We trudged through the woods: five people on horseback and one vampire to lead them. There was a trail, sort of. It was disused, hard to notice, harder still to follow without accidentally going off-track. Some trampled grass here. Slightly more packed earth than usual over there. Those were the only signs.

The state of the trail was why I had replaced Irina as the person to lead everyone else. The trees were all alike, and the clouds still shrouded the world in oppressive darkness. If you closed your eyes for even a second, stopped paying attention for even a moment, then you were likely to get turned around. Only my superior senses kept us from ending up hopelessly lost.

I did not want to lead. Angry silence followed after me, most of it Irina’s. Trailing after her, the three other Inquisitors. My dad, last of all. I would much rather have been back there with him, but he would not let me.

We hadn’t spoken. Not one word. Occasionally, I felt his attention, him trying to distinguish my shape throughout all of this darkness, but every time I glanced his way he shied away. Every time I called out to him, he flinched. When I had been forced to take the lead, he had moved to the back of the line, as far away from me as he could get.

I attempted one more hope-torn glance at him.

He urged his horse on until it pressed close to the one before it. The part of me I could no longer deny identified it as a subconscious attempt to remain close to the safety of the pack. Even when it was so dark he could barely tell where I was, he still recognized that a predator was tracking him.

Predator.

Me.

My dad’s horse bristled, an angry shaking of the head that tested the control of its rider. These horses were all full-blooded coursers, just like the horse I had eaten. They weren’t tame and lame animals that never acted out. These horses required their riders to be firm, to lead.

I did not want my dad to ride that close to the other horse, because he wasn’t a good enough rider for it. I wanted him closer to me, because he was the weakest of the pack and shouldn’t be on the outside of it. I wanted him closest of all, because he is my dad and I wanted to protect him and he… him fearing me like this was worse than the weeks I had spent in that nightmare hole.

In startling contradiction, I wanted him far away because I was not safe to be around. I wanted him further still because then he would be isolated from the pack. I wanted him furthest of all because the only reason he was in this predicament was my own foolish idiocy.

My fault.

If only I had stayed home. If only I had listened to him, then none of this would have happened. We would have still been a happy family. He, alive. Me, trapped, caged by the four suffocating walls of a too-small home, a predator snapping and snarling at the unfairness of her prison, longing for the wild and free.

Predator.

Me.

Again.

I flexed my claws and balled my hands into fists so tight that talon pierced flesh. A painful and bloody reminder of my true nature. It was so easy to care, to feel, to fall into that same trap all over again. These fake emotions, I had cultivated them to the point where this anguish felt too real. So I had to keep reminding myself. Over and over.

Cunning monster.

Not a distraught little girl.

We weren’t safe yet. Not by far. Until we were, the ruthless predator that had broken out of my pasty shell of pretend-humanity had to stay out. Maybe I would never lock it away again. And maybe I should stop wallowing in self-pity and start getting answers.

“Irina?” I tried to keep my tone gentle as I cast a quick look behind me.

The furious Inquisitor worked her jaw and continued staring ahead, over me, past me, into the darkness. She worked the reins in a way that gave her horse no direction but still presented the illusion of being too occupied to answer me.

She had been like that for the quarter of a bell or so we had been walking, ignoring every attempt I made to talk to her. I could feel her holding back, keeping in the anger and the grief that wanted to come pouring out again. At least this time, she did not shoot me a murderous glare. Hopefully, it meant I finally had a chance to hear her out.

“Why…” I tried, ever so gently, allowing for a short silence after that first hint of question to gauge her reaction. “Why was I captured instead of killed?”

Despite trying to be quiet, my whispers still sounded too loud in this continued tense silence, too offensive, too grating.

The leather of Irina’s gloves creaked as she balled her fists even tighter. Twisting lips, widening eyes, flared nostrils, a grimace. A raft of emotions washed over her face in rapid succession. Fresh tears dampened her cheeks. With a quick swipe of a knuckle, she wiped them off. Fingers pinching her eyes closed, she turned to face me.

