Page 12 of A Vow of Blood and Tears

I nodded my understanding, but deep inside, I felt oddly rejected. There was no good reason to feel this way; only this morning, I had washed a sea of blood from the floor and was then thrown into marrying him.

Maybe it was because I had never expected to marry at all. And now that I was… it was merely because I was the best thing the Sisters could scrape up at short notice. A political pawn.

A means to an end.

My inability to speak likely didn’t matter to him at all. He wasn’t going to want to answer my questions, nor crave a conversation.

I was a thing he had been saddled with, as much as I had been saddled with him.

“As for your blood, the cleansing is a necessary step. You’d be surprised by the contaminants found in the human body.” The bloodwitch’s expression was pleasant, but there was something as hard and cold as steel in her eyes. “For a time, it was a popular tactic to feed women silver dust and watch the vampires who drank from them die choking. I’m sure the Eldest Sister would never have considered such a deceitful and treacherous thing, but one can never be too careful.”

I swallowed, my hands still silent in my lap.

So they considered me a potential enemy. It was no secret that some voices in the Silver Sisterhood had advocated for breaking the Blood Accords after the Forians had been driven back—why exchange one captor for another?

But we owed them a debt of life. The Forians and their worship of Wargyr, their mad, wolf-headed god of war, had led to too many Veladari sacrifices.

I shook my head, knowing I could not make myself clear. No matter how deeply this marriage horrified me, I would not be responsible for destroying the Accords. I would never make an attempt on his life.

The blood of too many Veladari had gone into that agreement to secure our freedom.

What happens at a vampire wedding?I asked, not making much effort to sign clearly. They couldn’t understand.

The vampire—the fiend—was once more watching me sign with that scowling expression. Wilting under the force of that glare, I returned my hand to my lap. Perhaps I offended him,much as Eldest Sister had despised what she called ‘the spastic flapping of hands’.

“Olwyn?” he rumbled.

Olwyn. I committed the bloodwitch’s name to memory. She might not trust me, but she was pleasant enough.

She glanced at her liege, then shook her head helplessly. “I haven’t the foggiest. We really must find you a writing instrument as soon as possible.”

I huffed out a soundless laugh, and curled my hands around each other, gazing out the window as the countryside around Argent flew by. If I had seen any of this before, I didn’t remember it; after the lai Darrans had left me on the Cathedral steps, I had never stepped foot outside the city walls again.

Now I was never to return.

If Antonetta had not chosen death over matrimony… if I had not been the one to respond when the Eldest Sister sent out a frantic summons for a maid this morning… if I had kept my eyes glued to the floor…

Several missteps, all perfectly aligned to bring me here. It would almost be funny, if the vampire across from me was not a fiend.

There would be no Library in my future. No new languages to decipher during my meal breaks from cleaning, in the hours when I was given time off for lessons.

No proving myself to the world, that I might be silent, but I was still worth something.

I was simply one of the four linch-pins that held the Blood Accords together. The only purpose in my life now was to exist as his wife, to prove that he had obeyed and taken a Veladari bride.

And… and for him to feed upon.

I glanced at my husband, the shining tips of his teeth, and imagined them piercing my flesh.

The pain of the needle, repeated a hundred times.

With a shudder, I turned back to the window and closed my eyes.

Chapter 4

Bane

The carriage did not stop until the sunlight gave way to long shadows. The town of Thornvale, on the outskirts of the Rift, had been arranged as our shelter for the night.

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