Page 72 of A Vow of Blood and Tears

I thought that perhaps several hours had passed when Cirri finally sat up and stretched her back, shaking out her dominant hand. She smiled at me as she resettled herself, pulling her braid over her shoulder and rolling her shoulders before she picked up the next book.

She leaned forward, examining the cover, and then I saw it. A blooming red-and-violet stain on the nape of her neck, nearly hidden in the mass of her hair.

Without making a sound, I rose from the chair and prowled towards her, my eyes fixed on that one little mark. Such a small thing, in the grand scheme of things… but what, or who, had done it?

I pressed a thumb to the mark, measuring it, but I had not grabbed her by the throat. It was smaller than my thumbprint, but the angry violet color… it was fresh, and not done by my hand.

“What is this?”

Cirri had frozen under my touch, her pen still. There was a hesitation I might not have marked if I hadn’t come to know her a little better in the last few days, but shedidhesitate before she turned back to the page we ‘talked’ on.

There was a knot in my hair, she wrote.I pulled it out a little too roughly.

There were no snarled or torn hairs, nothing to indicate a tangle had been ripped out by force. It had the look of something that had gripped her, however small the patch.

So she was lying. But to protect herself… or someone else?

I didn’t choose to believe that my Cirri would lie to me without good reason. She’d had opportunities from the start to begin our sudden marriage with falsehoods; she’d chosen truth every time.

But if someone else had done this to her, it wouldn’t be allowed to persist. Besides myself, the only other people she had seen this morning were Koryek, who had greeted her politely and followed my orders to remain behind, and her personal maid from Argent… Elora? Elinor?

Whatever the girl’s name, she was a sour little thing. Wyn had already informed me that Yuli and Lissa, whom she’d selected as proper maids who might also teach Cirri about us, had been driven out by the new girl, who’d insisted on tending to the Lady alone.

So. I’d put cold, hard gold down that Elise had done this to Cirri. They had both been indentured servants of the Cathedral, according to Wyn’s dossier.

I would not have my wife subjected to the petty jealousy of a woman who could’ve returned to Argent at any time, but if Cirri was willing to lie for her… she didn’t want her to be hurt or dismissed.

The maid could work in the kitchens, then. Cook was always demanding more hands, especially when we housed human-heavy legions.

These thoughts passed in the blink of an eye; I caressed Cirri’s neck with a gentle touch. “It’s only a bruise. It’ll fade soon. Are you well enough here on your own? I must take care of some arrangements I’ve put off, as much as I’d prefer to watch you work.”

Cirri tilted her head up, no small amount of suspicion in her gaze, but she finally wrote,I’m completely at home here. This is going to take me all day, I don’t expect you to sit and watch me. But come find me for dinner, please? Sometimes I get caught up and forget everything else.

Despite the irritation and anger churning in my gut, I smiled at her. “Of course. I expect you to tell me about your day.”

She put her hand over mine, where it rested on top of her shoulder, and gave me a light squeeze before she let go to write,I’ll expect you at sundown, then. Don’t take too long.

“Of course not,” I told her, and brought her hand to my mouth, brushing a careful kiss over the fragile skin before releasing her and walking away.

Ihadto walk away. That Elaine thought she could harm Cirri and continue to live in the position as her personal maid, close to her day and night… it made me want to find the girl, to drink of her in a way that offered far more pain than pleasure.

But Cirri had lied for her.

So I went to Wyn.

The Tower of Autumn was one of the least-visited towers in Ravenscry, not because it lacked the beauty of the others, butbecause Wyn often threatened—and was no stranger to carrying out—bodily harm on anyone who disrupted her sanguimantic experiments and projects.

There was a scent that hung in the air around her tower, a mix of tangy iron and herbal sweetness that grew stronger as I drew close to the door. I knocked three times, waited as the muffled sounds of cursing and shattering glass emanated through the door, and knocked again.

It swung open, revealing a rather ruffled-looking Wyn. Approximately two hairs were out of place in her usual chignon, and there was the tiniest drop of wolfsbane oil on her sleeve—she was going to be in a mood.

“Bane, you do realize you’ve just disrupted an extremely delicate extraction process?” she asked. “I’m going to have to requisition more wolfsbane, and the herbalists are telling me there’s a blight on this year’s crop.”

“I apologize, but I have a new… ah, experiment for you. It should consume most of your waking thoughts until the new shipment of wolfsbane arrives.”

Wyn peered at me over her spectacles. “Oh, yes. The extraction is ruined, so now you’re doing me a favor by taking upmoreof my precious time? Do you think I don’t want to eat, sleep, or actually see my wife on occasion?”

I sucked in a breath. “My apologies are entirely in earnest. I can get your herbs quicker if you’d rather not hear my idea…”

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