Page 110 of A Vow of Blood and Tears

“I will take my chances with her,” I said, keeping my own voice hushed. “If she crushes me—then she crushes me. At least I will have had the pleasure of loving her for a little while. At least I will still live under the sun, and my kind here in the Rift will live free. But even if it means agony forever, I agreed to this. I agreed to become a fiend, and to marry a stranger for the sake of our kind, not myself alone. And so did you, Wroth. We both signed our lives away forthem.”

He stopped moving, standing statue-still as he gazed at me. “So we did,” he muttered. “But this… might be more than I stand.”

“Then we find another way. We will remove her.” I clenched my fists, feeling claws dig into my palms. “Perhaps I cannot kill her with my own hands… I can’t break the Accords in that way. The risk is too great. But Wyn will give her the poppy syrup,and Kajarin will be too deep in dreams to spend every second tormenting you. Or… take another lover, someone to bolster you against her hatred. The vows meant nothing to her. She is a political requirement, not a true wife.”

Wroth’s ears twitched, and then he shook his head. “No. No, I will not do that; I will benothinglike her,” he snarled.

He descended into pacing and growls, striding back and forth on the wall; I had nothing else I could tell him. Nothing I could do.

I remembered thinking of the Accords as a paper prison, and my wife the warden; that was before I’d thought I was inexpressibly fortunate. The luckiest vampire in the world.

A shiver of foreboding went down my spine at the parallels to Wroth’s story.

No. I wouldn’t poison what I had with Cirri. She’d been too patient, too kind. She spoke her mind. I didn’t believe she would hide it if she despised me.

She wouldn’t come up with games, or be worried about a vampire who was like my own sister.

No, I truly believed Cirri was my friend, and now my lover. She was everything I could have wanted, more than I deserved.

But Wroth… I looked back at him, leaving him alone to his fury and baffled misery.

If I killed Kajarin and my crime came to light, I would lose the Rift. I couldn’t do that to my people.

Once, when we were young and stupid, everything had seemed so amusing. Why not become beasts, if we could steal thrones and claim glory? We were already killers, one and all; it had only been one step further.

Now I felt the chains of obligation, the weight of responsibility, and I knew my brothers were now suffering under that same weight.

I climbed the tower, slipping back through the window to my sleeping bride, curled up in my bed. I looked down at her, smoothing hair back from her face, watching her dark lashes flutter against her cheek.

I would not allow Wroth’s fears to grow inside me. Not my Cirri. Not her.

She frowned in her sleep as I took her into my arms, cradling her tightly against my chest, then settled again. One hand flopped back onto the pillow, her fingers moving in her dreams, spelling letters in nonsensical fashion.

I smiled at the sight, tickling her palm carefully with my claws until she made a fist.

Very well, then. I would refuse to believe she harbored hatred towards me. Our time together was too short as it was, a mere human lifetime not nearly enough.

But I could no longer ignore my brothers, and their struggles. I hadn’t the slightest idea how to help them, how to fix it—but if things continued as they were, the other fiends might give up over time, crushed under the wheel of a constant stream of abhorrence.

And then the humans would take the seats of the Lords again, and everything we had worked for, everything we had sacrificed, would be for nothing. The vampires would be hunted down and staked with silver. The bloodwitches would be burnt in the Arks, the vast iron ovens meant for bodies. The families that had sprung up in the last decade would be driven Below, into a nightmare realm.

All of it for nothing.

“You will be my proof, lover,” I whispered into Cirri’s ear as she dreamed. “You will be the one to turn the tides.”

She shifted closer, her hand closing around one of my fingers and holding me tightly.

Ancestors, please… let her be the one to break the mold.

I needed my brothers to have hope to live for.

Chapter 27

Cirri

Iwasn’t upset when I woke to an empty bed; I knew Bane was with a Silent Brother, making strides every day to understand me. I could forgive opening my eyes and stretching out a hand to cold sheets for that.

Especially when I saw that my journal was open on the nightstand. Bane’s broad, rough hand, written in Low-Country Nord, filled half the page.

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