Hollow eyes bored into me when she opened them again. “You have no idea how terrifying you are, do you?”

Anguish twisted my heart and I leaned to the side, looking past the train of horses at my dad. He, not seeing me but feeling my gaze all the same, quickly cast his eyes down to the ground.

“Reports about your interrogations are classified, but word spreads all the same,” Irina continued mirthlessly, “You arrived, they gave you blood, and you spat it out.”

I remembered that. Sort of. That was how I had woken up in that pit. The Creeping-vines predator's little Spring-chicken assistant had been standing at the rim of the oubliette, pouring blood all over my face from all the way up there. Human blood. Disgusted, I had spat it out. Oh, how naive I had been, thinking I was above that. Injured as I was, trapped in that Tonaltus field, it hadn’t lasted long at all. Soon after, I’d ended up licking that blood off the floor.

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“They dangled your father over your pit, and you cried and begged and pleaded not to hurt him. Reports of Birnstead, an entire town and nothing but an enthralled pig.”

Nothing but a pig. Only Aunt Reya’s pig, the one she had suggested to me after I had denied her offer of chickens. She had incessantly pestered me with her proposal, every single time I came out of the forest with a meal of blood-drenched rabbits, until I finally, reluctantly, accepted.

And even though it had disgusted me, doing that to the animal, feeding on it every handful of days, Irina was right. That single enthralled pig was all the Inquisition would have found in Birnstead. No corpses, no human thralls, no plots or schemes. A vampire, right under their noses, hidden for decades on end, without a single sinister plan that they could see. That would... it would terrify them. How many other vampires had they missed? How many people had been compromised? How many thralls positioned in vital places?

None. Not a single person in Birnstead had been enthralled, yet all of them had let me live amongst them, knowing what I was. They would not understand. Even I could not understand. So much food and I had left all of it uneaten.

What had the Inquisition done when they didn’t find the answer they expected?

Threaten? Torture?

I cared for those people. I never wanted anything bad to happen to them. But I stayed all the same. Those villagers and I both judged the risk of my stay and considered it worth taking. We judged wrong.

I had asked Sung if they had harmed the people of Birnstead. It had only been an impulse, fueled by my anger for Arrin. But the Spring-chicken assistant had reacted to that question. She had been so shocked, so surprised. So… guilty?

Oh no.

Oh no, no, no.

“Your father, only just getting his bearings after we unchained him, terrified, trying to keep his distance, and you ignored it and sobbed all over his chest.” Irina’s words tumbled over each other, each one louder than the next, anger and grief taking over. “You. Killing! My Gods! Damned! Husband! Claiming him as food! Nothing but a feral sarding animal! And still, those sad little eyes of yours begging me to understand!”

An arm wrapped around my shoulder. Twisted me around. Pulled me off my feet. Slammed me against a tree. An abandoned horse gave an indignant whinny. People were shouting in surprise. Irina was on top of me. She had me pinned against the trunk of the tree. Was snarling into my face.

Foolishly challenging me!

I hissed in response. Fangs bared. A low growl escaped my throat. A challenge met. The prey was forgetting its place. I would—

“Tina!” Dad’s shout slipped from angry straight to anxious. Then his sudden cry of alarm was drowned out by panicked screaming from his horse.

Clawing my talons into Irina’s armor, I dragged her out of the way, and dove under her arm at the same time. I reached for the reins of the horse that barreled through the spot she was standing in only a moment ago. As the animal bunched its muscles, ready to buck, I pulled down and back on the reins, forcing its nose towards me and then to the side, sending us both in a tight spiral dance.

My dad flailed atop the horse, panicked “whoas” escaping his mouth as the reins slipped out of his hands and he reached for them again in haste. As if by some miracle, he remained in the saddle, probably only saved by my quick reaction stopping the courser from rearing up.

“Dad?” I squeaked out as I slipped to the other side of the horse and repeated the gesture that prevented the animal from bucking and asserted my dominance.

