Page 170 of A Vow of Blood and Tears

The tree was so short, stunted and dry that it was easy to snap the lowest-hanging branches off, which I did in a desultory way as Miro cleared a small ring for a firepit. He tied the horse to another tree about ten yards away, leaving it just enough room to crop the grass around it, then lined the pit with stones and dry grass. But he kept one eye on me as he did it, ensuring that I didn’t have time to tackle the knot he’d made.

I found myself hoping that his little fire would set the whole countryside ablaze, and I’d either perish in the flames, thwarting his plans, or find the opportunity to run to the horse. But he cleared it carefully, taking my collected twigs and branches, and shoved a ball of tinder under the pyramid he made from them.

In the next ten minutes, he had a fire blazing merrily in the dark, the saddlebags set off to the side as he chewed a mouthful of dried meat and berries, and I was crouched on the other side of the flames.

Miro also had my bag, and my journal was open in his lap. I stared at him sourly through the leaping flames, wondering if he’d sleep at all, because I sure as hell wouldn’t. What I would do was curl up and pretend, and hope he drifted off on his own.

But for now, he had my full attention, because he was prying into private things that didn’t concern him.

“‘Her name is Cirri, and she is pretty’,” he read aloud, making a face. “By Wargyr, be serious. How can you love this… this absoluteshitpoetry, and then look at my paintings and say they’re just fine?Fine? In comparison tothis?”

He threw back his head and laughed, but I had to suppress a smug smile—because that laughter was entirely manufactured. He went through the motions, but there was genuine bitterness and irritation in it.

I was glad that Bane’s small, silly poem, the words that had brought me so much happiness, were able to get under Miro’s skin and nibble him to pieces.

Good. Be eaten alive by envy, you puffed-up, self-obsessed ass. I hope you choke on it.

I would have liked to say it to him, but Miro made no move to return my journal or my pen. He flipped through the pages idly, the cap of my pen glimmering in his breast pocket, and I watched him and let my mind turn over quietly.

I could leave the pen and the journal; I remembered enough of the lexicon on my own that I could recreate it. The poems, the conversations, I would miss those deeply, with an almost physical pain, but in the end, they could be sacrificed.

But the ritual book… that I could not leave.

Once Miro succumbed to sleep, I would have to get my own hands dirty. I’d never before been in a position to have to consider taking another person’s life. I’d never wanted to be a warrior like the Silver Sisters; violence had never appealed to me.

But Ihadto. He was not yet a warg, but he worshipped Wargyr, and that meant he forfeited the right to live. As he slept, I would cut his throat with his own dagger, and escape with the horse, the ritual book, and my journal, and leave his body for the wargs.

I accepted it, internalized it, and then tried my damnedest not to think about it. Better to let the fury of the moment carry me through, than to anticipate the sickness and terror of the deed.

Miro turned yet another page, and another round of laughter came pealing out of him. “What is this? You were jealous about Auré putting her hands all over him?” He looked up, eyes twinkling and reflecting the fire like red pools. “You really are twisted, Lady Silence. Imagine being jealous over that thing.”

I closed my eyes and counted to ten, exhaling slowly.

“‘Are you all mine?’” he mocked in a falsetto voice. “Is there something wrong with me?’”

My teeth gritted together painfully and I started the count over, trying to let the anger leak away, but it was dammed up inside me and I wanted to pull a burning brand from the fire and shove it in his eyes.

“Yes. I’ll tell you what’s wrong with you: you actually believe a fiend has feelings. You’re too naïve for this world, Cirrien. You serve one purpose, and that’s for him to feed.”

I opened my eyes, yearning to respond in a way that’d be clear even to him, and my body froze before my brain fully understood what I was seeing.

Miro, still leaning against a saddlebag, the firelight playing across his features, the darkness all around us. The flat yellow shine of eyes behind him, a multitude of stars dropped to earth. The elongated snout hanging over his shoulder, a thousand teeth gleaming.

He saw it in my face before he turned and fell away towards the fire, shouting several curses as he scrambled away from the warg.

Gods, they’d approached so silently, here between one breath and the next.

The warg made a terrible sound, a dry, scraping chuckle like laughter from a dead man. It had crouched behind him on all fours, and the others appeared from the dark, slinking along the perimeter of the firelight.

In a dim, numb part of my mind I wondered why the horse hadn’t screamed in terror, like any self-respecting horse would, and then I heard the wet sounds of tearing meat and understood.

Well, then. I was to die, I supposed, sometime in the next few minutes. Moving like a sleepwalker, completely cut off from my emotions, I picked up the journal, which Miro had dropped dangerously close to the fire. I brushed the dirt from its crimson leather binding, cradling it to my chest like a baby. All of my last words were in here; if Bane ever found my body, if the journal survived, I hoped he’d know from what he read that I had loved him with everything I had.

I stared up at the warg’s white pinprick pupils, so incongruously calm, and waited for it to descend in a maelstrom of tooth and claw.

“Well, then, Miro Kyril, what have you brought me?”

The voice that flowed out of the night was deep, masculine, with the rolling melodical burr of a northern Forian.

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