Page 116 of A Vow of Blood and Tears

Much better, I thought, for Cirri’s painting to sit next to a beautiful, long-dead lie.

But in the library, I found nothing. No lover to warm me and dispel the cold cloud of regret in my bones. Her table was empty but for neat piles of books, though her fragrance still hung in the air.

Along with something else; my nostrils flexed, tasting a thick, cloying cloud of jasmine perfume and the reek of a man’s sweat.

Kajarin had been here… but where was my Cirri?

I looked in my tower next, finding no sign of her, but Visca waited for me outside the door when I emerged. She leaned against the walls, paring her nails with a sharp dagger.

“Why is everyone lurking in the halls today?” I grumbled, and Visca raised a brow.

“I don’tlurk,” she said loftily. “I simply wait with great patience for the perfect moment to ambush my prey.”

I squinted at her. “That’s—”

“Come on, my lad. Let’s have a chat.” Visca slapped my shoulder, steering me down the hall. “Up on the wall, now, if you don’t mind.”

We crossed through the stableyard, where Cirri’s old maid was toiling to muck out stalls, coated to the knees in horseshit and mud. She watched us pass with furious, red-rimmed eyes, and I gave her barely half a glance in acknowledgement.

Bruise my wife, muck out shit. Seemed a fair enough trade to me.

Visca was ahead of me, climbing up the wall hand over hand, climbing with practiced grace. I followed, and when I reached the top, she was already leaning against the far wall, almost directly where Wroth had stood only a night ago.

“Tell me what you see, what you smell,” she said quietly.

As always, most of what I saw was a hundred thousand pines, their pointed tops poking through the sea of mist below. The mountains in the distance of either direction, encompassing the Rift like a long, narrow bowl. A few birds; an overcast sky.

This was not what Visca was looking for. My nostrils widened, taking in the scents I’d come to expect from the Rift’s forests: sharp pine, the delicate rot of the mast under the trees,the coolness of the air. A trace of urine from a passing fox; the carrion musk of a badger’s den.

“Not so much a hint of warg,” I said, as quiet as she had spoken. “I would’ve expected at least a trace, a scout.”

“Exactly.” For once, Visca wasn’t smiling or cocky; she stared over the mist with her mouth downturned in a grimace, eyes squinted at the corners. “Not a single one, when we’ve been harassed constantly for months? I don’t like it.”

“No.”

“It’s deliberate, that’s for certain.”

“Yes.” I breathed in again, and the air tasted natural, normal. No taint whatsoever. “But why?”

“Could be they’re trying to lull us into a false sense of security.”

I frowned at the mist myself. Thanks to Wyn’s bloodwitchery, Cirri would be protected at all times—even if, ancestors forbid, a warg made it over the walls.

“Or… they want me to come hunt. Hakkon knows I would investigate this sudden silence.”

Visca drummed her fingers on her dagger’s hilt as she thought. “That would make sense. Lure you out, and while the fiend is away…”

“The wolves will play.”

Even as I considered Hakkon’s motives for suddenly withdrawing his scouts, I felt the itch to go hunt, to stalk up and down the Rift until I found the warg-sign I knew was out there.

“When did the nightly visits stop?” Perhaps the presence of Wroth, two fiends so close to the Forian border, had made Hakkon rethink his tactics…

“A week ago. That scout you chased to the eastern border.” Visca sighed. “It’s not because of Wroth, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“How well you know me.” So this was a tactic to lure me out, and not because of our combined presence. I snorted. “Surely he doesn’t believe I’m so stupid as to leave her unguarded.”

My commander lifted one shoulder in an easy shrug. “It’s a fair enough gambit, isn’t it? But it makes you wonder what they’re up to where we can’t see them.”

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