“I’m alright, Turnip,” Dad’s breath came fast and ragged, clearly indicating he was anything but alright. “I’m alright.”

His voice sounded so much like he was failing to convince himself that I looked up at him in concern. He had even used that nickname he knew I hated. I was right. He hadn’t ridden in far too long. He had barely sat on a horse when he had taught me to ride three winters ago, and the time before that must have been before I was born. And now, weakened from imprisonment and malnutrition, he did not have this horse under control, and he was trying desperately not to show it.

Feeling a frown settle on my face I patted his leg. “Scoot back.”

“Tina?” His face twisted in worry and fear, and this time it wasn’t from the horse.

“You’re going to get hurt, Dad.” I cast my gaze down because I could not stand to look at his reaction. It was a futile attempt to ignore his fright of me. The taste of it tickled my nose, and that only brought it into starker focus.

“Valentina…” he hesitated, clearly searching for an excuse, any excuse to not have a dangerous predator like me close to him, but not finding any. “I have it under control.”

“Vale,” I corrected angrily. No longer waiting for him to grant me space, I heaved myself into the saddle right in front of him.

When he shuffled further back, away from me, I snatched hold of his frigid gooseflesh arms and guided them around my middle. “I know I smell rank, Dad, but that’s no reason for you to risk falling off. I’ll wash up at the first river we cross, alright?”

I hated my excuse as soon as it had left my mouth. My words were perpetuating his lie, filling in for the excuses he failed to come up with. It wasn’t the dirt and grime caking me that bothered him. It was the blood. It was that I had fed on Piers’ corpse right in front of his eyes. It was that I snarled and snapped like a feral beast when Irina lunged at me.

Gods, I was such a mess. I hadn’t reacted this instinctively to a threat since… since I had decided to become a hunter and Dad had taught me to fight. I was slipping. I was slipping so, so bad.

And nothing confirmed that more than Dad’s arms closing around my waist like he was wrapping them around a rabid bear about to snap his head straight off. Like I wasn’t even his daughter anymore, but the vampire he should have killed when it was nothing but a harmless babe fresh from the womb.

His reaction to my nearness was so visceral that I let go of his wrist. It made everything worse because that made him relax ever so slightly. Instinctively, I reached for his arms again. I couldn’t lose him. I couldn’t lose my dad. I wouldn’t lose anyone ever again.

His icy, too-fast breathing caressed the top of my head. His raging heartbeat hammered against my back. Underneath the flabby weakness of his skin, cold muscles stiffened. His arms trembled, and his whole body shivered with both a desire to pull back and the fear of the consequences if he did.

Caressing the erect hairs of his arms, I cataloged the texture of his spotted, parchment skin to organize my thoughts. I couldn’t not be distracted by it. His age. He was so old and frail now, and I couldn’t think of when it had happened. Surely all of this aging can’t have merely been the time he had spent in that cell. As far back as I remembered he had always been my dad, young and spry and deliciously tempting. Seeing him like this, as if he’d gained twenty years since I had left him a year and a half ago was wrong.

He was supposed to be my dad. He was supposed to see me grow up. Instead, I was seeing him grow old. I was only 24. Winter now. 25. Yet I looked like a ten-year-old kid. I wasn’t ready to lose him.

Futile thoughts. The nervous tension in his posture, the harried tempo of his breathing, the way he flinched at my merest touch. I had already lost him. All I could do was pretend that some of this distance between us had been steadily growing ever since I walked out on him two springs ago. That this wasn’t merely a sudden change, caused by my own inhuman actions. That these two years away from home had simply caused us to drift apart. It was a far kinder delusion than the truth.

Irina, having climbed back to her feet, dusted herself off as she walked past. “You’re so much like other vampires. And you’re not. And you have no idea how bloody, sarding, terrifying you are,” she snarled at me as she got back on her horse.

She was right. I have no idea. I thought I understood people’s fear of what I was. But now, with my dad so close, with his terror and disgust wrapped so firmly around me, with the warmth of family further away than ever, I was beginning to see just how little I really knew.