Page 221 of A Vow of Blood and Tears

I blinked, distracted by the warm softness of his lips juxtaposed against the slick hardness of his fangs, and remembered I was still wearing the nearly-weightless spidersilk gown.

Now it was rucked up and twisted, and red from the bodice to the waist, the spatters of my life’s blood fading into pristine white.

The wedding night I should’ve given you. I touched a red stain; it was completely dry, my blood soaked into the spidersilk.

“No. No regrets. This is another step forward in our journey, the one we take together. I’m glad that this is our wedding done right, when we know each other, when we’re not strangers to one another.” He gazed at me, the kind of warm, loving gaze I’d never imagined turned towards a person such as myself.

Never, I said.You are mine, and I’m yours. You’ve never been a stranger to me.

“Nor you to me, but… this is our happily ever after.” He touched my cheek, claws trailing down my throat and the sidelong curve of my breast, down to my waist and the dimples in my lower back. “All fears dispelled. All enemies conquered. All wishes come true.”

It’s funny how the books say happily ever after is the end. I took his clawed hand and kissed his fingers.Happily ever after is just the beginning of something new.

“For the rest of our lives.” His eyes flickered, that inner fire that burned as bright as the flames he stoked in my own chest.

For eternity. And I smiled, because he was mine.

Chapter 52

Bane

Can you believe it’s been a whole year?

The carriage clattered over the smooth cobblestones of the Silver Road. The white towers had been visible for hours, drawing ever closer.

I’d chosen to sit in the carriage with my wife, this time on the same seat, holding her close the entire way. It was a far cry from that first awkward ride home, with Wyn between us, and Cirri in the corner, cut off from all communication, terrified, and reeking of rowan.

“No. It feels like a month spent in a fever dream.”

And it did, though it was a pleasant dream, feverish or not.

Cirri, as the Scrollkeeper, had completely taken over the library with the aid of her golems. Half of it was in the process of reorganization, pulling books and scrolls from the depths of the stacks beneath the library proper and cataloguing them, searching each and every document for more of the history of our kinds.

But it was a slow project, because she had reached out to our people and acquired another journal, this one to become a hand-embellished copy of theLore of the Rift, by Cirrien lai Darran.

From north to south, Rift-kin had been coming to Ravenscry, bringing her folktales of their own to be committed to books. Every village had their own tales, some passed down for centuries; some Rift-kin required coaxing and bribery to share their stories, while others were pleased to see their family tales put to paper, a mark of legitimacy to their claims.

But when they came, Rose and Thorn had to hide; the Rift-kin weren’t ready to be in the same room as Fae-made golems. So the library went unorganized during the day as she diligently took down first, second, up to twelfth-hand accounts of the Fae and their spirits.

In this manner she had begun the process of courting the Rift-kin, allowing them to see her not only as their Lady, but as a fellow human being who would speak for them, the human voice representing their kind amidst the rule of vampires.

And then she’d added a correspondence with Auré fel Seren to her plate. Now she wrote to my fellow vampire at least once a fortnight, responding to long letters that discussed the Fae folklore of wherever Auré happened to be traveling; the ambassador had become my wife’s eyes on the ground. I’d peeked at the letters a time or two, wondering if they were still frosty towards each other, but Cirri’s efforts to work on our language and decipher the charm seemed to have thawed the last of Auré’s reservations, and Auré’s willingness to report on the Fae had charmed Cirri.

They were becoming friends on paper, at least. It pleased me to see Cirri carving out her own niche among my people.

With this much to do, she often burned the midnight oil, coming to bed in the wee hours with ink-stained hands and tired eyes, stripping off her dresses to be enthusiastically mated before sleeping for six hours and rising to do it all again.

With this week-long journey, there would be no Rift-kin in the keep; I hoped Rose would manage to organize it all beforeher return. Cirri’s work ethic made me feel lazy, now that patrols were reduced. I’d taken to overseeing the opening of the mines and quarries, doing everything in my power to dispel the fears of the folk and joining them in the work, toiling in the mines alongside them, scouting the old mines for any sign of Fae. Whatever ensured we were actually producing; wargs or not, I intended to see every village’s defenses shored up and done properly this time.

But it was not necessarily a week of rest, this trip to Argent.

Even with the titles she could now claim—Wargbinder, Scrollkeeper—Cirri had elected to keep her family name for most of her work.

But she had decided, after much thought, that she didn’t want the family estates. Ravenscry was her home now; she had no real memories of her life before the Silver Sisters took her in—only bits and pieces, none of it forming a whole.

Several knights and the steward had gone to the lai Darran lands in her stead. Her family was properly buried, all marks of Miro’s treachery and Hakkon’s agents erased, and they’d brought back the key.

It hung around her neck on an iron chain, a blunt, twisted thing of dark metal. She stroked it, staring out the window at the walls and towers of Argent.

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