Page 175 of A Vow of Blood and Tears

And it was not her usual scent, but the odor she’d given off in Tristone: roses and musk tainted by metallic fear, the raw bite of anger.

I snuffled over the ground, jaws aching, and reared back as she filled my nose, scraping at the leaves with my claws.

Bloodrose petals, and a tangled knot of her own hair.

I held it up, examining the crimson threads, burning with their own inner light. There was something deliberate in this, and I could picture my brave, stubborn Cirri leaving it for me.

A conjecture that seemed more likely as my tongue flicked out as I crept over the ground, tasting her sweat, even her spit: she had made a mess, a damned deliberate one.

Miro’s scent was here too, his own fear acrid and bitter, mixed with powerful cologne. I traced his footsteps, imagining it in my mind: he halted the wagon. He laid her on the ground. Cirri wriggled, spit, tore out her own hair…

And where was the wagon?

The grooves on the edge of the road told a clear story, and I peered over the edge at the shattered wagon. It was a damp pile of wood, weapons gleaming amongst the splinters, sacks split open and spilling grain into the creek.

My tongue flicked out; I tasted it all, but not Cirri. No, her scent continued up the road, mixed with Miro’s cologne and the horse’s sweat… and then the trail was all horse again.

I smoothed out her tangled hairs, wrapping them around a finger like a ring of scarlet spider webs.

“Go,” I ordered the golems, and they were back in motion like they had never stopped at all.

Half an hour later, they turned east, departing from the main road and following a forest trail, a worn rut of smooth dirt that climbed upwards steadily, ascending towards the mountains bordering Foria.

The trail followed a slope under a thick canopy of trees, and I smelled it before I saw it, the entrance obscured by the thickening evening mist.

A mine shaft, the ragged entrance shored with old timbers, coated in decades’ worth of cold iron charms and protections.

It smelled old, deep. The ancient mineral belly of the world, gusting its breath down over the mountains, sending a chill up the spine of anyone who smelled it; it was a scent tinged with danger, with unknowable things. A scent I was too familiar with from my youth; the Fae had once walked those dark paths.

This close to Foria, they still might.

Fear prickled at the nape of my neck, my heart skipping a beat; my mind stumbled, tripping over a terrible thought—what if she’s in there what if she’s dead in that darkness—before the golems calmly walked under the charm-laden timber.

They still hunted her, so she lived. I clung to that notion as I followed, my eyes adjusting to the deep shadows in an instant.

And there it was again, her scent, as powerful as if she was standing right here beside me: it coated a lump of cold iron, dropped in the dirt.

I carefully maneuvered my claws around it, brought it to my nose. Flicked my forked tongue over it, tasting her fear and desperation.

Shredded in two, between blinding rage that she had been stolen, and the comforting knowledge that she had left this as a sign. Left it for the one person who could track her by blood or scent.

Forme.

She had not run from me, she had been taken. My Cirri… somehow, I knew, she had not left me of her own accord. Had Miro forced her to write that letter? Had he threatened her, put a knife to her throat?

It was of no consequence now. The letter meant nothing.

She had left her petals, her hair, this cold iron, for me.

I wore no shirt; my body’s rippling conversion had shredded it. I finally did my best to tuck the cold iron into my trousers, torn and useless as they were, sloughing from my body with every step.

Every piece of Cirri, every clue she had left… I could leave none of it behind.

She was waiting, afraid and desperate.

Following the golems, my living compasses, I plunged into the dark.

Chapter 43

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