Page 120 of A Vow of Blood and Tears

I couldn’t stop the grin that spread across my face, exposing all my bloodstained fangs in a terrible display of happiness. “As you are mine.”

She raised her head for a kiss, nipping at my lower lip with her adorably blunt human teeth.

“Are you trying to bite me?” I asked, amused at the thought.

Cirri laughed breathily, flopping back to the bed.Yes.

She snuggled against me, and between one breath and the next she was asleep.

I curled around her, pushing aside all thoughts of awful death-portraits and wargs. My fingers smoothed over her hair, and I stared at her sleeping face, memorizing every inch of it.

There were only so many years left for us.

I had to love the gift of every moment as much as I loved her.

Chapter 29

Cirri

It was only the thought that Bloodrain would be over at midnight that kept me from hiding in the closet while Rose fussed over my hair. The elaborate braid she was working on somehow managed to feel heavier than my hair on a normal day, tugging at my scalp.

I’d holed up in the library all day to work, the presence of the golems dissuading Kajarin from returning. Bane had been busy, and the keep was strangely quiet without Visca and her legions. The vampires had emptied out of the keep overnight, leaving the walls mostly undefended.

Not that I was too concerned about becoming a breakfast for wargs—Wroth had planted himself firmly on the keep’s walls, and had shown no signs all throughout the day of ever moving from that spot again.

Here, the day had been quiet. If I hadn’t seen Wyn’s decorations for myself, I would have forgotten today was Bloodrain entirely.

In Argent, I knew that at this very moment the streets would be hung with crimson banners, and children would already be going door to door, collecting their salty-sweet candies andcinnamon buns. The bonfires would already be roaring thirty feet high, and for every fire, there would be an effigy made of spiced meats, pork and beef molded into Liliach Daromir’s feminine shape, to be roasted as the fires died down. The market stalls would be selling soft, chewy flatbread to go with it, and everyone would be drunk by midnight.

The candies were the best part of Bloodrain, a taste synonymous with childhood when we indentured foundlings were allowed out on the streets, but there was none of that here.

Instead the vampires, and the human nobility, celebrated by dressing in their finest and hosting a ball.

Rose tucked a tiny braid into the larger one, and twisted a ruby pin into my hair. My waist was cinched in tightly enough to pinch, so I could wear the dress that hugged my shoulders and torso, and bloomed outwards into a skirt like the petals of a rose.

It might have been easier to get ready in silence, but Wyn hovered over me as well. With Visca gone, her tension radiated to me, her new victim. Though she was dressed for Bloodrain herself in red silk robes, thick with embroidery, her mouth was turned down at the corners, and she seemed to have taken me on as a pet project for her own distraction.

“Lovely,” she said, touching my hair as Rose clutched her cheeks and waved a simpering hand:oh, you.

I couldn’t bring myself to drive Wyn off. She clearly missed her wife and worried for her safety, and neededsomethingto take her mind off that anxiety; and I had also noticed she seemed much warmer towards me since I’d overcome my fear of Bane feeding on me. I didn’t want to lose that warmth.

Besides, I would welcome the extra hands today, and I wouldn’t protest the expensive clothes. Not when I fully planned to seduce my own husband. Last night had not been nearly enough; sometimes I thought I was going mad, with howdesperately I wanted to rip his clothes off with my teeth. It was an unshakeable craving, down in my bones.

She does beautiful work, I wrote in the journal, balanced precariously on my lap.You’ve outdone yourself with her.

“I should say something self-deprecating, but… I really did, didn’t I?” Wyn looked over the golem smugly. “When you have children, I’ll make some to help as nannies. It would be best for a growing bloodwitch to grow up comfortable with sanguimancy.”

My eyebrows shot up so high they might well have vanished into my hairline.Children?I signed, temporarily forgetting my journal.

Children? How could I have forgotten them?

I’d never considered the possibility in my entire life. Before I was plucked from the river of life by Fate’s hand, I had been only concerned with my own education, and paying off the debt with the labor of my youth.

Children had never figured into the equation, much less a husband. How on earth would I have afforded them, working for the Sisters until I was fifty?

Fortunately, Wyn hadn’t lost her intuition for what I was asking.

“Yes, children,” she said, draping a ruby-studded necklace around my throat and eyeing it in the mirror. “You should have… oh, at least two, I would think. Three might be better. An heir, of course, but as you can never be too careful, you’ll want to have one prepared as the next sanguimancer to take my place. One day I’ll retire from this position and pursue another research expedition into Liuridar—but not before I’ve trained them up properly, of course.”

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