Page 78 of Vervain

Nightwalkers incline their heads, smiles on faces and awestruck wide eyes. Some mention how beautiful I am—beauty I never saw in myself until I came here. Others shrink back, still cautious, hiding in the darkness.

My hand tightens on Serun’s.

“Mumma, look!” a child holding a lantern says from the other side of the street, cherry cheeks flushed. He points to me, a smile brimming on his face. “M—” His mother scoops him up, and they hurry away before he can cross the street.

Nightwalkers on the main street go about their night, busy at the market stalls with their human Feeders. Hands reach for blood bags, and children—hard to find topside—run through the steam and along the metal-sheet flooring that covers the Undercity. Smiles reach eyes here, a stark contrast to the desperate looks I’m used to in the feeding ground.

And there our Goddess of Light was in the sky, if only for a few hours a day.

“Do you think she will return—Mother, that is?” I ask Serun.

“I’m hopeful,” he admits.

We head towards a building with one of those caged elevators outside that bypass the staircase. Loud banging comes from the floor above, piercing the air.

Nightwalkers waiting for the elevator don’t move when Serun guides us into the cage. Once he realises no one else is prepared to join them, he slides the door across and locks it in place. I grip the chipped, red-painted metal railing, while above, a light sways on a thin chain, a spider crawling over it.

An iron city. It’s the best way I can describe the Undercity. A place made of countless metals, filling the underground with an intricate structure of spiderwebbed beams. With it comes a constant buzzing in my ear from the ringing metal that intensifies the higher we go.

“Have the slayers been the real enemy all along?” I murmur, more to myself than anything.

“Humans should stop touching things they know nothing about. Once they do that, maybe Mother will have a reason to believe Kepler is worth saving.”

Since talking to Serun, I’ve learned a lot more about the world than I did from others in the feeding ground. In his eyes, Mother left after humans created vampirism.

A disease.

Then, to combat it, they created slayers.

Yeah, I can see Mother having had enough of the world if that were true.

The cage shudders. Serun slides the door open and waits for me to leave before he steps out of the elevator. We round the bend into an armoury and smithy, orange sparks flying. Swords, bows and arrows, and shields line the walls, shimmering in the dim light.

A man has his back to us as he hammers away at something, raising it high and slamming it down, grimy stains covering his broad arms.

While I wait at the entrance, my arms folded over a grumbling stomach, Serun coolly walks in and stands behind the man. Shadows split away from his cloak like vines, curling around the blacksmith, and he stills. In one swift motion, he spins, slashing with the hammer as though it is a broadsword. Serun’s shadows break away like broken ribbons, and a cruel laugh echoes, deep and devious.

Serun has a tormenting kink, I see.

The man flips his protective helmet up, and my eyes widen slightly to find the blacksmith is Devan. Tired eyes settle on me before they snap to Serun. He immediately drops the hammer and bows. “L-lord Serun, how can I be of service?” he stammers.

Serun’s long claws tap the nearby table lined with daggers. “Lucifer ordered a bow, and I also wanted to know if you have finished the sword I commissioned for my consort.”

Wait, what?

I dart a look between them. Does he remember that last time I had a sword, I shoved it through his chest?

Serun flashes me a smirk. He definitely heard that thought.

Devan rises abruptly and wipes his forearm across the grime plastering his face. “I finished Lucifer’s bow the night Maeve sent me the order. As for your Lady Consort’s, the design was challenging until you sent the drawing.”

Serun designed it? Curious.

“I started with the floral design on the hilt…” He crouches and drags out a long, rectangular crate, then places it on the table. “Making sure it would be light to wield.”

Devan opens the box and carefully lifts out the blade. It looks like the sword of rot, except a vervain pattern moves up the hilt and the centre of the blade and all the way to the tip.

Serun faces me. “What do you think, my kamai?”