Page 146 of A Vow of Blood and Tears

Have you heard anything about thorns being involved?I wrote.A circle of thorns?

Miro’s brows crinkled further. “No, of course not. They’re sacred to the vampires’ Mother, not Wargyr. Where would you even get that idea?”

I worried my lower lip, thinking.Just a misconception.

“Hell of a misconception. No, blood and flesh are sacred to Wargyr. Pain. He is the god of torment, of being forged in a crucible of agony and emerging in your most powerful, primal form.” Miro glanced towards the field of pits. “A little like the fiends, in fact.”

How so?I didn’t believe that for a moment. I couldn’t picture Bane lifting a finger against any of his loved ones.

“He never told you how they took that form?” Miro snorted.

I’m sure he didn’t tell you, either.

The man grinned, showing his white teeth. “No, but he didn’t need to. My mother told me. There are some interesting parallels, though. To be born, a warg needs to emerge washed in blood. Just so with them.” He nodded towards Bane. “You think the vampires feed all pretty now in their blood shops? They had to cause epic suffering to go fiend. She told me…” He leaned in closer. “It took thirty deaths before Bane could make the shift.”

I didn’t know what to say. Without meaning to, I looked out at my husband, deep in the trenches, covered in blood and soot, his broad shoulders flexing as he shifted bodies.

Thirty agonizing deaths, to become what he was… but this was Miro speaking, and if I thought I understood anything about him, it was that he would twist any truth to his advantage.

“It’s kind of funny.” Miro followed my gaze. “They hunt the wargs for being what they are, and yet between the four of them, they killed over a hundred people at once to become fiends. You could argue that they are the exact same coin, on different sides. Neither is born from love and rainbows, I can tell you that. What makes a warg any different from a fiend?”

The fiends don’t hunt and eat innocents and children, to start with.

“No?” He raised his brows. “So… you’ve never seen Bane or Wroth raise a hand in anger?”

My pen was motionless in my hand, my mind flashing back to that night in Fog Hollow, how quickly he’d moved—that man’s arm nearly torn off, the warm, wet spray of his blood across my face.

The white-hot hate in Wroth’s eyes.

Bane, claws slashing through my side as he prepared to kill him.

He had reasons, I wrote.

“Ah, well then. Reasons. Were you there on the battlefield against Foria?”

I shook my head, a tendril of warm anger finally seeping through the numbness of my emotions.

“Some of the wargswerechildren,” Miro said quietly. “Do you think that stopped him from gutting them on sight?”

A long, taut silence passed.

“But I suppose you know everything, don’t you?” Miro smiled, with more than a touch of snide superiority in his tone. “Never been on a battlefield, grew up safe behind nice thick walls, but you know all there is to know about fiends. I’m gladyou’re an expert and can correct the rest of us, who’ve been living under them for the last ten years.”

I sucked in a sharp breath, but Miro had already shoved off the wall. He gave me a mocking bow.

“Thank you for amending my errors, my Lady Silence,” he said. “I bow to your superior knowledge. Or…”

He came close enough that I felt his breath on my ear as he spoke. “Or you’ll see one day just how terribly wrong you are, and when that day comes, you’ll wish you’d listened. Two sides. Same coin. There is no difference between your husband and what he hunts.”

He left me alone in the cold silence, the wind kicking a flurry of snowflakes through my cloak, my toes frozen numb, my heart a stone. Finally, I forced myself to return to Wyn’s tent, making my notations from Miro’s knowledge and putting the laika by the brazier to keep him warm.

I still hadn’t thawed as the legions filled in the last of the pits. As the tents were packed, the wagons loaded, the horses saddled.

Bane’s shoulders were slumped as he emerged from the twilight, his hands filthy to the elbow. He bowed over as he walked, like the weight of the world rested on his shoulders.

I watched as he scrubbed them in a bucket of well water, scouring blood and dirt away with harsh soap.

“We’re going home alone,” he rumbled, his voice low. “The legions are spreading out, reinforcing where they can. We need to get Miro back to the keep. He’s going to run supplies south—it’s the most likely place for Hakkon to attack next.”

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