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16
Three days passed, and Mina spent most of her time in bed, or at her window, glaring out at the starry sky. Lucy came and went, bringing her food, trying to coax her into some sort of conversation, but she had no will to participate. Her life had been shattered right before her eyes. Conversation and food wouldn’t fix that, and every time she closed her eyes all she could see was the king. He haunted her every thought, and her body ached for him.
On the fourth day of her self-imposed isolation, the door to her bedroom was thrown open. Mina jumped in bed and pulled the covers up to her chin as Harker came striding in with Lucy at his side, both of them in tight black leathers, laden with weapons.
“By the Crone, what are you doing here?” She hissed. “I’m not dressed.”
Harker laughed and threw a satchel down on the end of the bed. “I heard you wanted to train with the big boys and learn how to fight.”
Mina raised an eyebrow. “Excuse me, what?”
“Erik has instructed the two of us to teach you how to fight and defend yourself from…the monsters beyond the veil. Whatever, or whoever they may be,” Lucy explained. “He said you asked him if he would teach you, and he thought now might be a good time for you to start.”
Mina nodded slowly and slid her eyes from Lucy to Harker. “If you want me to get dressed, you’re going to have to step out of the room.”
He held up his hands, and sauntered back to the door, pausing just long enough to smile at her over his shoulder. “You have ten minutes, or I’m coming back in here, and dragging out.”
Mina glared at him. “The last man who put his hands on me without permission got stabbed. I’d think twice before you try to rush me.”
Harker laughed, and shut the door between them, leaving her alone with Lucy. Her cousin forced a smile to her face and began undoing the bag.
“It’s not as bad as it sounds, I promise. I think you might actually enjoy it,” she said.
“What kind of training am I in for?” Mina asked, fighting the urge to crawl back beneath the covers.
Looked up at her, flashing a wicked smile. “Oh, you’ll see.”
And see she did. Thirty minutes later the two of them flanked her as they walked down a hill on the far side of the city. The training grounds were situated on the side of the mountain. The barracks were built into the stone, and spread out across the grounds were men, women, wolves, Raven-kin, and other non-human races fighting and sparring with their hands, with weapons.
“So,” Mina sighed. “Where are we starting?”
In unison, the pair of them pointed away from the sparing grounds, to a space at the edge of the mountain where a group of other soldiers dressed in a similar fashion all stood milling about.
“That is where we’re starting,” Harker said, putting an arm around her shoulders. “You’ve been trained in weapons and hand to hand, but when it comes to fighting vampires, and monsters sometimes those things aren’t quite as useful as the ability to hide and improvise.”
“Ooookay,” she said, watching the soldiers wrapping colorful cloth around their belts. “What is it? What are they doing?”
“That team,” Harker pointed to the group she’d been examining. “Gets ten minutes to hide. Their colors are assigned, and when that team…” he pointed to the other group who all wore the same uniform, but with white bands around their biceps, “the seekers, find them, they will release smoke into the air indicating who was found. They also have ten minutes.”
Mina laughed. “I’m sorry, so it’s a game of hide and seek? Like when we were children?”
“Not quite,” Lucy laughed, looping their arms together. “Come with me. This round is about to begin, we can join the next one.”
“Ooookay.” Mina chuckled.
Lucy stopped just short of walking them right off the edge of the mountain and dropped down to sit on the very edge of the rock.
Mina clutched the ground and laughed nervously at her cousin. “You aren’t afraid of heights, I guess.”
“What’s the use in being afraid?” Lucy smiled. “We humans spend so much time being paralyzed by fear we forget to live. I know I’m guilty of it as much as you are, butwhat is the use? Life is too short.”
Mina laughed. “That was…profound.”
Lucy rolled her eyes and pointed to the group closest to them. Mina followed her finger and to her surprise, the soldiers were lining up in front of a tall wooden post, and from her new spot, she could see the thick rope coming out of the end, stretching down into the quarry below, disappearing into darkness. The first man in the line fastened a hook to the rope, and with a flash of faint violet light, he hopped from the edge and went humming down into the abyss.
Mina gasped, and watched as he traveled a hundred feet, three hundred feet, she couldn’t be sure, down to the top of what she realized upon closer inspection, lit by a few dozen torches laid sporadically around the condensed space, was a small village at the bottom of the quarry.
Dozens and dozens of houses were squeezed in tight together. The only sign of life in all of it was a single massive tree that served as the center of the town, casting a black shadow over everything. A dark spot, surrounded by torches on the ground.
