Ring of Fire
As soon as they returned to the Headquarters, Zack created a brand-new order. All activities not directly related to the upcoming fight were suspended. No school. Festivities had been rare before but were now nonexistent.
Children, the sick, and the elderly worked day and night, casting bullets and sewing armor of leather and thick fabric. Everyone between sixteen and seventy and healthy had to join the fight. Zack allowed the elderly to volunteer, but never the children. Estella, the brave and bright sixteen-year-old who had first come up with the idea of a rat farm before Myra’s trip to the Palace, pushed hard against this rule. She tried to grant everyone the right to join the battle and gathered supporters from the young and old alike, but Zack never gave in, much to Myra’s relief. She was certain Thea would have volunteered if given the chance.
All Warriors had double the usual training every day. Guns, crossbows, swords. Bare hands. Running, jumping. Climbing. Days and nights bled into each other, and all that Myra remembered was the constant pain in her arms, legs, and back. But then she would look at their schoolteacher, Grandma Pia, white-haired and wrinkle-faced, her arms barely thicker than sticks. She held up her gun and shot, again and again, each bullet moving closer to the target. Myra would stare at her and push on, until there was no unstrained muscle left to push.
Every evening she dragged herself to her cot, but instead of collapsing on top and going to sleep, she always pulled out her notebook from underneath her threadbare, moth-eaten blanket and stared at the pages.
Vlad’s book. Could she simply go on writing, as if nothing had changed? After everything she had learned about him? Could she twist her words and sentences so that they would fit the man he had once been, and the man he had become? The book centered on Theodora, a young Byzantine noblewoman. How had his view of his own character changed after he had become a vampire? What turns would this tale take if he could still write?
Tragedies big and small had filled the Prince’s past. His unfinished book was perhaps the smallest tragedy of all. And yet, it was the only one Myra had the power to change. And so, one night she opened the notebook to the first blank page and took the story in a new direction. Her words painted pictures of conflict and treachery, of hope and loss. Perhaps she would never see Vlad again after this battle. She would finish his book and give it to him before they parted ways.
But which story mattered more—the one she put on paper, or the one she created with her actions in the real world? Could any tale Myra wrote rival the one Vlad was weaving with his choices and his deeds? They were both storytellers—she with her pen, and he through his actions. He could never write in the way she did. But perhaps she could become an author of history, just like him.
Days turned into weeks, blending together in a red haze of training, writing, and pain. Until one day, Vlad arrived to take them beyond the circle of guards that surrounded the Wizard.
Only, he had no intention of taking her just yet. “I can only transport your people in small groups,” he said. “You need to be among the last. The army of guards is rotating—some of them have been to the Palace during your stay and might recognize you. I will take you only right before the battle.”
And so Myra stayed back, losing herself in training and writing, watching as Vlad came and went, always taking ten to fifteen Resistance Warriors away with him. Every time he returned, he brought news of their friends who had left. They fared well. They had not been discovered.
Zack left, and after him Sissi, Thomas, and Lidia. Soon, Myra had hardly anyone to keep her company, apart from the children and the sick and elderly. She talked to Thea often, but her cousin’s enthusiasm for the upcoming battle made her stomach twist into a knot. Thea wanted to fight. Vlad’s conversation with his firstborn daughter played inside her mind. If you say this, you are either a monster or a fool. What if someone attacked the Resistance while all the Warriors were gone? What if allowing Thea to fight was the only way to save her, as it might have saved Erniké so many centuries ago?
But these fears were meaningless—ancient spells guarded the Resistance, and only Vlad had succeeded in getting past them. The children would be safe.
Unless Vlad betrayed them…
She pushed the thought aside. It was too late to worry about that now—she had made the choice to trust him and would stick to it.
On the night of her planned departure, Myra stood in her cellar, illuminated by a single candle. She gazed at her small, hard cot, at the flimsy blanket covered in holes. The world would change after this battle. Would she ever come back to this place that had been her home for her entire life? To the place where she had first started to write?
She held her notebook pressed against her chest, Vlad’s finished novel inside. Of course she would return. She hid the notebook under the blanket as she had done many times before. She would return, and she would take it and give it to him.
The battle was in three days, and she would need all that time to reach the site by horse cart. At last, Vlad came to pick her up. She climbed into the back of a covered cart together with the handful of Warriors that still remained, and the Prince sat on the front bench and urged the horses forward.
Every time Myra lifted the flap, she saw a starry sky and thick darkness all around them. They stopped for breaks, and to get food and water. Soon, the stars gave way to thick grey clouds stretching over a stony desert.
They traveled for two nights and two days. On the third night, Vlad stopped the cart and walked to the back to talk to them. “We are approaching,” he said. “Stay inside and keep quiet.”
The cart resumed its trek but stopped again in a few hours. Myra heard muffled voices outside—Vlad was talking to someone. She saw the light of fires shining through the flaps. Curious, she took a cautious peek and froze. Tents and carts loaded with weapons stretched endlessly under the starry sky. Fires burned, and vampires walked among them, armed with swords, knives, and axes and dressed in armor. The ring of warriors guarding the Wizard. Myra had never seen so many vampires in one place, not even in the Palace. But Vlad would take them beyond this ring, and, if all went well, they would face only nine enemies.
But then what? How would they get out? The plan was to destroy the Wizard in daytime, so that the weather would become unstable and the outer ring of guards would scatter in fear. Myra had believed it would work when she’d heard the plan, but now, looking at this vast army, terror rose inside her.
A blond woman, dressed in black, caught her eyes. A woolen bracelet, red and white like blood drops over snow, encircled her wrist. One of Ila’s vampires. She seemed to be moving freely around. Had she integrated inside the camp and gained their trust?
Soon, the ring of fires, tents, and fighters was behind them, and Vlad stopped the cart. He came to the back and pulled the flap aside. “We are past the guards, but try not to wander around too much. Ila will pick you up at dawn.”
Myra’s eyes darted to the sky above. “Should we expect a golden sky or some other crazy spectacle to match the big battle tomorrow?”
He smiled. “I admit I was tempted. Sadly, it would raise too much suspicion, so I had to stick with boring old clouds. I have produced the yellow sky only a handful of times, and never over the Wizard itself. It would be a strange coincidence if I happened to do it exactly on the day when a group of rebels attacks.” He winked. “Practicality comes before drama.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Wow, Vlad. I never thought I’d hear you say that.”
“I suppose I will never stop surprising you,” he said and disappeared, as quickly as if he had been nothing more than a gust of wind in the night.
Myra blinked and stared into the darkness, where he had been a moment ago. The starry sky stretched above her. They still had a few hours until dawn, when the WeatherWizard would cover the sky with clouds for the very last time.
She stepped out of the cart to stretch her legs and took a few steps away from the fires in the distance. Myra stared at the stars, the many constellations she now recognized after all the lessons the Prince had given her, and took a deep breath of the fresh night air. So clean, it seemed to purge all the filth that had clung to her lungs after almost two decades at the Resistance.
Myra gasped at the sudden cold touch of metal to her throat.