Page 118 of A Vow of Blood and Tears

Don’t you hunt them?she asked.

“I do. I could.” I looked at her face, hungrily drinking in every detail. After the travesty of a painting I’d commissioned, nothing could be so lovely as my Cirri in person, rumpled in bed with wild hair. I pushed her skirts aside, stroking her bare leg. “But that would involve leaving you… and, like Wyn, some things I feel are better done by my own hands.”

I don’t want you to go, but I won’t complain if you must, she wrote.Rose and Thorn are here, after all, and Wyn. And that one guard you’d assigned me. Either way, the Rift-kin come first, right?

“Koryek? He’s leaving with the legions. As for the golems… they’re a marvel of modern bloodwitchery, but…” I examined my hands, hideous and bulging and long-fingered against her smooth thigh. “I would not be able to think clearly, knowing your life was in others’ hands. It’s something I must do myself.”

She smiled at me over the journal.I suppose I understand.

“No. I don’t think you do.” I looked up at her. “There was a warg the day you were brought to the Rift.”

She raised a brow, waiting, but some of the color had left her face.

“He was like any other warg—a young man, probably brought into the fold by Hakkon for the sole purpose of being used. But this one… he was sent for you.”

For me?She frowned.How could he even know who I was?

“Oh, he knew nothing about you personally. Not your name, nor your face. He knew only that there would be a girl in the carriage, and that the girl was his target. To eat my bride would have been a powerful blow—demoralizing my people, upheaving the Accords, to say nothing of the agony you would experience.”

Cirri licked her lips.To… eatme? I thought that sort of thing was just tales.

She signed it, seemingly forgetting the pen resting on the pages.

I looked down. “I don’t want to tell you this. I want you to understand why I feel the way I do, why I can’t run the Rift myself and leave you here, but I want you to live a life blissfully ignorant of these things.”

She wrote, and touched my hand.No one in Veladar has gotten to live a blissfully ignorant life. I’m only surprised that there was a warg waiting for our arrival—and that eating me was a priority over just killing me.

“That’s what they do,” I said bitterly. “Everyone knows what happened to Andrus’s first bride, and yet they don’t. We tell everyone they simply slaughtered her, but… she was mostly devoured. To outright kill you is their mercy stroke, and they don’t grant it often.”

Cirri stroked the tendons standing out on the back of my hand.

“So you see why I can’t bear to leave you alone,” I muttered. “To find what Andrus had to find, to know it was my fault if I had only stayed put… to know you’d spent hours in agony, devoured bite by bite. I could not bear that. It’s best that I stay here, because I trust in myself alone to prevent it. Ancestors, thisis grim. I didn’t mean to come here and horrify you with could-have-beens.”

She touched my face, fingertips playing over the crests of my forehead and cheek, and wrote:Well, you should stay with me then. Under no circumstances should you go anywhere.

I couldn’t help but smile at that. “As you wish.”

She hesitated before writing again.I do feel a little guilty asking you to stay. Especially with Visca out there.

“My commander can handle a few wargs, believe me. They’re nothing compared to the things she’s seen Below.”

Cirri shook her head.I feel selfish. There’s another girl just like me in one of these villages. Why do I deserve more protection than she does? What makes me better?

“Don’t feel guilty. That’s why Visca is bringing the legions out. The new boys are unblooded, and the veterans need practice. The girl in the village will have Koryek and his brothers out there watching over her.”

She gave me a little half-smile. That’s good. Better she have him, than me. I really do understand now, Bane. It’s always better to tell me of grim things, than to make me guess at them. If all I knew was that the wargs were avoiding us… then maybe one day I wouldn’t have taken the warnings quite so seriously.She looked down at her page for a moment.But knowing what I know now… I don’t think that will ever be a problem.

“Always take them seriously,” I growled, and Cirri put a finger to my lips.

No growling at me, she signed lightly, then wrote:Not unless you’re going to put those teeth to good use. I’d say we’ve both had enough grim talk for the day and it’s time for lighter things.

I would have protested, would have severely pounded the absolute necessity of the rules into her head, but she tossed herjournal to the nightstand, dropped the pen on it, and leaned forward to cup my face, bringing me closer.

Her lips were so soft, like the petals of the bloodroses. She caressed my misshapen mouth with her own, tucking kisses into the corners of my lips, moving with slow, deliberate consideration over my fangs.

Her kisses were a blessing, a light in the darkness I feared.

When she looked up at me, her eyes were bright, pupils dilated. My cock ached at the sight, remembering those lips wrapped around me, their warmth and softness wringing me out.

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