Silver Blood

The Great Moon drenched the elven capital in silver light. It was deep enough into the night that no one had any good reason to be awake. Maz certainly didn’t. He did, however, have a very wretched reason.

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He gently closed the door to the nobleman’s lavish room as he crossed over the threshold. He hadn’t received a name. It was supposed to make your first time easier, not knowing.

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He was painfully aware of how sweaty he was, could feel the slow stream running down his back, the wet patches growing beneath his armpits, the slick coating on his hands that transferred to the knife he gripped far tighter than was necessary. It was already a cold night. Add the wetness, and he was frigid. He pretended that was why his hands shook, that his breath came so unsteadily.

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He could see a bed, illuminated by a pool of cool moonlight pouring in from a small window. Someone lay in it, their blankets painted silver with moonlight, their chest slowly rising and falling.

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His nameless mark.

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Maz swallowed once, twice. Something from the dinner he’d barely touched must have lodged itself in his throat because there was a frustratingly unmoving lump. He stepped forward, avoiding the gaze of the watchful moon. With tremulous hands, he drew closed the curtains so that only a thin sliver of light entered the room, cutting across the noble’s pale throat.

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Another swallow. That lump was still there. He’d need to visit a healer after this. He felt sick, a sort of nausea radiating up from his toes and filling his chest, mingling with his thoughts.

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Maz shifted the knife in his hand—rather, Maz tried to shift the knife in his hand.

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He wasn’t used to being slick with sweat.

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His stomach dropped in tandem with the knife.

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Maz lunged down for it, catching the blade a hair’s breadth from the ground. He took a shuddering breath of relief.

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Then he saw the dark liquid budding up between his fingers. The blade. He’d caught the blade.

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The tip of his pinky finger fell to the ground with a sickening plop.

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Maz couldn’t quantify how long he crouched there, frozen in the darkness, staring at the mistake he’d made. Long enough for him to start hearing the sickening plip plip plip of his own blood pooling beneath him.

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A commotion sounded downstairs. Maz’s brain reactivated. Had he left the residence as he’d found it? Locked every door he’d unlocked? Concealed everything that might alert the guards?

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Stirred from his initial stupor, Maz lunged into the darkness, searching blindly for his missing flesh. He’d definitely need to visit a healer after this.

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He needed to go. Were the voices getting louder?

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Halfway out the window, Maz remembered what had brought him to this accursed room to begin with: the noble. If he lived, Maz starved. He turned, gripping a knife drenched in sweat and the wrong blood.

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The lump was still there. Maybe it would never leave.

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Anyone outside the window would have only heard a few gargled screams. They were deafening to Maz. They echoed in his ears as he left the noble drowning in a pool of quicksilver moonlight, as he scampered back to the sewers through the weaving streets of the capital, as the Great Moon watched.