Page 139 of A Vow of Blood and Tears

Why had I wanted to come at all? I couldn’t even save one life.

If it was anyone but me, I told him,you would have lived.

I dropped the sodden edge of my cloak, giving his cold, still face one last look. Then I prised the knife from his hands, now frozen over with a frosted scarlet crust.

The cut he’d given me ached, but Wyn would fix it later. It meant less than nothing now. I stood up, leaving streaks of red across the white, and stared further into the forest as I collected my deadened thoughts.

At first my eyes didn’t see it. It was nothing but a lump of gray on a fallen log, a random but enormous knot on the branch. After a moment of puzzling over it, my mind finally forced the puzzle into shape: it was a body on the log, halfway draped over.

I didn’t pay the loudness of my steps any mind as I moved towards it. No one was left alive to hear them now.

The warg had died in the midst of a leap; it was its back leg that was hooked over the log, giving it that strange shape. The rest of the creature was sprawled in the snow on the other side. Whoever had killed it had done so with brutal efficiency. Several spears had been driven through its guts, one piercing its mouth and emerging through its spine. It was enormous, as tall as Bane and barrel-chested, but strangely spindly in the limbs, its arms and legs long and thin.

Strange how we called them wolves. It was an insult to wolves themselves. The warg’s snout was distended to an obscene length, and its wide-open jaws showed me the rows of teeth going all the way down its gullet.

So very,verymany teeth. Hundreds, all the way down to its stomach. Stained red, bits of flesh caught between them.

Ate them all up!

The round eye was frosted over, but I could see the pitch-black color, the pale pinprick of pupil frozen like a tiny moon in the center.

From a mental distance I knew I was shivering uncontrollably, both fear of the dead thing in front of me and the horror of the dead man behind me combining into total shock.

I needed to go back to the village. I needed to find Bane.

But I couldn’t turn my back on the dead warg, because… what if it was only pretending? What if it got up?

Go back to the village, I told myself, but every time I tried to force myself to move, my body stayed locked right where it was. There was a voice screaming that question in the back of my mind, loud and shrill:what if it gets up?

I had never felt a fear like this in my life. Not even when Bane first nuzzled his fangs to my throat. Every muscle was frozen, aprey’s response to knowing a predator was before it, even if it was dead.

I couldn’t make a sound, not even a footstep. To make a sound was to die. It was a completely atavistic response, and one I was powerless against.

So I stood like a statue, watching the dead warg for any sign of movement. For the faintest rise of its chest or the blink of that pale-pupiled eye. The spears meant nothing. How could mere spears bring down a thing like this, all twisted out of shape and made of hunger?

The sound of crunching snow behind me made me flinch, clutching the knife tighter in my sweaty palm. If I could’ve made a sound I would’ve whimpered, too terrified to scream, too afraid to take my eyes from the warg.

“Cirri.” Bane’s voice, thick with combined relief and anger.

And it was only because it was him that my iron-hard muscles finally unlocked, nearly sending me to my knees again. I dropped the knife, my hands shaking.

“Why?” His arms wrapped around, warm and safe. I could finally blink, frozen tears cracking on my cheeks. “Whygo into the forest?”

I heard a man call, I told him, teeth chattering.He called for help. He was alive, but for me. I killed him, Bane. It was because of me. Because I couldn’t say anything.

He looked down at the warg, still holding me tight, and I felt his chest rise as he sucked in a breath. His nostrils flexed, forked tongue flicking out to taste the air.

“Never mind that,” he said gruffly, and released me long enough to scoop the dagger from the snow. He handed it to me, and took my bloodied hand, examining the scabbed slash wound.

“I tasted your blood on the wind.” Bane tucked my trembling hand against my chest. “Come now. You can tell me while Wyn heals this.”

You didn’t tell me what they looked like, I said.I thought they were like wolves.

He gave the dead warg—now that Bane was here, I could accept that it was truly dead, and not lying in wait—a long look. “No, they aren’t much like wolves at all, but that’s what Wargyr’s gift is. Something twisted and wrong. Something made with suffering.”

I nodded. That made perfect sense. This was not a wolf, but suffering given shape.

“It’s not the kind of thing you can describe.” His voice was gruff as he led me away, and even with him at my side, it was difficult to turn my back on it. “Not easily. It’s the kind of thing you must see, and feel, to understand. I’d hoped to keep you blissfully ignorant about that, at least.”

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