Page 165 of A Vow of Blood and Tears

“Cirri,” he said, his gaze serious and calm. “If something comes for us in the dark, I’m leaving you while I run.”

My smile faded as I imagined what things might be in those shadows, and Miro got the fourth match lit. He held it to the wick, and when the light was burning steady and clear, he plucked it from the peg.

He tightened the arm around my waist, speaking low against my ear. “Good thing you’re mute. We need to be silent all the way through. Quick and quiet wins the race under here.”

The horse shook its head too, sending its mane flying, dancing from side to side as Miro guided it under the timbers dripping with charms. I reached out, plucking a piece of cold iron from a loose nail as we passed.

True to its name, it was icy against my palm. The metal itself was no more than a long blob, twisted and warped, but it was a comfort as the daylight faded.

The horse’s hooves clopped on the smooth floor, echoing in the silence, and I felt Miro flinch behind me. The mine shaft extended forward with the tiniest hint of a downwards slope, into darker places.

To hell with it. If Bane thought I’d left him, if he wasn’t going to come for me… then I’d rather be dead by ghosts or Fae than let Miro use me.

The lantern’s soft light made the shadows dance. I could feel Miro holding his breath, his palm clammy with anxiety against my belly.

I rubbed the cold iron charm in my sweaty palm, and dropped it. Probably to be forgotten in the dust for a thousand years, or taken and squirreled away by some fell creature of the night, but there was always a chance.

A thin, dim sliver of a chance that I hung all my hopes on.

Find me, Bane.

Chapter 40

Bane

In the inner keep, I stared up at Cirri’s tower, at her empty window. Devoid of light, devoid of fire.

Wyn and Visca surrounded me, their mouths moving. Their voices traveled right through my head, leaving no mark.

I was not there, not really. My body remained, but my mind… that was elsewhere entirely.

Over and over, my final moments with her replayed—the rage that had boiled over, the hot glove of blood I’d worn, the horror that she was finally seeing me as I really was… and even as I envisioned it all going a different way, there was no changing the past.

I had destroyed everything with my own two hands.

Sometime in the midst of my imaginings—Cirri, staring wide-eyed at Ellena, Cirri flinching away as I roared at her to turn her eyes from the creature I was—something touched my arm.

Not softly. Not the one touch I wanted.

Wyn had smacked me with the back of her hand. “Well?” she asked waspishly.

I blinked at her, brought back to the screaming void of the current time and place. The place where my heart was nothing but a raw, gaping hole in my chest. “Well what?”

How could she have left? How could she havenotleft, after discovering the truth?

Had I given her any real choice?

Or perhaps I should have given her my blood the moment she asked. Then she could run… but she could never hide. Not from me.

A bright streak of fire cut through the numbness of my core. She was human, slow, reliant on horses and carriages.

She could not outrun a fiend.

She was mine.

“What are you going to do?” Wyn asked. “Lurk around in a grim mood, or go find the girl?”

Visca stood at her side, lips still downturned, face grim. She stood braced for an answer she didn’t want to hear, her arms crossed over her chest.

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