Page 80 of A Vow of Blood and Tears

I finally collapsed in a languid puddle, skin flushed, and Bane slowly caressed his hand up over my stomach.

He was still hard as iron, his shaft ground against my hip, but when I reached for him…

He caught my hand, pulling me against him, my back to his chest. I should’ve known, but I was too wrung-out to fight.

“My lovely Cirri.” His voice was rough, raw, but his arms were an implacable prison. He stroked me from shoulder to hip, his fingers dancing over my skin. “You’ve trusted me. Let’s not tempt fate now. Sleep with me.”

I understood. He was on the edge, torn between thirst and desire.

And I was still too much of a coward to face the beast’s fangs.

So I settled against him, letting the sleepy, warm glow take me under.

Chapter 20

Bane

In the early hours of the morning, well before dawn light dared to breach the mist of the Rift, I stroked the spill of crimson hair on my pillow and wondered if I was still dreaming.

Had I really spent the previous months fearing what my life was to become? Locked every day in a torment of knowing that I would be hated, despised, that the faceless woman I’d pictured as my wife would bar and bolt her doors against so much as a word from me… and now here I was, after a night of touching her, holding her in my arms, thinking that I couldn’t possibly be awake.

This couldn’t be real, and yet it was.

Cirri shifted in her sleep, curling up tighter and letting out a tiny sigh. I pulled the blanket over her, tucking it in around her shoulders. With one last touch, barely a graze over her cheek, I climbed from the bed with as little motion as possible, determined not to wake her.

My eyes didn’t need light to find proper clothes, and she was still sleeping as I leaned from the window to pluck one of the tiny roses that had bloomed on the climbing vines outside.

Her hand was curled on the pillow, the other tucked under the blanket beneath her chin. I set the rose near her fingers, where she’d find it when she woke and know that I hadn’t wanted to leave her here alone… but there were things I needed to do, people I needed to see.

I opened her journal, debating the wisdom of what I was about to do—this journal was hers, and hers alone. But it was also our conversation on the page…

I picked up her pen, carefully pinching it between thumb and forefinger. While I had shattered my fair share of pencils—and Serissan glass quills were completely out of the question—the last thing I wanted was to so much as dent her main method of clear communication.

I have gone to attend my duties, but I will find you as soon as I can, my lovely rose. Koryek will bring you to the library, and if I do not see you before noon, I will come find you for dinner.

I paused, and finally signed it as ‘your devoted beast’. She would understand that I was joking, I hoped.

I laid the pen atop the journal and quietly slipped from the room.

With every day that passed, fear and confidence grew in equal measure—confidence that this might not be a living hell, but a reward I hadn’t deserved; fear that one day she would wake up and realize she slept next to a monster, and that the only answer to a monster was to escape from it.

I would do my best not to be a beast she needed to run from. The note tucked into my shirt pocket seemed to burn against my skin, not only because I was hiding it from Cirri, but because I hadn’t been sure that my hopes would be answered.

The keep was already rising, along with the sun; I made my way to the Tower of Summer just ahead of servants bearing breakfast.

Of all the towers, this one was the tidiest, decorated with what the human nobles of Ravenscry had left behind when I took their throne. To my eye, it was overwrought and impersonal, all gilt and flowery still-lifes and overstuffed furniture, but it was usually reserved for visiting nobles, who seemed to like such things.

The guest now inhabiting the tower was not a noble, nor a vampire; the Silent Brother answered the door at my knock, giving me a brief, impersonal bow of greeting.

“I thank you for responding to my summons,” I said, stepping into the tower. “Of course, there will be gold in it for you, for every day that you are here.”

He grinned; the last time I’d seen him, in the tavern in Thornvale, I’d given him enough gold to live on for a year. When I’d written a note to my steward, asking him to pass the message along to Thornvale in the hopes that the Brother would still be there—and still interested in making an enormous sum of money—I’d wondered if he had already moved on to better climes, but the ancestors were looking out for me this time.

He was not a Silent Brother I recognized from the Rift’s small chapter, but he’d likely fought under the commands of one of my fellow fiends; speaking to me didn’t seem to phase him at all.

The Brother had shed his leather armor and wore only the pure white uniform of his order, and he unclasped a tiny notebook from the belt around his waist, producing a blunted pencil.

I’m Brother Glyn, happy to be of service, he wrote.The Vale chapter desperately needs the gold. This time, though, I think we should start at the beginning, properly. None of us learn to speak as you attempted, every word and concept all at once.

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