Page 191 of A Vow of Blood and Tears

The fingers came to a rest. The disappointment weighed on my shoulders, heavier than any mountain. The relentless crush of it stole the breath from my lungs.

“And there you have it,” Andrus said to Voryan. “You have covered your eyes and ears. Your trial will pass you by, and you will be none the wiser—you have learned nothing.”

Voryan’s sharp snout wrinkled, giving him a rabid mien. “Don’t you keepyourwoman in a poppy sleep?”

Andrus was quiet for a long moment. “Only by her request. I would have given her freedom instead, if I could.”

“And what if the Mother thinks, ‘oh, I did it because it was written on this piece of paper’ isn’t a good enough excuse?”

The Heartpiercer lifted his shoulder in a shrug. “Then I will have failed, as I have failed at so much else.”

“By the ancestors, shut up.” Wroth rubbed his temple. “For fuck’s sake. I shouldn’t have asked.”

The argument devolved into silence, but it was a comfortable, familiar one.

“Just like old times,” Voryan said in his dead man’s voice, arranging the rabbit’s severed paws in the anatomically correct places. “I miss those days. Things were so simple.”

Wroth shrugged, nodded, and Andrus tipped his horned head. “I miss these times, speaking to my brothers. Amari… doesn’t speak. Only sleeps.”

“You mean you miss proselytizing to a captive audience,” Wroth growled, and despite himself, Andrus’s long face twisted into something that could’ve been a smile.

“That, too,” he said.

I tore my eyes from the motionless golems and looked up at them. “Those were good days at times, weren’t they?”

I had missed them, more than I could say. There was something to be said for brotherhood, for the simple days where we fought, argued, jabbed and poked, but at the end of the day, I knew every one of them had my back, and I had theirs.

To be on the throne was lonelier than I’d ever imagined, and only Cirri was my light; I wished that they could have the same, a person who made them feel that life was not a trial or a test, nor a burden to be endured, but a true joy to experience.

I turned to look at them once, remembering what they used to be: Wroth and his wild mane of pale braids, shining with bones, wearing the furs of a northern savage; Andrus, a tall, pale priest who delivered salvation only with death; Voryan, dark-haired and scarred, those coal black eyes that only lit when he was up to his elbows in gore.

And now I looked at them and saw men who had all gotten what they deserved, myself included.

Now our skins reflected the interiors.

Monsters, one and all. Brothers wrought by war and pain.

But it had been worth it, because it took a monster to destroy a monster. That was the only way she was coming home.

“Better than these days.” Wroth shook his head, tail flicking.

Andrus took a breath to speak, and fell silent.

The golems shivered, their bodies convulsing in the grass, and went still again. But it wasn’t the stillness of death; there was something aware, watchful, about their limp limbs. Like they were waking up.

Then, with eerie silence, they rose to their feet, statues that shouldn’t exist rising from Foria’s dry grass.

They were still diminished, still bruised and damaged, but they stood upright without swaying. Wyn rushed to them,limping slightly on older limbs, her pure white hair a wild corona around her head.

“They seem… as they were, physically,” she said, with only the slightest hesitance in her voice. “But they weren’t designed for outright warfare, Bane. The damage the wargs caused was too great, and their bodies will fail sooner rather than later. The odds of them living another week are minuscule, but theyshouldlast long enough to find her, I would hope.”

The golems tipped their heads as she spoke, then ‘looked’ at each other; there was something disquieting in their silent communication and assessment, though they signed nothing of their thoughts.

I wondered what minds existed in those skulls of thorns and roses, if they were disturbed at the thought that their artificial lifespans had dropped to something near zero.

There was no telling, and the golems weren’t speaking of it. Moving as one again, they turned to the northeast, adjusting and searching until they faced true north.

Gods. If I had left on my own… I would have been wrong.

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