Page 171 of A Vow of Blood and Tears

Miro rushed to his feet, still panting and pale, eyes frantically searching the crawling pack of wargs. He spun, looking for the speaker, until the wargs parted and he stepped through.

My first sight of Thurn Hakkon, and I knew him instantly. He would have been a handsome man in another time and place, tall and well-muscled, his deep auburn hair spilling over his back in braids, with a neatly-trimmed beard. But his chiseled features were sharp, brown eyes set in a predator’s gaze. His mouth was a cruel slash.

Hakkon stopped at the edge of the firelight, hands spread. “Well?”

Miro pointed at me, finger trembling. “Sir. I brought Cirrien lai Darran, Lady of the Rift.”

Hakkon turned that gaze on me, as though he hadn’t noticed me at all. Not an iota changed in his expression, but his eyes went glacially cold. “The Lady of the Rift,” he repeated in that musical voice.

“Yes.” Miro swallowed, and bowed nervously. At any other time I would have been gleeful to see him terrified, cringing like a worm, but now… all I could do was sit there, tethered to the tree, clutching my journal like a shield. “She’s a lai, sir. Due to inherit a vast—”

“Kyril.” Hakkon touched two fingertips to the bridge of his nose, as though a sudden headache had afflicted him. “Kyril, Kyril, Kyril.”

Miro went silent, his hands fisted at his sides and trembling. With each repetition of his name, Hakkon shook his head in disappointment, and Miro shrank further into himself.

“I asked you to bring me something of value, Kyril.” Hakkon gave him a quizzical smile. “I asked formaps. I asked for the number of his legions. I asked for their locations. I asked forgold, I asked forweapons.”

His voice steadily grew louder, a vein throbbing in his temple.

“I asked for anything of value, but I didnotask for hisgoddamned wife!”

Miro was struck silent as the grave, staring at Hakkon like he was watching his own death approaching.

The man curled his lip, revealing teeth far sharper than those of any human being. “What worth do you have to me now? You didn’t see the point, Kyril. I needed footholds in the Rift, not a sacrifice. The girl was already meant to die.”

“He loves her!” Miro blurted, pointing back at me with a shaking hand. With his gaze fixed on Hakkon, it was shockingly accurate, his finger aimed right at my heart. “He loves her, he won’t just let her die, he’ll come for her. You can lure him in, kill him on your ground, and use her estates as your foothold. The lai Darrans are already dead. It’s all hers now. There’s plenty of room for a pack.”

My palms and back had gone clammy, a tendril of terror piercing the numbing fog of accepting my own death.

What was worse than dying on a warg’s teeth?

Watching Bane be torn apart by a pack of them.

I shook my head, wordlessly denying Miro’s claim, but Hakkon had looked at me again with a new speculation in his eyes.

“Does this boy speak the truth, wife of Bane? Will he come for you?”

I shook my head again. Inwardly I was praising Miro’s plan to forge my writing, to tell Bane never to come for me. I hoped he listened. I hoped he threw the letter in the fire, cursed my name, and never gave me another thought, if it kept him out of Foria, away from these circling things that called themselves wolves.

“She’s mute.” Miro glanced at me sidelong, venom in his gaze. “She can’t speak. But I assure you, if Bane knows she’shere, he’ll come for her. The proof is there, in the book she’s holding.”

I clutched it tighter as Hakkon pushed Miro aside with ease, coming to stand before me. The Forian commander knelt, bracing his arms on his knees and letting his hands dangle between them.

I didn’t want to meet his eyes; I kept my gaze lowered, picking out all the small details that turned Hakkon from a monstrously mythic figure into what he was: simply a twisted man. His knuckles were heavily scarred, the tiny red hairs dusting the back of his hands and arms catching the light like embers.

“Let’s have it then, lass.” He held out one of those scarred hands, his voice soft and kind. If I didn’t know what he was, if I hadn’t seen the cruel lines of his face, I could hear that voice and truly believe it was the voice of a good man. “I’ll take a look for myself.”

I leaned back, ready to kick him away, but there was the slight crunch of paws on grass behind me, and hot, fetid breath washed across the back of my neck.

Goosebumps rose on every inch of my skin, which crawled from head to toe. I didn’t have to see to know what was behind me, a gullet lined with teeth just inches from my neck.

I swallowed, tears of fury and terror building in my eyes, and Hakkon easily reached out and plucked the book from my hand.

He flipped it open, frowning as he carelessly flicked by the pages, and then he stopped. “Ahhh, there it is. I recognize the hand of my old enemy.”

Deep in the calm, sane part of my mind, where there was no warg breathing down my neck, I noted that he moved his lips, slowly sounding out the words; he was not a native speaker of Nord. It took what felt like an eternity as he parsed through thepoem Bane had written, and finally his gaze moved up over the edge of the journal to my face.

“I wouldn’t call it proof,” he mused, slowly closing the journal in one hand and waving off the warg. “But never have my spies brought back word of Bane with such romantic notions. I suppose that whatever love he is capable of, he has given to you, little redling.”

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