I can only theorize on death, though it seems I've had a few brushes with it. I remember nothing of it, except a restful silence. Nearly poisoned to death by a lover, tortured to the edge of endurance, and then the black spirit river itself tried to take my life. There is power in three, so let that be the last time.

  From the journal of Drago? Buh?scu

  Consciousness swam back in pieces. The lack of sensation in his arm. His brain pounded the shell of his skull, timed to the beat of his heart. The dull sensation of something over him. Abrupt thoughts intruded. The revenants. Chinhua.

  When his eyes finally opened, light lanced his vision, forcing him to squint. He was in a dim place, the scent of balsam and dust thick in the air. A fire burned somewhere near. His body felt muted and weighty, his left arm completely numb. Licking dry lips, he forced his right elbow under himself. Something slid away from his skin.

  A worn wool blanket. His scarred flesh startled him when he looked down. Deadened hands fumbled at the cover.

  “Awake, I see.”

  The voice.

  Dragos's gut clenched. His eyes stung with a sudden surge of too many emotions. He forced the name out of his parchment-dry throat. “Zgavra?”

  The creature leaned into his narrowed focus. It sat upon the wooden frame of the bed he was on. Orange eyes and scaled muzzle, wild mane and carnivore’s smile. Nothing was more welcome a sight than the zmeu.

  A cup touched his lips. Water trickled into his mouth and down his chin. His hands clasped around Zgavra’s scales, trembling to hold it close as he drank. Sweet. Life-giving. It trilled through his blood a moment later, and Dragos sighed.

  Sudden tears blurred the monster’s face. Dragos's lip quivered, and he slapped his chest with his palm. He shuddered a hard breath. Lost everything, again and again, and rarely felt sorry for himself. And yet, this? Why?

  Epiphany fell on his head like a hammer. Was there such a thing as tears of gratitude? He was soul-deep grateful for the creature. Where he was didn’t matter. What else moved in the world was beyond any care Dragos had, past the moment he realized it hadn’t left him to die.

  The zemu sat quietly watching him with expressionless irises.

  “I’m sorry,” Dragos blurted.

  The beast’s long snout tilted down, black lids flashing over orbs the color of a hearthfire. “I am as well. I left you to prove I could. I did what I wanted because I resented the shackles of your name-gift, but…”

  Dragos wiped his wrist under his nose, frustrated and disgusted at his own sniveling. The words the creature spoke, however, explained some things.

  “But?”

  “You gave me a name. It is burdensome—and precious.” The monster flung its gangly arms up and huffed. “Do you know how frustrating that is?”

  “I can imagine,” Dragos replied, a twitch of a grin starting on his face.

  “I just want to help you. Never in the ages of man have I wanted anything from a mortal…”

  “Besides wives,” Dragos supplied, his grin growing.

  If a dragon’s face could express annoyance, he was sure the monster’s would.

  “Which you’ve banned me from collecting,” the zmeu griped, arms crossing over its torso.

  Dragos wiped at his cheeks and chuckled. “That still works? I was sure the command would fade over time. I said it at sunrise and sunset when we were together, to be sure.”

  Zgavra’s claws tapped on its elbow spur. “You’re already making me regret saving you. And…” It cast a look over to a door.

  They were in a burdei. The surroundings snapped into recognition. The clay and stone chimney rose up into boughs of pine. Cobwebs lingered, a fine layer of dust lay over the empty shelves and the table pushed to the other side of the cramped room.

  “And?” Dragos asked when Zgavra’s pause lingered.

  “I brought the other. The one you’d protected until the end.”

  “She’s alive?” Dragos lurched up, head spinning as he reached for the beast’s shoulder to haul himself up.

  “Wait,” Zgavra said, gripping Dragos's arm. “She’s—not alive, exactly.”

  A flash of memory stilled Dragos. The revenants of Duala, Quillen, and the others sprang like a blade to jab him. He made himself ask.

  “Striga?” When he whispered the word, he meant the true meaning of striga, not the fearful use of the word, slung about without care of meaning. Something that lingered in the living world.

  Its wedge-shaped head bobbed. It got up and tossed a bundle onto his lap, then said, “Meet me in the barn.”

  It dissipated into smoke and drifted out through the crack beneath the rickety door. Dragos dressed with a miserable slowness. His left hand didn’t always respond, fumbling with buttons and ties, but it slowly improved as he fought with his garments.

  The clothes were plain and musty, like they’d been kept in a trunk for years. Dragos slipped off the bed and into boots just slightly too big. He saw no sign of the clothes or armor he’d been wearing.

  He held his palm up as he opened the door. Late afternoon light streamed over him. His skin tingled, itching as if he’d been bitten by a thousand black flies all at once. With a low hiss, he stepped up into the yard. The small farm was overgrown. Neglected. The barn sat empty, except for the figure in the doorway.

  Zgavra had transformed into a young man of similar build to himself, with a face close enough to his own that they could have been brothers. The zmeu leaned against a post, waiting. Black hair, the same wild mane its draconic form had, hid its eyes.

