold, possessive pulse.

  A shape flashes behind my eyes, unbidden. A single, undulating wave. ?. It is a concept, pure and all-consuming. Hunger. Untapped resource.

  My own mind, scrambling to name the alien feeling, offers a translation. A crude and brutal one.

  Skins. Waiting.

  No. They have names. They are not skins.

  The pressure in my stomach surges in reply. One that my mind again struggles to frame, spitting out another set of inadequate, childish words.

  Their lives are so small. So easy to take.