Fuming, I picked up the bolt that was lodged in the dirt. This had been my third miss now. My third gods-be-damned miss. I was hungry, I was tired, I was fed up with everything, and the food just would… Not… Do… As it were told!

Seriously! Just don’t dodge! How hard can that be?

Or when you do then at least dodge in the direction of the bolt, you stupid foxes!

Or maybe learn to aim, Vale?

“Raaaagh!” I screamed and slammed my head into the nearest tree trunk. Now I was even beginning to hear my own thoughts in Reya’s grating, condescending voice.

Yes, Vale.

You’re pathetic,Vale!

Trust, Vale!

That stupid bitch, she had gotten to me. She really had.

And now my fuming and screaming is chasing off the wildlife.

I stomped the ground in frustration, barely checked myself from throwing the crossbow to the ground. Fern observed my incompetent rage with utter passivity.

Why don’t you do it, hunt a fox, if you’re so much better than me, I glared at my horse.

She shook her head and whinnied as if to say, I eat grass and hay, you Silly Bean.

Great, now even my horse is calling me a runt.

Temper, Vale!

“Get out of my head!” I shouted into the night. Somewhere in the distance a lone creature I had not yet managed to scare away scurried off.

I can’t, Vale.

I’m only doing you a favor, Vale.

I leaned back against the tree I had been abusing and let my weary body sink to the ground. The second my ass hit the dirt I recalled the image of Reya patting down her rear before she sat down. How pathetic. Even sitting down I could no longer do without Reya’s taunts haunting my thought.

I huffed, laid down the crossbow, and wrung the frustration out of my hair. I had to get my act together, catch myself something I could drink dry, and get some serious distance between me and Birnstead. Maybe I even needed to spare some attention for Fern, because I did not know if anyone in Birnstead had taken care of her in any way besides stable her for the night.

Has she even been fed?

And I needed to do all of that, preferably before sunrise, before I did something drastic, like returning to Birnstead simply to sink my fangs into Reya’s neck.

Give yourself some more credit, Vale.

It wasn’t my fault. It had been the hunger. I had been so distracted by the hunger that she had been able to play me. The hunger always made me lose focus, made me slip up in small and insignificant ways.

Except I was lying to myself. The first part of my exchange with her, when I had thought I was in control, had been so exhilarating that I hadn’t thought about the hunger at all. I hadn’t thought about hunger, or food, or eating a single time. Not even all the way at the start, when I had told her it was safer for her if I remained on Fern.

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She had manipulated me, made me lie, right from the start. And then to think that I’d come here to get away from the lies. This was her fault, all her fault. I should never have saved Uncle Tare, should never have gone back for the ahuizotl, should never have returned here in the first place.

And so in a way it was also a little bit my fault. I had been so stupid, letting myself get baited by that longing. There were no happy places for me. Not ever. I had let down my guard, and now I was paying the price.

The worst part of it all was that I still did not know what she had been trying to achieve.

Reya convincing me that I could stay with them?

The very notion was absurd. Meg and Gery, maybe they would have accepted me. Shae, I did not know, she wasn’t anything like the little girl I remembered. The wife, she had been so relieved and thankful, also a maybe. I had promised her I would check up on Uncle Tare in the morning. It was yet another lie they had forced out of me.

Everyone else in that village, I would not trust them as far as I could spit, let alone with my life.

Reya telling me to get lost and stay lost?

Completely redundant. Onar and Limn had made it abundantly clear that I was not welcome. The only thing Reya had added to that was a warning that she’d report me to the Inquisition. But wasn’t that always a given? Spot monster, report monster. Especially a vampire. Doubly so for a vampire. I wasn’t even anything like a vampire!

Reya asking me to stop lying and deceiving people?

Ridiculous. She thought I did this for fun? I lied to survive. I lied for the simple right to live just like everyone else. I lied for every breath that I took. I lied with every breath that I took. Didn’t she see that I was trying to get away from that?

I hadn’t ever lied in Birnstead. Except that once, at the end. Sorry Suri. But that was it, only that once, and it hadn’t been intentional. Only ever that one lie. And maybe joining in on Gery’s lie, but that wasn’t my own lie. Telling that woman from the bunkhouse that I wasn’t hungry wasn’t a real lie. I couldn’t have come out and told her that I needed blood instead of chicken broth. That would have been so much worse than a simple white lie.

That was all.

Those were the only lies.

I took a heaving, shuddering breath. I wanted tears but they did not come.

Those weren’t all the lies.

Oh gods, I’d lied so much to all of them.

I hugged my knees, lowered my head, and whimpered. I had lied to the people I cared about. I truly was a monster. The claws on my feet scraping against the inside of my shoes only served to remind me of that. I reveled in the miserable feeling that reminding myself of those claws gave me, began toying with the claws on my hands in the same way I was toying with those on my toes.

Eventually, the hooting of an owl pulled me out of my misery. I could not keep sitting here indefinitely. There was a lot I still needed to do if I wanted to be gone by dawn. Every second I tarried would only make the night shorter.

A glance at my horse revealed that Fern was already asleep, having long given up on me. So I left her be and went to tend to my hunger. Calmer now, I managed to catch myself not just a fox, but a badger. Even that larger prey didn’t provide much sustenance after how close to my limits I had been, but it would at least tide me over for a little while.

Freedom of hunger brought me clarity. All those things Reya had told me, none of them mattered because I was leaving. What did I care if people from a village I would never return to thought ill of me? What did I care if there were three people instead of two that would report me to the Inquisition? After Ostea all they needed was one single credible report to investigate. The extra two were irrelevant.

Why did I even care about being accepted by random strangers? If I wanted acceptance all I needed to do was head home, seek out my dad and Uncle Hadrian. Yes, that was exactly what I would do. A couple of weeks traversing the wilds to shake off pursuers, and then I’d head straight home.

Content with my resolve I settled down for a short break. I would let Fern rest for now, provide a normal daytime rhythm for my horse, and set out at dawn. But first, before I allowed myself a moment of peace, I pulled out my amulet and begun pouring Atlus into it. The runes had already been close to spent when I had stepped out of Uncle Tare’s place last morning. Without recharging them now, going out into the sun once more might be my last mistake.