Page 155 of A Vow of Blood and Tears

Bane…I gestured weakly, not wanting to look into Ellena’s burst eyes again, nor see the gaping rent in her torso.Did you have to do it like this?

By the Light, she was like Tristone all over again. I wanted to be sick.

He let the letter flutter to the ground. It landed in the spreading pool of blood, soaking through immediately. “Do my methods displease you, my Lady?”

For the first time since we’d met, there was something cold, almost mocking, in the way he said that. It was hard to believethat could sting at a time like this, standing in front of a butchered girl, and yet it did.

“How else should I have done it? What do you take me for? Did you believe that I would stand back and hold a trial for a woman who caused the death ofmypeople?” Bane snarled, pacing through the blood, leaving clawed prints on the floor.

You could have made it less like…I stopped myself, clenching my hands.

I would not compare his actions to the wargs, not now. He was hurting; he was responsible for those people, and they’d been slaughtered under his watch. If she was the one responsible, then it was only right she experienced the same.

But to see it done in here, right over the bed where we slept… butchered like a lamb.ThatI could have lived without.

And all I could think of when I looked down at her was the tree of limbs. The woman in front of the church, savaged to death.

How similar that primal rage was.

“Less like what?” Bane’s lips stretched, showing all his fangs. “Less like awarg?”

There was a horrible silence after his accusing hiss, in which I could have denied it and didn’t, because my hands didn’t want to obey.

Because that was far too close to the mark, and as much as I hated to see him descend into this bloody fury, I couldn’t stand to tell him that yes… this reminded me of the wolves.

The joy in the killing. The pure, unbridled fury.

I’d been caught off guard. The first time Bane sentenced a man to death in front of me, he’d been cold but fair. He hadn’t taken pleasure in the act. I’d somehow come to believe that if he had to kill another, it would be the same.

But this… this was complete savagery.

Here was the answer I’d come seeking.

He laughed, but it was a twisted sound, half a scream.

“This is what I am, Cirri!” He flung his hand towards Ellena. “This is what a fiend does! Did you have pretty notions that I was some noble beast, a fair and just man? Let them be dispelled now, then! I am a fiend, and everything terrible you’ve heard about me is true.”

A low growl tore from his chest, a sound almost like he was in pain.

“I am amonster!” he roared, and turned to the portrait behind him, slashing through it. “What did you take me for? Of course I’m like the wargs.That’swhat you married.”

His claws ripped through his old face. Blood spattered what was left of the canvas. With every rending blow, his face warped further, the peaks and valleys of his face growing more monstrous; the fabric over his spine and shoulders began to strain from the form mutating beneath it.

“I might as wellbeone,” he hissed, ripping the painting from its stand, and one of his wild slashes caught my portrait, tearing through the painted representation of my face.

I flinched, waiting for him to throw it aside too.

Bane paused, staring at the shredded canvas with an unreadable expression, and turned that gaze on me. His eyes were two pale pinpoints of light in the darkness of the tower.

“Stop looking at me,” he snarled. “I don’t want you to see me.”

My heart was galloping hard enough that my throat burned, the taste of copper on my tongue. I had never seen him lose control. The depth of self-loathing as he glared between me and what he’d made of Ellena.

Bane— I started to sign, and he turned with a roar.

“Justgo!”

I dropped my gaze, taking a few steps backwards. He remained hunched over Ellena, his feet in her cooling blood, his body completely warped beyond anything I’d seen before.

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