The light through the front window cut across the floorboards in sharp, dusty bars as the heavy boots stopped right before the threshold. Hunter materialized out of the shadows by the potted ferns, his tall frame blocking the narrow gap between the counter and the display shelves with absolute finality. I kept my hand hovering above the sink, listening to the tiny, metallic scratch of Levin’s diamond tool against the glass in the back room. Outside the beaded curtain, an old voice rasped a warning that brooked no argument. “Move aside, shadow, or I’ll test how well you heal in the midday glare.” Hunter didn't draw a blade, but his knuckles clicked as he gripped the edge of his tailored coat. “The shop is closed to the high council today, Elder. Take your grievances back to the vault.”
“My grievances are sitting on every empty table in our domain while our children starve in the dark,” the intruder snapped back, shoving past the heavy velvet drop cloth before Hunter could catch his shoulder. The elder was an ancient creature with skin the color of parched parchment and a long wool coat smelling faintly of dry crypt dust. He blinked against the sunlit air of the shop, squinting until his rheumy eyes landed on the back room doorway where I stood. In his trembling, clawed hand, he clutched one of the glass bottles Levin had just finished engraving.
The crimson liquid inside caught the midday glare, burning with a steady, unearthly glow that made the elder’s breath catch in his throat. He looked down at the bottle, then dropped heavily to his knees on the wooden planks with a dry, rattling thud.
“Forgive us, Majesty,” the old man whispered, his forehead nearly touching the dust between his boots. I stared at him, my fingers curling into the damp canvas of my apron as the sheer weight of his surrender settled over the room. For three centuries, those elders had looked down their noses at my botanical experiments, calling my work an unholy waste of time that weakened our bloodline. Now he was kneeling in broad daylight among my hanging ferns, clutching a glass flask like a dying man grasping for river water. “We thought you were squandering the court's reserves on foreign vanities,” the elder murmured, his voice cracking with an old, jagged shame. “We were blind. All of us.” Levin stopped his rhythmic scratching in the back room, the silence stretching out between us like a tightened bowstring.
“Stand up,” I said, my voice dropping into the cold, level register I used when executing royal decrees. The elder didn't move, keeping his grey head bowed toward the floorboards while his fingers tightened around the glass.
“The others sent you here to test me,” I continued, taking a slow step out of the back room to stand beside Hunter's unyielding shoulder. “They want to know if this miracle can feed an army without turning our stomachs.” The elder looked up then, his eyes bright with a desperate, terrifying hope that chilled me faster than any blade.
“They half want to overthrow you if the flavor fails to match real prey,” he admitted without hesitation, his honesty brutal and complete. “The young ones are sharpening their daggers for the solstice. But if you can produce enough of this exact vintage within four days, the majority will drop their swords and swear fealty to your crown.”
Levin stepped out from the shadows of the back room then, his long light green hair catching the sunlight that filtered through the glass bottles on the counter. He didn't look at the kneeling elder, fixing his gaze instead on the silver leaf pattern he had carved into the floorboards near my boots. His presence in the room felt like a sudden, rushing tide that threatened to wash away every defense I had spent centuries building against my own kind. I knew what the elder was asking for, and I knew what the cost would be if I failed to deliver the endless supply in time.