Page 48 of A Vow of Blood and Tears

I was rewarded with another breathy laugh, my warm inner glow returning.

Is it so necessary to have another celebration tonight? I think I would much rather talk to you than strangers.

“Believe me, I feel exactly the same.” The growl in my voice deepened, betraying my desire to be locked in here with her all night. I told her the why—that the Rift-kin, unlike the rest of Veladar, had carried centuries of superstition through the Red Epoch and into the modern age, and superstitions aside, must be reassured that the Blood Accords would ensure our continuing rule.

Understandable, if tedious. She sighed as she wrote.I feel like I’m making awful parlor conversation, when I have so many questions, and yet not enough time to have them all answered.

The parallel to my own thoughts made me grin ruefully at her. “I feel the same. Maybe we could make this easier on ourselves. Simple questions only, taking turns.”

She nodded, eyes gleaming with enthusiasm.

“But—since I presented the idea—you must take the first round.”

Cirri wrinkled her nose at me, but she looked pleased nonetheless.Where were you born?

“Somewhere in southern Nordrin. I don’t think my village even had a name; we were lowland folk. And before you ask, we were farmers. Sheep farmers. Not much glory in that. And you?”

Well south of Argent, she wrote.The lai Darran holdings are also farmland, but they make their gold with silkworms and honeybees. Your turn.

For a terrible moment, my mind went completely blank. All the questions I wanted to ask this woman, and I could think of nothing!

“Ah… what would you choose to do with your life? If you had not been selected for the bride lot?” A mental cringe made my ears flatten back against my skull.

As though I wanted to remind her that she would have been dragged to the altar in chains.

But Cirri wrote with swift confidence.I wanted to become a Librarian for the Sisters. I love books, words, languages. They may have taken me in time, but it was not to be. If you need a court scribe, I’m the woman for you. And what would you have chosen?

Her words reassured me that a book had been a good choice of a gift, as well as the library that the steward had a small army of servants cleaning even as we spoke… but perhaps buying her a romance as my first gift had been a touch on the nose. Perhaps I could sneak it out of her bedroom before she started to read it.

“If you desire, we’ll have you named as the official scribe by tomorrow morning, but… I was told there was something else you may be interested in. As for myself…” I pondered the question. “I don’t believe I would have chosen another path. Even as a human, my dreams involved leaving the sheepand joining the northern jarls. Obviously I became a vampire instead, but… the end is the same. I fought for the side that I considered family.”

She tipped her head, studying me, then wrote.How long have you been a vampire?

I grimaced, turning my face away so she wouldn’t take the full force of its hideousness. “Sixty years, or thereabouts. I was twenty, I think, when I was reborn.”

Though the immortal lifespan of a vampire meant we measured time quite differently—to my people, I was still so young—would she see me as an old man?

But Cirri simply wrote on her slate:I’ve put this in my journal, of course, but I’m twenty-five. Is it painful to become a vampire?

“Oh no, my lady. It’s my turn for a question.” Why was she thinking of what it was like to be of my kind?

It must be simple curiosity. Humans who wished to be reborn weren’t exactly rare, but neither were they throwing themselves at us in droves, begging for an eternal life of blood. In any event, I would not allow Cirri to open her veins and take in vampire blood; her rebirth would disqualify her to be my wife. The Accords were quite clear on that point, that any bride taken by one of the Four Lords must remain human.

Cirri erased her slate and watched me expectantly, chalk poised to write.

I needed to think of something innocuous that could not be turned against me, making me an animal in her eyes. If I asked so much as her favorite meal, she would ask mine, and ancestors only knew how ‘blood’ would sound as an answer.

“Why did you not become a Silver Sister yourself?” I asked abruptly.

To think that if they had claimed Cirri, if the first time I’d laid eyes on her she’d possessed those brutal, ugly silver teeth… what a waste that would’ve been.

This time, her smile was tinged with bitterness. She reached up to touch her throat, eyes on mine, and wrote:The Sisters do not take damaged goods. They’re struggling to recruit as it is; they want the prettiest girls, the best ones, to represent them. A mute is not good representation.

“Damaged goods?” I snarled, rage sparking to life in my gut, and only when Cirri leaned back in her seat—no more than a slight shift—did I force myself to take a calming breath.

She watched me sidelong, still relaxed, but there was a watchfulness to her now that shamed me.

“My apologies.” What I didn’t say was that I rather wished I’d shoved the silver bells down the Eldest Sister’s throat until she choked on them. “I think you would have been better representation than what they showed me.”

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