Page 5 of A Vow of Blood and Tears

From the moment I lifted the pen, the weight of his title became mine. Lord of the Rift, the first border the Forians crossed. From that second forth, every life in that misty valley was my responsibility.

Going fiend had consumed most of my thoughts from there on out. I remembered most of the last year of the war as a haze of blood—not only the blood on my hands, but the blood still in veins, the mouthwatering call of a pulse in a throat.

The people of the Rift were mine to protect, not consume, but in the mind of a fiend they were one and the same.

I had done my best to ensure the only blood that passed my lips in violence was Forian. I had not always succeeded.

When the wargs had retreated, I'd been at my worst. No longer recognizable. A creature from nightmares, something that belonged in a dank cavern on a heap of bones.

A thing primal and wild.

It had taken me all ten years of the Accords’ grace period prior to the political marriage to return to some semblance of civilization—only with my advisor Olwyn’s help, my creator’s support, and too many near-misses to count.

Olwyn sat across from me in the cramped carriage, a stack of papers on her lap; the Blood Accords, in their entirety. Today she was only interested in one section, which detailed the exact qualifications for the woman who would become my wife—the warden of my paper prison.

“You look like you’re preparing to attend a funeral, not your own wedding.” Wyn glanced up from the papers and gazed at me, not without sympathy. Her kindness was more alarming than her usual acerbic bite. “For the girl’s sake, do try to look a little less miserable.”

I averted my eyes, looking at the landscape out the window: we had left the Rift many hours ago, the fog-wreathed mountains giving way to thick forests and plains, freshly-harvested farmland. The white towers of Argent were just visible on the horizon.

My eyes focused on the reflection in the window glass, the warped face and long, pointed ears, and I sank back into my seat, finding a point above Wyn’s head to watch.

“A smile might frighten her more. The real question is, will she scream or faint at the sight of me?”

Wyn tapped a pen against the handwritten list she’d been working on. “Ideally neither. The humans have had a decade to come up with a proper bride that meets the requirements of our agreement. If they had any sense, they would’ve been training the girl for this from the day the Accords were signed. But hoping for common sense from the masses is… an unlikely wish. I suppose I’ll be pleased if she’s young and healthy.” She wrinkled her nose, pushing her spectacles up. “But she might be…”

“Ugly.”

“Yes.”

“I don’t give a damn if she’s ugly, so long as I don’t have to listen to her scream every time she sees me. I just need her to be healthy, composed, and reasonably sane.”

In the last few months, when it was made clear to me that I needed to take my required bride or lose my title, I’d allowed Wyn to handle the communication with the Guild leaders of Argent.

She had scoured the fine print of the Accords, ensuring that the demands our kind had made would be met—most importantly, that the bride be young and healthy. The humans’ demand that the bride be pure-blooded was not our problem, but she would ensure it regardless, giving the Veladari high nobility no room to claim that we had reneged on any aspect of the agreement.

But I’d developed a mental picture of the woman who would become Lady of the Rift, a woman we’d come to think of and refer to as ‘the girl’. I knew, from my time in the villages of that area, and from the marriages of my fellow fiends, what human women thought of us.

Most vampires were beautiful. Ageless, unlined, with the lithe grace of predators and the intensity of angels. That form was long lost to me.

Becoming a fiend left a permanent mark on body and soul. Whereas the members of my legion had spread through the Rift after the war, finding no shortage of human friends and lovers as the Veladari grew more comfortable with their unlikely allies, I was met with gasps, shrieks, and nauseated aversion, and several memorable times with a silver knife or sword.

A vivid picture of the girl had developed in my mind: my new bride-to-be, a plain Veladari woman, smiling as her new husband approached… and blanching with horror, lip curling in disgust, possibly recoiling and holding up her hands to fend me off.

That would be one of the mildest reactions I had ever received. At Wyn’s request, I was doing my best not to imagine some of the more likely receptions.

Just knowing that my wife would loathe the sight of me was gut-wrenching enough. I had been one of those beautiful predators once.

That life was over.

“What wouldunreasonably sane look like, I wonder?” Wyn mused. “Well, it doesn’t matter if she screams every time she lays eyes on you, Bane. You must remain Lord of the Rift, even if the girl is a shrieking lunatic. If she’s too hysterical to be seen in public, I’ll simply dose her with poppy syrup.”

“Therein lies the problem, Wyn.” I returned my gaze to the window, running the tip of my tongue over sharp teeth. “I don’t want a wife who needs to be drugged like a skittish horse before she can stand next to me.”

“It doesn’t matter,” she repeated gently. “Not with Hakkon testing our borders again. Worst case, I’ll keep her in the tower, safe and happy with her poppy, and you may discreetly find a lover of our own kind in time.”

My lips twisted against my will. “We both know I can’t do that.”

The idea of marrying the girl, and keeping her in a drugged dreamland while I broke our vows, was sickening.

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