Valmire: The Halfblood Pact

The night that should have been quiet had become something else entirely.

Gunshots and screaming tore through the gaps between the old houses, bleeding through walls of rotting wood. The smell of gunpowder hung thick in the air, bitter and metallic, tangled with dust and the damp breath of earth trembling beneath hurried feet.

Inside the darkened house, Serena Russel pressed her back against the corner of the wall. Her chest heaved in short, uneven bursts, each breath harder to catch than the last. Her eyes swept the room in restless arcs, landing on every shadow as though the walls themselves might cave in at any moment.

Across from her, Anthony Adler stood with his jaw set and his hands gripping her shoulders. Steadying her, or trying to.

"What do we do, Tony?" Serena whispered. "We can't keep hiding in here."

They looked at each other. Fear and fury lived in the same breath between them. They both knew who was behind this. There was only one name that fit.

"It's him," Tony said. Low. Certain. Burning.

"I can smell him too. There's no question."

Outside, footsteps drew closer. The floorboards gave a faint, telling shiver.

"Mom?"

The small voice cut straight through them. Evelyn, their daughter, seven years old, had wrapped both arms around her mother's waist, her small body shaking.

"Hey." Serena pulled her in close. "It's okay."

Tony watched them. For just a moment, something in him faltered. Then another round of gunfire cracked through the night and he remembered where they were.

"We have to go help them, Serena."

"But..." Her voice broke. She looked down at Evelyn trembling in her arms. She's too young for this, Serena thought. She can't understand.

"Evelyn needs to hide. In the chest." Tony's voice was firm.

"What if they find her?" Serena's arms tightened. "I can't lose her. Not again."

"We don't have a choice. If we don't go out there, the Hima won't stand a chance."

Serena went quiet. She knew he was right. She hated that he was right.

Slowly, she knelt in front of Evelyn and tried to smile through the blur gathering at her vision.

"Mom and Dad are going to be right back, okay? Everything's going to be fine. I promise."

"But Mom..."

"Whatever happens," Tony said gently, crouching to her level, "do not come out of that chest. Do you understand me?"

Evelyn nodded. Her chin trembled.

With hands that wouldn't stop shaking, Serena led her to the old wooden chest in the corner. Large enough to hold her. They had hoped they would never need it.

"Listen to me." Serena knelt, holding Evelyn's gaze. "Mom and Dad love you so much."

Evelyn threw her arms around her and held on.

Serena pressed her lips to the top of her daughter's head and let herself stay there for one breath longer than she had. Then she remembered.

"Wait." She unclasped the necklace from around her own throat. A small pendant, shaped like a drop of blood. She fastened it carefully around Evelyn's neck. "Keep this safe, Eve. Don't give it to anyone. Not anyone."

Evelyn's eyes dropped to the necklace. She didn't know what it was.

"Okay, Mom," she said quietly.

"I love you, Eve."

"I love you too, Mom."

Serena smiled. The tears came, just for a second, and then she closed the lid. The heaviness of it nearly stopped her. But there was no other way.

CRASH.

The front door gave. Tony was already on his feet, jaw locked, eyes blazing.

"Serena. Now."

She cast one last glance at the chest, murmured the protection spell low and deliberate, layering it over the wood, over the scent, over everything that might give Evelyn away. Please, she thought. Please let it hold.

The door burst open.

They came in armed with silver swords. Serena and Tony knew exactly what that meant. The fight that followed was brutal and desperate. Two against many, and still they fought, for their people, for the Hima, for everyone who had already fallen.

Inside the chest, Evelyn watched through the narrow gap between the planks.

She couldn't look away.

The blades found her mother first. Multiple strikes, all at once, and Serena went down. Tony's voice tore out of him, raw and breaking. He raised both hands, the incantation ripping from his throat. The force of it threw the attackers back across the room.

Serena lay still. Her chest barely moved.

Evelyn pressed both hands over her mouth. The sob had no sound. She wouldn't let it out. Her eyes burned and her whole body shook and she could not look away.

"I'll kill every last one of you," Tony snarled.

Then.

BANG.

The sound cracked through the room like something that could never be undone. Tony lurched backward. He fell.

A figure stepped through the doorway.

The man in the red cloak walked in like he owned the silence, stepping over the bodies without a second glance. He stopped when he reached Tony, half-collapsed on the ground, Serena motionless beside him.

"All that noise," the man said mildly, "for this."

"Go to hell," Tony rasped.

"This is your last chance. Tell me where Evelyn is and I'll let you live." His voice dropped, quiet and precise. "Where is she?"

Tony laughed. Quiet, bloodied, and completely unafraid.

"I would die a hundred times before I let you anywhere near my daughter."

The man raised the silver sword.

"What a waste, Tony." His voice was almost soft. "Say goodbye to the daughter who's watching you die."

The blade came down.

Tony's blood spread slow and terrible across the floor. But even then, even with the light leaving his eyes, he was smiling. Faint and satisfied and utterly unbreakable.

"You'll never..." His voice dropped to nothing. "Never find her..."

His eyes closed. The sound his body made against the floor was final in a way that nothing else that night had been.

Inside the chest, Evelyn had stopped breathing.

Her chest felt like it had caved in. Her eyes stayed fixed on the gap in the wood. On the floor. On the blood that wouldn't stop spreading.

Mom. Dad.

The words didn't make it out. She had her hands pressed so hard against her mouth that her fingers had gone numb, and still a sound escaped. Small. Broken. The smallest possible piece of the grief tearing her open from the inside.

It was enough.

The man in the red cloak went still. Slowly, he turned, his gaze moving across the room until it landed on the wooden chest in the corner. On the narrow gap between the planks. On the pair of eyes looking back at him.

His mouth curved.

"Found you."