Page 101 of A Vow of Blood and Tears

Wroth’s lip twitched, revealing the glimmer of teeth. “What did she say?”

“She told you to stop acting like a toothless infant deprived of a tit.” I was gratified by the astonishment in his eyes as he peered at her again. “So what will it be? You’re always welcome, Wroth—but not if you treat my wife like this in her own home. If I can’t trust you, you have no place here.”

The fiend took a step back, pacing over the needles Cirri had trod moments before. She stroked my arm as Wroth thought it over, shooting her the occasional opaque glance.

Clearly he’s had troubles of his own, she told me, keeping one eye on him.He’s expecting these same troubles from me. And if he’s willing to kill me… well, it must be pretty bad. I’d hear him out, Bane.

“You’re very forgiving, for a woman who was about to be gutted,” I murmured against her ear.

She looked up at me, and cupped my cheek briefly.I feel as if I’ve known you my whole life, she said.I feel fortunate every day that I wake up, knowing I will see you.

“I feel the same.”

Cirri glanced at Wroth, who was muttering to himself.

He doesn’t. I would watch his wife, she said wisely.She might never have overcome her fear of him.

“Wroth.”

The fiend stopped pacing, throwing me a black look. “What.”

“Is… is your wife coming?” He’d sent out the news five years ago when he’d married her, and I’d forgotten her name already.

“Kajarin?” he sneered. “Of course. Ancestors forbid the Lord and Lady of the Rivers be separated. She’s in the carriage, an hour behind me.”

Cirri squeezed my arm, brief but tight, and all at once I understood a little of Wroth’s pain. It was… exactly what I’d feared for myself. A woman who thought me hideous, who hated all I was, a woman who would rather live locked away in poppy dreams.

And all at once, my anger faded, the embers becoming cold ash. “There are still wargs,” I said quietly. “Do you wish us to send reinforcements to guard her?”

Wroth stared at me defiantly, his silent answer shocking but clear.

Come inside, my wife told him. She offered a hand to the fiend, beckoning him, and he gazed at her mistrustfully.Come with us. You’re with your brother now.

That night foundus in the dining hall, that great empty expanse that Cirri had hated, but it was the only place to fit us all.

The long table had been covered with dark silk, elaborate iron candelabras filling the cold room with warm light. For the humans, dinner was served in courses; Cirri sat to my right, her arm healed and bandaged by Wyn, picking at a tiny roasted hen. Shallow as the scratches were, I couldn’t shove the guilt aside. I needed to remember how fragile she was; even if her life was in danger, I was just as much of a threat in a moment of carelessness.

But her lack of appetite was not because of the wound. Wroth sat opposite me, his anger now constrained into a bitter silence as he sipped from a goblet; Yuli was old enough to volunteer her blood, and had bled into it for him. There would be no convict blood for honored guests.

Kajarin lai Orros, Lady of the Rivers, sat to his left, directly across from Cirri. I didn’t know what to make of her.

I had expected a timid mouse, shrinking away at the sight of vampires. Perhaps a woman with dull, glazed eyes and a dinner of poppy syrup. A nervous wreck, one to stretch the bounds of any fiends’ patience.

But she was aware, no scent or sign of poppy in her veins. She could have been pretty, I supposed, with those strawberry blonde curls and big blue eyes. The coloring of a pureblood Veladari, denoting half her worth to the Blood Accords.

But she was… gaudy. Her corset had been laced tight, pushing her breasts up to a comical height. The dress itself was bright pink Serissan silk, a fortune in fabric and dye—to say nothing of the chains of diamonds woven in her hair, dripping from her ears, draped over the ludicrous mountains of cleavage, and glittering on her fingers.

Cirri seemed equally nonplussed by Wroth’s wife; her eyes had nearly bugged out of her skull when she first laid eyes on the woman, fighting her way free from the carriage in a spume of silk and lace.

Kajarin had greeted her buoyantly, every movement exaggerated with cheerful, bubbly motions; she’d gripped my wife’s shoulders, kissed her on both cheeks, and exclaimed over everything she saw.

As she was exclaiming now over the roasted hens, while Cirri watched her sidelong.

So… what was the problem? An over-the-top personality was no reason to want her dead. She had been showered in bride gifts, the diamonds alone putting my small gifts for Cirri to shame.

Wroth’s gaze was fixed somewhere over my shoulder, eyes unseeing as he took another draught. Auré, sitting on his otherside, had forgone a donor; she toyed with a glass of bloodwine, her mouth set in a thin line.

Altogether, it was an awkward dinner. I wished I could make my excuses and take Cirri to the library, to curl up together in our peaceful little bubble of happiness and jokes, where my wife might actually eat something.

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