Page 115 of A Vow of Blood and Tears

Enjoy drinking your gold away, I told him, and he grinned. The Brother had used conversational instruction to tell me of his plans to sample the local brews of every tavern within easy riding distance for the celebration.

I stretched as I rose, and left the tower—and the godawful stink of sex, thanks to Kajarin—only to find a face I hadn’t expected in the hall.

“My lord.” Miro gave me one of his courtly bows, the one that hinted at scorn and sarcasm, but his eyes were sparkling. “I’ve got something you should see.”

“What’s that?” I examined the lad, who dressed like the court dandies of Argent in a velvet coat, with lace trim at the cuffs and gilded buttons. Well, hewasan artist, not a renowned warrior.

“Please, Lord Bane, don’t make me spoil the surprise.” Miro grinned, teeth white against his tanned skin, and led the way.

The servants’ quarters were in the back of the keep, near the heat of the kitchen fires. Miro opened his door to a small room that was not plain in the slightest; an old Forian rug was spread across the floor, the bedding fine linen. The lamp was blown Serissan glass, rather than the usual beeswax tapers the rest of the keep used.

I had just enough time to wonder if he’d been working on other commissions and lining his pockets with gold when I saw it.

At first, I thought there was a window, and Cirri beyond it, but it was merely paint on canvas. The scent of pigments, paint medium, and expensive incense filled the air rather than her own rose-and-musk perfume.

I froze as she seemed to look back at me, that wry little twist to her smile, secrets held in eyes the color of primeval forests. Instead of painting her with her hair styled formally, he’d painted it as it usually was, spilling in long waves over her shoulders, albeit with a rose tucked behind her ear. There was even the slightest freckling across the bridge of her nose, true to life.

It was so perfect, a flawless representation. “You have your mother’s talent,” I finally said, astonished by his skill. If one had told me that Edda had returned from the afterlife to paint this last portrait, I would have believed it wholeheartedly.

Miro tilted his chin, acknowledging the compliment. “Now you will always have a way to look at her, even when…”

A chill ran down my spine. I had commissioned this portrait of Cirri so that I could see her when she had joined the ancestors, and all at once, the beauty of the paint unsettled me.

I was looking at future pain, at a gravestone. What good was paint when I didn’t haveher? How could I have ever believed this would suffice compared to the living, breathing woman?

A low rumble reverberated through my chest.

He sucked in a breath. “I apologize, my Lord. No one wants to think of that now, in the present. Please forgive me.”

“You’re forgiven.” But my voice was dangerously deep, the anger of a fiend quivering deep inside me. What good was it? I’d rather have her, alive and warm and laughing, in the flesh.

It was a waste of talent. A waste of paint. I had been wrong to ask for this.

“It’s completely finished?” I asked, and Miro nodded.

“Signed and sealed.” He gestured to the signature on the bottom; he even had Edda’s writing style, and from a distance the signatures would appear identical. “I’ll have someone deliver it, my Lord. Where—?”

“The upper levels of my tower.” I needed to leave here, to stop looking at that face, because the next time I studied it with a hunger for every detail, Cirri would be in her grave. It sickened me now, the realization that I had not commissioned a beautiful memory, but a future quagmire of agony to wallow in. “Truly, Miro—Edda would be proud of you. You’ve got her eye.”

A quick, dark smile crossed his face. “I’m sure she would. I painted most of it from memory. Your wife doesn’t enjoy sitting still.”

“No, not unless there’s a book in front of her,” I agreed, finding it easier to speak with my back to that thing.

“Perhaps…” Miro examined the portrait, his gaze flicking to me. “We should do yours as well. A matched pair, as you are now.”

“Why?” Who on earth would want to look at such a thing?

Miro reached out, touching the edges of the canvas. “I know my mother painted you before you turned fiend. But when you hang Cirrien’s portrait next to yours, there will be no truth in that set, will there?”

I frowned, forcing myself to look at my wife’s image again. It was easier to think of it sitting next to mine the way I had been, rather than now.

My knuckle rubbed against my jutting cheekbone, felt the peaks beneath the skin of my face.

“No,” I said abruptly. “This is not a face that should be committed to an image. Let hers sit next to the old one. The only person to care will be me. Have it delivered, Miro. You’ll get your pay.”

I turned my back on him, no longer willing to look at the thing, nor to imagine the absurdity of that beauty next to my ugliness. What a joke it would be.

A stormcloud hovered over me all the way to the library, sickness and dread washing through my veins. Why did I have it made? What were all of Edda’s paintings, if not epitaphs in themselves? So few of them depicted anything pleasant or beautiful—she had spent the last years of her life painting the truth as it was, the truth we saw every day, and the cold fact was, the truth was horrendous.

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