Page 102 of A Vow of Blood and Tears

I watched from the corner of my eye as Cirri took a small bite, pleased that she hadn’t simply pushed it to the side.

“Your courtesy issoappreciated, Lord Bane,” Kajarin said, drawing my attention to her. She leaned forward, looking at me from under her lashes. “This castle is absolutely lovely. Owlhorn is so drafty and cold, it’s impossible to feel warm there.”

Wroth lapped at his goblet and muttered, “Not for you, it isn’t.”

Kajarin continued like she didn’t hear him. “I’d love a private tour of the grounds, if you have the time?” Her lips were rouged, and she pouted them at me, eyes glittering. Somehow, between the rouge and the grease of the food, I was reminded of a mouth smeared with gore. “You could tell me of the battles here! I’ve heard you were the most vicious fiend of all—the Skinner of Wolves, and all. Is it true that becoming a fiend was your idea?”

“Wyn will take you on a tour, Lady Kajarin,” I said, discomposed by the mental image of Kajarin, dripping diamonds, with her face plunged into an open wound. “She knows far more about the history of the Rift and its grounds than I do.”

My bloodwitch, on Kajarin’s left, smiled at me politely and eyed a butter knife.

Kajarin let out a small laugh, pressing a hand to her bosom. “Why, that’s so kind of you, but as you yourself have been through so many campaigns, I’d like to hear all the gory details from the man himself. You must have beensobrave. There’s something so manly, sovirile, about being up close to a wargyourself and taking its head off with your bare hands.” She sighed, almost a parody of a sexual sound. “I’m available any time, day or night. Just let me know and I’m all yours.”

I caught Wroth, catching his eye for a fraction of a second, just enough time to silently ask:what the hell?

My brother remained stone-faced, but I heard the distinct sound of claws digging into the arm of a chair.

I shifted uncomfortably as Auré’s eyes glittered, a dangerous tilt to her head. The vampire, who had served as an ambassador and messenger both on the battlefield, and after we’d taken our thrones, looked angry enough to bite.

“Lady Olwyn can manage it, Kajarin,” she said, and while Auré never snapped, she was close to it now. “Their time is important—entertaining you is the least of their concerns.”

Kajarin fingered an earring, a diamond the size of a robin’s egg, and that grotesque pout returned. “I merely thought the Lord of the Rift might be willing to extend his hospitality to a sister-in-law. I’ve been yearning to meet him for years.”

Cirri suddenly smiled, and signed to Kajarin, her movements more boisterous than I’d ever seen them. She looked friendly, from her smile to her broad motions, but her words…

His hospitality doesn’t include ending up in your bed. Perhaps you should kindly fuck off back to the Rivers, and give your husband a moment of peace from your mind games.

I was astonished to silence for a moment. My wife had saidfuck, in polite conversation, at dinner. Ancestors, I wanted to kiss her.

And secondly, she made the problem entirely clear. I was so revolted by Kajarin that I hadn’t realized… that she was flirting. Trying to take another man to bed… in front of her husband.

Wroth said nothing, his jaw tight.

Cirri ended her thoughts with a wide, sweeping movement, not just knocking over, but sending a glass of wine flying—straight into Kajarin’s face. The woman cried out as the wine stung her eyes, dripping over her cleavage and staining the expensive pink silk, beading on her diamonds.

My wife made expansive gestures of apology, offering a napkin and doing a rather flawless impression of embarrassment and dismay. The Lady of the Rivers waved her away, gasping and wiping wine from her face, but the dress was a loss.

Kajarin stood up, wiping her eyes so that kohl stained them in a raccoon’s mask. “Please—please excuse me,” she stammered, and she rushed from the room.

A painful silence fell, no one wanting to meet anyone else’s gaze. Cirri sat down slowly, smoothing her dress over her lap before taking my hand under the table. She was shaking with rage.

Wroth drank the last of the blood, dropping his goblet.

“And now you see,” he said, his voice utterly flat and dead.

Chapter 25

Cirri

As always, I was a little taken aback at how wrong my expectations had been when it came to the vampires.

I had fully expected to fear Wroth, to shiver with curdled terror at the sight of him—but how could I be afraid of someone who was so obviously broken?

His leonine features, as monstrous in their own way as Bane’s bat-like visage, with his curling horns, digitigrade feet, and lashing tail—they were hideous and strange, but the deep pain and bitterness in his eyes… those emotions turned him from something to be feared, into someone in need.

And Kajarin… I’d thought I would find common ground of some sort, both of us being women forced into marriages we never could have foreseen, marriages to monsters. I’d had it in my mind that perhaps Kajarin was terrified of Wroth, that maybe with a little time she could come to see that a fiend wasn’t so bad.

I hadn’t expected a woman dressed like the harlots in the Argent slums, albeit one wearing a lifetime’s ransom of gems. Nor one who would ignore her own husband so readily in favorof trying to bed mine, though I hadn’t missed the curl of disgust in her lip as she looked at Bane.

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