  Dragos took a deep breath, wincing against the itching sting. “Did you give me medicine that made me sensitive to sunlight?”

  “No. That’s from your brush with the Umbregrin, if I were to guess.” The zmeu ran fingers through its hair and examined him briefly with eyes disguised as a common brown. “I half-expected you to have lost more of your humanity.”

  Dragos paused at the shaded entrance of the barn. It was mostly open air, except for the back corner, which was fully walled in. A thick canvas tarp lay over a pile of straw. He frowned.

  “You said you had her. Where is Chinhua?”

  Zgavra nodded at the back corner and the tarping. “Under there. The sting you feel in the sun would set her on fire.”

  Dragos stepped into the relief of the barn’s shade. Zgavra caught his shoulder. “She’s not alive anymore, Dragos. Not human, but not like the revenants, either. I took her from the Umbregrin before it could change her completely.”

  It followed him in. Dragos wanted to dash over and rip the canvas away. He restrained himself, instead moving to kneel beside it. Tucking his unbound hair behind an ear to keep it from his face, he leaned down and gently lifted the corner.

  A feline hiss escaped from the lump under the tarp and he dropped the corner immediately.

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  “It’s alright, Chinhua. I’ll wait until tonight,” he said, rocking back on his heels.

  Straw shifted. Just before he pushed to a stand, the softest voice asked, “Julianos? Is that you?”

  He’d forgotten about the lie. It smarted worse than sunlight.

  Dragos lay flat on his belly on the straw, thrusting a hand beneath the tarp to find her. Cold fingers caught him, clutched at his wrist. She purred, “So warm.”

  “Are you alright? I mean, do you need anything right now? What can I do for you?”

  “Something hot to warm my bones. I ache, Julianos, chilled to the bone like a winter morning. I can feel the frost nipping at me. I can barely feel your hand in mine.”

  His heart squeezed at her longing voice. He wanted to crawl under there and wrap around her, to warm her as one would if it was winter. However. Late summer’s syrupy warm breeze washed into the barn, stirring the aged scent of animals long gone.

  “I’ll make you tea. Once the sun goes down, you can come out,” he said, glancing at Zgavra, whose shadow cast into the barn. Tense and watchful.

  “Trusting strigoi not to bite the hand that helps them,” it chuckled, shaking its head.

  Dragos shot it a sour look and tugged his hand free of Chinhua’s grip. “If the striga retains anything of its former self, then yes.”

  Zgavra stepped into the barn to offer Dragos a hand up. When he stood, Dragos looked him over again. Zgavra’s face split into a grin that was both charming and somehow wicked at the same time.

  As they walked toward the burdei, Dragos flicked a glance at it. “Is—is that how I am? How I look? How I act?”

  “We’re brothers, almost alike, so of course,” Zgavra responded, face turned to the sun, and jerked his chin toward the barn like a warning.

  The idea tickled at the back of his skull. Brothers. Well, he liked that better than when it pretended to be his father. That had been awful.

  “The rest of them… Were you able to save any others?”

  “How many claws do you think I have?” Zgavra snorted. “Just the two of you.”

  “What can I do for her?” There were no manuals in ?oloman?? that explained what to do with strigoi beyond their standard remedies of appease, banish, or destroy.

  “Let her exist, or kill her,” the zmeu said, tugging the burdei door to creak open on sagging hinges.

  Dragos paused, squinting through the lancing sunlight at the barn. “I almost thought I could—I mean, it’s stupid.”

  “Which part is?” Zgavra asked with exasperation in the wings of his words.

  “To dream of things not meant for me. I just met her,” Dragos exhaled more than said the last words.

  He pinched the bridge of his nose and shook his head. Stupid. Infatuation driven by loneliness, maybe. Having seen Julianos settled in a village with so much promise, with children and the glimmer of potential for more. It wasn’t jealousy that drove him into wanting to believe he could be with Chinhua and the others, even if only for a day or two.

  It was pure idiocy.

  The burn of Zgavra’s gaze sat on him almost as heavily as the sun. The monster’s expression was grave but sympathetic.

  “Desire is part of your nature, Dragos. It’s part of everything that moves, in all realms. Get inside and make her tea,” the zmeu said, giving him a light shove down the hardened clay steps.

  He did as he was told. A battered teapot was found, and water that Zgavra must have brought. His peddler’s box rested by the bed. He found herbs that would hopefully settle her, things that wouldn’t upset a striga’s constitution.

  Through his simple industry, he thought. Hands with fading numbness poured, mixed, and strained as his mind churned. If the Luminatori hadn’t taken his starlace, he might have been able to do something. Ease some of her imbalances.

  And the well. That conduit to the depths where the Umbregrin flowed had to be blocked off, and the surrounding area cleansed. The bodies of those he’d come there with had to be purified and prepared to never rise again. He had work to do.

  Zgavra kicked off its shoes and flopped onto the bed, hands tucked under its head. Dragos flicked a glance at its feet. What his used to look like before the torture. The wounds ached, still. He sighed and made himself some medicine with the freshly boiled water.

