Page 57 of A Vow of Blood and Tears

I looked down at myself, and saw what she saw.

Derog’s execution had been quiet, but not tidy. Draining a human of all their blood never was.

I had been so caught up in my own regret that I hadn’t noticed the droplets of blood on my sleeves, the warmth of red soaking into my shirt-front.

What had I been thinking, to return to my wife with the evidence of death all over me? A death she had spoken against.

But Cirri had only been the Lady for a day. She didn’t yet realize that to allow them to bite the hand without punishment would only court further violence and disrespect.

I hesitated, looking at those stains, and then up at my wife. Her hands were silent, curled into her lap; one clutched a primrose with bruised petals.

“I will leave you alone,” I said quietly. “Bar the door.”

I shut it and waited for the sound of the iron latch. The softsnickhad a weight it didn’t have before, like the slamming of a prison door with no key.

Visca sucked her teeth, still sour. “Should’ve known this would be a mess. I forgot—all that nonsense here about red hair.”

Few Rift-kin—if any— had Cirri’s fiery locks, Veladari or not. It had likely been bred out long before the vampires had arrived, a color once held dear by the Fae. Either bred out, or the Fae had taken all those Rift-kin unlucky enough to be ‘born of the flame’, as they said.

But we had forgotten, all of us. None of my people had put much stock in their lore or myths when we knew perfectly well for ourselves that they were baseless.

“Don’t beat yourself up.” Visca was only sour because she had come within a hair’s breadth of failing in her duty to protect Cirri. “Something might come of it, at least. And she’s unharmed. That’s the most important part.”

“Right.” Visca cast one last infuriated look back at the stone houses of Fog Hollow, and mounted her horse. “I’m rather torn on this. Suddenly it seems like a good idea to keep her locked in her tower. Didn’t think these people had it in them.”

She nudged the horse into a walk as Eryan got the carriage moving. I stared at Fog Hollow as well before prowling after them.

So I would finally get my way on things that had been gnawing at me. They would have strong stone walls. They would eat their food instead of wasting it. They would join us in the night-hunts.

And as necessary as all these things were, somehow they paled in comparison to the way Cirri had looked at me. As though none of our moments had mattered. As though Iwerea monster, a creature from her nightmares, something that only lived to drink blood—bathed in her light, I’d forgotten I wasn’t just a man.

I was grateful to leave the firelight and step into the shadows. The way she had stared at me… it felt like the sun had gone down for the last time.

Like it would never rise again.

Chapter 15

Cirri

The primrose’s petals rained to the ground as I climbed from the carriage, relieved to be out of the space that seemed so large and empty without Bane to fill it.

And yet, despite the hour of suffocating silence I’d endured and the desire to hear him laugh again, I was also glad that I’d had the time to pull myself together.

Never in my life had someone raised a weapon against me. I’d felt the back of Sister Aletha’s hand before, and been swatted across the knuckles by the Eldest Sister more times than I could count, but never…everin my life had someone pulled a knife with the intent to kill me.

At the time, I thought my heart would gallop right out of my chest. The wine Wyn had given me hadn’t settled my nerves. I’d simply felt floaty, strangely disconnected from everything happening around me.

And when Bane had passed that man’s sentence… for the first time, I’d really, truly seen what other people saw when they looked at him.

A beast. A monstrous being to be feared.

Even the first time I’d laid eyes on him, I hadn’t felt the prickle of genuine terror. He was strange and alarming, but he still behaved in a way I understood: smiling, speaking, offering his hand.

But tonight, all of that was gone. He had been both judge and executioner, and there was none of the Bane I had come to know in him: his eyes, flat and cold, his claws a threat.

And yet… could I have stopped him? Would I have?

That man would have cut out my heart if given half a chance. Would I still feel any remorse if it had been me lying on the ground in the end, bleeding out from terrible wounds?

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