Page 184 of A Vow of Blood and Tears

Cyrene watched her evenly. “This is very bad,” she murmured. “If Radomil chooses to retaliate… it’s been ten years, and we’ve hardly made a dent in repairing the damage of the war…”

“If Radomil retaliates, I’ll be pleased to remind him thatheallowed Hakkon to go free,” Wyn snapped. “He allowed the wargs a foothold in his country. We’re merely cleaning up his mess.”

Cyrene sighed. “True, and yet politics and borders are not a question of truth, are they? Andrus will no doubt be there by daybreak. I would come, but the girl here… requires careful tending.”

“Ah. Good luck to you, then.”

Cyrene snorted, her face beginning to fade from the mirror and leaving Wyn’s reflection clear. “You need better luck than me. All I do is keep her asleep. Ancestors guide you, Lord Bane.”

She vanished entirely, and Wyn lowered the mirror, staring into the flames.

Visca draped her arm over her shoulders. “Two days, then, at the most. Our legions will be with us, and all the fiends.”

I shook my head, ready to refute the idea of waiting, but my bloodwitch did exactly what I paid her to do and scowled at me. “Kindly keep your mouth shut, Bane. I still need to repair thesedamn golems, and you’re better off with the other fiends at your back.”

It was difficult to hold still, but I looked at my most trusted advisors, really looked at them: despite the blood she’d drunk, her fresh youth, Wyn’s eyes were bloodshot, and Visca was lacking her usual energy.

They were tired. Nobody had slept in days; nobody had truly stopped to feed and replenish themselves. I had already burned up a severe amount of the blood I’d glutted in my headlong flight towards Foria, and there were no prisoners to feed from here.

And Wyn’s work wasn’t over, nor was mine. I would not be able to close my eyes until Cirri was safe at home, but if I wanted all my people to come home alive, I needed them to be functional.

“Very well.” I settled into the grass where Cirri’s scent was thickest, trying to shove aside the voice screaming in my mind that she was dying right now, she was bleeding, she was hurt…

She was valuable, and I needed every weapon at my disposal to find and retrieve her.

Wyn handed the mirror to Visca and stood, blade and box in hand. She returned to the golems, frowning down at their mutilated forms, and began rummaging through vials of ingredients in the box.

“Powdered bone of a virgin goat… tears of a dry river,” she muttered, selecting vials as she knelt. “A thorn plucked from the paw of a lion, and the sole of a wanderer’s shoe.”

She sprinkled dust and thorns into their bodies, and finally set aside her box, opening her wrist again with a soft hiss.

“Come here, Bane,” she gritted out. “Your blood is required for this, too.”

I offered my wrist, hardly feeling the cut of the blade, and watched as my blood dripped black into their forms.

“Lovely. Now go away,” she said, leaning over her work.

Her mutterings followed me back to the fire; I watched sleeplessly, taking the first watch as Visca curled up for a nap and Wyn whispered to the golems deep into the night.

I didn’t movea muscle until dawn rose. The fire was burned out to cinders; Wyn was curled in the grass beside the golems, sleeping soundly, her head resting on her pack as Visca circled the camp, her eyes fixed on the empty plains to the north.

When the first rays of light pierced the sky, I crept to the golems, lying in repose like corpses, the only sign of life the faint stirring of their component parts. Rose’s petals ruffled, shifted; Thorn’s body was like a nest of black snakes, the vines slowly creeping as they grew, splitting into newer, thinner vines that braided themselves back into the main body.

They were almost skeletal in appearance, their arms long and thin, their torsos withered. Rose’s petals were bruised so intensely that most of her was a purplish-black color. Only a few tattered petals retained their bright crimson edges.

In this state, they were a risk to hang all my hopes on, but they were all I had. Months might pass before I caught Cirri’s scent again in the vast, unpopulated expanse of northern Foria.

Patience, I told myself, watching as Rose’s body cannibalized itself to fill in the most necessary parts, moving so slow it was impossible to actually pick out any signs of progress.

I knew I would go mad with the waiting, so I turned to watch the mountains instead.

The sun was creeping over the mountains when the first two figures came into view. They descended the mountain path, each moving at the rapid pace of a fully-fed fiend; both ran on allfours, bolstered on blood into the same forms they wore the last time we were here on these plains, ten years ago.

Bone spurs rose from Wroth’s spine and shoulders, his limbs thickened into powerful pistons, carrying him yards with a single leap; Andrus, his rack of antlers spreading six feet on either side of him into a forest of sharp points, still hiding his deadier attributes.

They had always been the fastest of us; no horse or carriage could hope to compete. Either of them could cover the span of Veladar in a night when gorged with blood.

I waited patiently until I heard the soft tread of footsteps.

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