  “Why didn’t you come for me sooner?” Dragos asked. It wasn’t its fault. That time in the Palisades was made of his own misery and hubris. Yet, if it had been watching, why hadn’t it acted?

  Zgavra rolled on its side and propped its head on a hand. “By the time I returned, they’d already gotten you inside. It’s not that I could not get in, but some of the old blessings around that place would have made anything I did difficult. I almost set the whole place on fire.”

  Dragos stopped grinding Chinhua’s medicine and stared at it, wide-eyed.

  “I didn’t! Obviously,” it said. “Figured you wouldn’t like that.”

  Dragos grunted and nodded. He finished the tincture for Chinhua’s tea and spilled some into a clay cup. He downed the rest of his own pain medicine before he poured hot water into hers.

  “I followed. The knight and the child complicated matters, but you solved your issues. It’s what you like to do, isn’t it? Fix your own problems?” There was a note of sarcasm in its tone that Dragos didn’t like. Not that the creature was wrong.

  “I’m half stuffed with foolishness, Zgavra.” He shifted to face it, Chinhua’s cup in his palms. “I won’t refuse your help again, it was just…”

  “Heartbreak,” the monster nodded knowingly.

  Did it feel such things? It must.

  Dragos smirked sadly. “Yes.”

  He went out into the inferno of a yard, lush green grass belying the brutal shine of the blazing orb above. The welcome shadow of the barn eased the sting. Gaze fixed on the lump under the tarp, he said, “I’ve brought you hot tea.”

  The lump moved.

  “Thank you,” Chinhua’s muffled voice slipped from beneath the tarp.

  He sat beside it and lifted the edge to slide the cup under. She pulled back from the dim light that entered with his hand, so he dropped the edge of the tarp again. Her icy hands cupped his, taking the cup.

  Minutes passed. In the silence, he found a stressful impatience. “Does it help?”

  “A little,” she replied.

  “What do you remember?”

  “Too much,” she whispered. He barely heard it, even with his excellent hearing.

  “I told you my name was Julianos. I apologize for lying about that, but it was done to protect the cavaler whose name I carry,” Dragos said, picking at straw, splitting one into fibers, over and over, until it could be split no more.

  He moved on to a new straw when she said, “Oh.”

  Quiet settled again. He shredded another length of dry straw and brushed its gritty dry strands from his pants.

  “What is your real name?”

  A faint smile tugged, awkward in its discomfort. “Dragos Buh?scu.”

  “Dragos,” she murmured. “It fits you better.”

  An exhaled chuckle escaped him. “I guess. Chinhua, I’m going to go back to the well and…”

  “No! Don’t!” She cried, the dampening of the tarp barely containing her shout. “It’s too dangerous!”

  “If the Umbregrin still surges, it is. I’ll wait until it recedes and then take care of them.”

  “We should give them a proper burial,” she agreed. “And then after that, decide what to do about me.”

  His heart skipped. Something about the way she said it sounded ominous. “I’ll do what I can to help you, Chinhua. I promise.”

  “Give me your hand,” she asked, not a command, but a soft request, delivered like a prayer.

  Dragos slid onto his stomach and found her icy fingers beneath the tarp.

  Cold lips, slick as ice, touched his knuckles. A frigid thrill tingled up his arm, through his entire being. At that moment, he’d have killed himself just to be sure she persisted.

  He also knew that was wrong. Certain strigoi could be seductive. They hungered for the life force they are denied, and have ways of getting it. As her lips drew on his, he clenched his teeth and tore his hand away, heart aching to have done it.

  A faint hiss slithered after his hand, and a second later, a soft wail. “Oh, oh, I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to! I didn’t know that would happen!”

  “It’s alright,” Dragos murmured, reaching over the tarp to pat her. “It’s alright. We’ll get this all sorted out. Hush. Soon the sun will be down and we can talk properly.”

  “Dragos.”

  Zgavra stood behind him, having appeared like a ghost, though still wearing the form of his ‘brother’. It knelt beside him, and its fingers tangled in Dragos's hair. Dragos grabbed its wrist and met its gaze with a confused scowl.

  The monster snorted and reached around him with its other hand, grabbing the same hank of hair, tugging it forward. “Look.”

  In the tangled white, a few strands of red gleamed, bright as blood straight from the heart. The monster asked, almost accusingly, “Have you always had this?”

  Dragos stared at it, letting go of the beast in order to touch the red strands. Like Mirel’s. Like Hana, Stefan, and Toma. The mark of the Solomonari. His wondering gaze lifted to meet the zemu’s. He found a mirror there, surprise, wonder, and a hint of horror.

  “No,” he murmured.

  “Blood red, boy. If you survive, I may not resent my name-gift,” the monster grinned.

  Burdei: A type of pit-house or half-dug out shelter, combining sod house and log cabin build concepts.

  Strigoi: All manner of creatures with wounded souls. It could refer to the undead, to witches, or ghosts, depending on the context.

  Umbregrin: Dark spirit river

  ?oloman??: The Dark School, where Solomonari take moroi viu to learn their ways. It rests in the bowels of the Spineback Mountain, not far from the Embrace.