Page 208 of A Vow of Blood and Tears

A hand as dark as night had stopped it dead, long fingers splayed over its barrel.

My heart skipped a beat, then another, and began racing so fast I could hear its drumbeat in my ears as the hand carefully picked it up.

I stood frozen in place as the dark figure stepped through the door, holding the pen out like a precious gift. In the shadows of night, only the spiny, eye-smarting edges of its body stood out, no longer skeletally thin but full and dense.

Thorn, I mouthed, the word unfamiliar to my tongue, but the golem nodded, motioning to my bag.

I held my hands back as he carefully held it open and dropped the pen inside, and then he looked about the tower, bristling at it like an angry guard dog, and nudged me to the stairs.

Bad place, he signed.Go.

My pounding heart settled with the golem at my back, and his silent, watchful company made the descent faster, easier; I didn’t fear that a warg would claw its way from the brambles, jaws snapped wide open.

When we emerged from the base, there was a bare spot in the bramble wall, vines broken open and oozing sharply-scented greenish sap; the shape was like someone had torn themselves free.

My eyes moved up to the bulbous green receptacle of a bloodrose, its petals torn away, yellow pistils crushed and broken; there was a sound out in the brambles that wasn’t quite a whisper, nor hissing movement.

I stumbled onto the open path, wondering if I should dare to hope.

And there she was, on the path ahead. Large parts of her were missing, like chunks had been bitten out of her body; her hip dipped inward in a sickening swoop, one shoulder and arm was missing entirely, and the back of her skull was caved inwards, but it was Rose, and she reached up one-handed to grip abloodrose, tearing its petals away, and smeared them across her collapsed hip.

It filled in as I watched, the curve slowly rounding out. She poked at it, shaking her head, prodding the petals until they lay flat and orderly and smacking a stubborn one into place.

Bruised in color, halfway missing, but undeniably Rose.

I huffed out a laugh and a sob at once, and she turned in surprise, faceless head turning towards us.

Rose’s soft hands gripped my chin as the tears fell, wiping them away with velvet fingers, and even in the moonlight I could see that everywhere they touched, the dark bruised edges of her petals became a vibrant crimson once more.

They had rebuilt themselves from my blood, healed themselves with my tears.

It didn’t seem right or fair, but I had long since learned nothing in the world was fair, and when you were given a good thing, you did everything you could to hold onto it.

So I sniffed a few times, smiled at Rose, and kissed her cheek. The golem took my hand, Thorn watched my back, and they walked me back through the bramble path.

The doorway split open, releasing us onto the grass, and Bane was there waiting for me.

His ears were pressed flat against his head, nostrils flared wide with alarm, arms crossed over his chest, but he stared down the reaching vines narrowly, risking being this close to wait for me.

I looked up at him, half expecting to be admonished, ready to defend my decision.

I was his, yes, but my life’s work was in this bag. Nothing could have stopped me from retrieving it.

But Bane just held out his arms to me. “You couldn’t have left a note, could you?” he asked lightly. “Spared me a few gray hairs?”

I smiled, shook my head and shrugged—what gray hairs?—and stepped into his embrace. Bane brushed a kiss over my head, surreptitiously checking me for injuries as he ran his hands over my arms and back, and studied the golems.

“Fae magic. It must be.” He tipped his head as Rose began harvesting the bloodroses on the outside of the barrier, filling in her concave skull. “Everything they’re made of came from you—the roses and thorns from our vows, your blood. And it was you who created all of this.”

I gazed out at the sea of thorns, disguising an army of dead wargs hidden within their embrace; that was what worried me, now that I considered it.

Fae magic, all of them; and who was to say what this field would awaken, sown with the seeds of a Fae being’s body, watered with blood and tears?

But that was a question for another day. For now, it was enough that the wargs were gone, bound and drained of blood. Hakkon’s reign of terror was ended, his cult buried beneath roses on a grave, and one day the rite of Wargyr would be as thoroughly erased from history as this had been.

We could go home now.

Chapter 50

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