Page 180 of A Vow of Blood and Tears

I gulped down air, swallowing the bubbles of laughter. I even clamped a hand over my mouth, clenching my stinging hand, because I wanted to drag Miro out of here by his hair and rub his nose in the corpses he’d helped make.

All of it for nothing.

“The moon is still full and ripe.” Hakkon stepped to the tower’s outer door, and the wargs slunk around Miro on all fours, not so subtly herding him. “So you will make the sacrificestonight under his watchful eye. We will see if you are worthy of running with the pack and joining in our hunt.”

Miro glanced over his shoulder, giving me one last, desperate look. As though I could save him.

As though Iwouldsave him.

But I was not to sit inside, safe from the wargs without.

“Bring her, Daniil,” Hakkon ordered. “Let her see the change. Her own time will come when her human purpose has been served.”

The tattooed guard held a poniard loosely at his side; on Hakkon’s order, he brought it up, the sharp tip pricking me through my corset. I took a shuddering breath as I followed Hakkon and Miro, driven along like… like a sheep.

And into a far worse nightmare than I’d imagined.

The clouds had tattered and parted, revealing the bright white moon, and its light bathed a sea of wargs.

My lungs crumpled, breathless, as thousands of eyes, all pinpricked with white, stared back at us. Hundreds of restless shaggy bodies milled back and forth, trampling the deadened lands of Foria into mud.

I had thought a hundred wargs too great for Bane to take alone.

But this was an ocean of them. An army vast enough to overrun all the fiends together, by sheer dint of numbers.

Hot tears pricked the backs of my eyes as Hakkon elbowed Miro down the stairs onto packed earth.

The wargs parted, and the poniard jabbed, and I followed. Down into the sea of spindly limbs, snouts stretched too long, high-pitched jeers and cackles emerging from the tooth-lined gullets.

They crowded in around us, only thinning out as Hakkon led Miro to a sort of cage sunk into the mud. Built of timbers andscrap iron, reinforced with plates of wood and metal, it was a hideous eyesore, but its contents were worse.

A woman, filthy from head to toe, hardly more than skin and bones, wrapped her thin fingers around a plank of wood. “I know you,” she whispered. “You’re one of Lord Bane’s men. Help us.”

Miro stared at her blankly.

Her eyes were too big in that skeletal face. “Please help us.” Her voice cracked. The others in the cage didn’t move, slumped over like corpses, but their eyes gleamed in the moonlight.

Hakkon extended an arm. “Here is your sacrifice, Miro Kyril. Your father’s blood does not matter. Your mother’s blood does not matter. All that matters is that you hold rage in your heart, and give Wargyr the proper offering.”

Miro’s fingers twitched as he stared at the woman and her fellow prisoners, five in total. He reached for the knife at his belt, and Hakkon shook his head. “No steel. Only tooth and claw, boy. You have tomeanit, or you’re meat for the pack.”

Miro was hyperventilating, tears running down his cheeks, but I was watching the cage, wondering if there was a way to free them… but even if, by some mad chance of fate, I could break away some of the boards, they would have to run through a sea of hungry wargs. There was a poniard drawing a slow trickle of blood at my ribs, and a warg panting at my heels.

There was no escape for any of us.

“Release the first one,” Hakkon called, and one of the guards in a human skin unlatched a door in the cage, grabbing the woman who’d called out, and dragged her into the open air. She was forced to her knees before Miro.

I closed my eyes, hands shaking, and heard Miro whisper, “Please.”

“Get to it,” Hakkon murmured, his brogue thicker than ever, almost perverse in how melodical it became as the bloodlustdrew nearer. “Give Wargyr his due, or you will take her place and feed the hungry young.”

Miro sobbed, just once, a dry and dusty sound.

I forced myself to open my eyes. She was Rift-kin, one of my people, and someone had to bear witness. Even if I couldn’t save her.

The traitor, that bastard, closed his eyes, taking several deep breaths. He opened them again, staring wildly at the wargs surrounding us, the unending ranks of misshapen bodies.

Without another word, still breathing rapidly, Miro began unbuttoning his waistcoat and shirt. His hands trembled at first, moving more quickly with each button until he was ripping them off, peeling away his clothes to reveal a smooth, bronzed back and shoulders.

---