Page 109 of A Vow of Blood and Tears

“Kajarin’s uncle led the rebellion against my reign—Lorik lai Orros. A brave man, if a stupid one.” Wroth shrugged carelessly. “My wife had vanished when they tried to storm the keep. When I reclaimed her, she swore her uncle had kidnapped her. And all seemed well afterward. We becamefriends, my brother. Perhaps she didn’t wish to mate, but she would sleep by my side, touch my hand, or take her meals with me. We spoke into the late hours, many nights. I… was genuinely a fool enough to believe she might come to love me as a husband.”

I swallowed, thinking of how it might be if one day Cirri turned on me… but that couldn’t be. I wouldn’t believe it of her.

“I did everything I could to keep her happy, hoping things would continue as they were. I spared her uncle’s life, though the man’s treason deserved death, and sent him into a rather comfortable exile, as far as exiles go. I gave her everything she asked for. If she wanted diamonds, I sent for the jewelers. If she wanted silk, I sent for the Serissan tailors. If she wanted a damn horse, I had the hostler in the keep within the hour. I thought if she had the things a lady would have, she would be pleased.”

He frowned at the sliver of golden light on the horizon. “I don’t think I did anything wrong. I was faithful to our vows. I never hurt her. I did not even harm her uncle. I never spoke ill of her family, nor did I keep her away from the matters of a lordship’s duties. But after two years, she finally told me… she hated me. That she wished Lorik had killed me, and since he hadn’t, I should have the decency to do it myself. That the sight of me made her sick, and she would make me miserable until her dying day.”

I found that I could say nothing. My throat was locked tight around a roar.

“So.” Wroth’s terrible smile had returned. “In one night, I went from believing Kajarin was at least a friend, a companion, if not truly a wife or lover—to knowing that she’d rather see medead. That was when I offered to find another wife and release her from me. And she told me no.”

“You offered her freedom?” Even in my darkest moments, even when I realized I would rather die than be responsible for hurting Cirri, I had not considered releasing her. Perhaps I was the selfish one.

“In its entirety,” Wroth said. “I told her she could keep the jewels, the silks, and the horses. I would sever our vows, and she could live as a rich woman for the rest of her days.”

“And she said no,” I repeated, knowing where he was going, but I didn’t want to accept it. What a waste of a life, to be so full of pure spite that one would live in a cage solely to make another miserable.

“No.” He grinned. “She wants to be around me, day and night. If I leave Owlhorn, she follows. If I am home, she is underfoot—except when she’s fucking the stablehands, of course. She told me herself, that for as long as she lives, she will be a cloud of misery hanging over me. That is her sole purpose, her one true desire. My only consolation was to tell her that none of her children would ever inherit Owlhorn.”

The smile dropped abruptly, obscuring his fangs, but the icy gleam in his eye was no less dangerous.

Wroth shook his head, and leaned in conspiratorially. “Sometimes she likes to go several days without bathing, so I have to breathe in the stink of the men she’s rutted with. I have to look at this woman, whom I thought was a friend, and smell their seed rotting in her. And she will sit there in that stench and smile at me.”

As he spoke, his claws scratched deep furrows in the stone wall. “I don’t understand it, Bane. It is something beyond me. I would release her if I could. I would grant her freedom in a heartbeat. But she has finally found the one thing shedoeswant—to drive the knife into my back, and keep twisting it, over andover. I never know what to expect. Some days she drives me to misery. Other days, it’s like it never happened—like it was in the beginning, when it felt like she could truly be my wife.”

“Get rid of her,” I said abruptly. “Before… before Cirri came here, Wyn had solutions. You don’t have to live with her breathing down your neck.”

“Believe me, brother.” Wroth sighed. “I’ve considered other options. I called in Auré to try to talk some sense into her, but Kajarin is… relentless. She knows she is untouchable. We thought the Accords were a boon forus? No. They’re a shield forher. So long as a pureblood woman is a requirement, she could fuck her many lovers right in my lap, and I cannot raise a hand against her.”

He examined his paw-like hand for a moment, as though imagining such a thing.

“I’ve considered whether it’s worth it,” he said softly. “Because this is the third year of living under the suffocating weight of her hatred, and it already feels like an eternity. I don’t know if I can last even another ten. Is it worth being the lord of anything, if I go to sleep every night to the sound of her screaming under another man, and never know if I’ll wake up to poisonous smiles or warm friendship? Some days I think I’m losing my mind.”

“You have eternity ahead of you. She will die, Wroth. You will be free of her one day.” I put a hand on his shoulder, feeling the hunched tension in him. “Give her the poppy syrup, and send her to sleep—”

“No, no, Bane.” He laughed aloud. “Don’t you see? We have an eternity as the Lords.It never ends. There will be another Kajarin after her, and another, and another. Forever. An eternity of being hated and despised. If I must take a new hateful bride every time the last one dies, I don’t… I think I’d rather give it up and be free.”

I felt for him, torn between awful choices. If Cirri had loathed me, had made it her life’s work to see me miserable and downtrodden… I could see how I would find this a thankless task, a pointless, empty title.

But it was not only about us. Not us fiends, and not the women who had been chosen by a twist of fate in their bloodlines.

“Then you would return Owlhorn to the humans.” I squeezed his shoulder. “How long would our kind be welcome in the Rivers? How long until they would feel secure enough in their grip on power to begin burning the bloodwitches? Would you have all your people there return Below?”

Wroth shuddered at the name of the hell far below our feet.

“Our people have made lives for themselves under the sun.” I felt truly awful for what I was telling him, but we were only eight sacrifices, against thousands upon thousands of other lives. The balance was clear. “We can’t force them back under again, Wroth. I will do what I can for your… situation. I will speak to Wyn and Auré. Believe me, not all of them are like Kajarin. There are other chances, other choices.”

Wroth rippled his shoulder, knocking my hand away. “Did you hear nothing, brother?” He turned on me, teeth bared. “You and your pretty little wife, all cozy in bed… did you think that was not me as well? Truly believing the best? That she could love me?”

He unfolded himself from his crouch and dropped to the wall’s floor, standing upright to look me in the eye. “I wasexactly like you, Bane. I thought Kajarin was not like Voryan’s weeping wretch, or Andrus’s dead-eyed, poppy-swilling slob. I thought we were happy. That I was lucky. And instead I came to find that she loathed me with every fiber of her being, that two years of growing to know each other was all part of her plan tomake me feel the true weight of her contempt when she showed her hand.”

His tail was thrashing wildly; he paced back and forth on the small stretch of wall. “You waited until the last possible second to marry, brother. You waited, and you’ve known this girl for—how long? A week? Two? And you think she’s not like the others? No. She will turn on you. None of us are lucky. We’re all trapped in a cage of our own making, and so long as we choose to remain inside it, we will live an eternity of misery.” He jabbed a claw towards me. “I want you to remember this—I offered to end it. I gave you a chance to escape before she could crush your hopes and spit on the remnants.”

I waited until he’d settled, his torrent of words morphing into a stream of snarls.

His hatred for Kajarin was like a seed that wanted to take root—but I would allow it no fertile ground. I would not,couldnot, believe it of my Cirri.

Perhaps I was naïve as well as selfish. So be it; I loved her.

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