Page 17 of A Vow of Blood and Tears

But the room, the dress, the soft bed… everything around me disproved the notion as a bad dream.

There was no sign of my husband. No sign that he had ever come back—not that I had expected him to. What could he possibly want with me? The journey to fetch me from Argent alone was more of a burden than a mute servant warranted.

He must have been terribly disappointed to discover the poisoned gift hidden in the Eldest Sister’s selection. The growl in his voice as he’d left… I hadn’t been able to stop myself from shrinking away from it.

I rubbed my eyes, already dreading opening the door, and made myself strip the linens from the bed and remake it with the fresh ones in the wardrobe to put off the inevitable.

Only when that was done, and I’d run out of things to tidy, had I seen the things on the desk.

My heart jumped into my throat at the sight of the journal. Paper… and not the rough, pulpy handmade paper used for common writing. This was bond paper, satin-smooth under my fingertips.

Andhundredsof pages’ worth. My hand shook as I opened the cover, touching with careful fingers as though my skin alone might smudge the pristine pages with dirt.

I closed it reverently and found a metal pen, already filled for use. A spare well of ink. And finally, a package wrapped in plain dark paper.

That one made me hesitate, but I finally opened it and found one of the popular romance novels that had been spreading like wildfire through Argent over the summer.

It was about a vampire—beautiful as the setting sun, deadly as the blade of a knife—carrying off a human peasant girl. Kora, one of the longtime maids of the Silver Cathedral, had pooled a secret fund with the other servant women to afford a single copy to be passed among them.

All of us united had kept it hidden from the Eldest Sister’s eyes, under pain of never being allowed to join a secret book fund again if it was found in our possession.

What little I’d managed to read of it, after bribing Kora with hard candy to get my turn early, had involved a lot of heaving bosoms and throbbing appendages nearly from the first page.

I’d only been on chapter three. Kora had probably already retrieved the book from under the loose baseboards in the maid’s quarters, knowing now that I would never be returning for it.

Just looking at the cover made my face heat up. I was no stranger to sex, but none of what I’d experienced had been remotely like the things described in those passages.

I considered if Bane was trying to send me a message with this particular book. That he knew I was a scullery maid—hardly more than a peasant myself?

Not that it would matter. The deed was done, and the vampires had not specified in the Blood Accords that the bride must be highborn.

So if not that, then perhaps… I swallowed hard, dropping the book like a hot coal.

Perhaps he was stating that he, like the handsome vampire, was a sexual being. That whatever the knight did in the book… he would want to do the same.

To me.

I pressed my hands to my cheeks, trying to tamp down the heat of my blush. It was one thing to imagine a vampire with glass-chiseled cheekbones and the physique of a Serissan god.

That was understandable. The popularity of the novel itself proved it.

It was another thing entirely to imagine Bane—the craggy contours of his face, the long, pointed ears, not to mention the rack of flesh-shredding teeth—arched over me in a bed.

Not with the breadth of his muscled body, hands large enough to crush skulls planted on either side of my head…

The blush was not fading. If anything, it grew worse, my skin always willing to show every flush of emotion.

How was itpossiblethat I’d be blushing over that mental image? He was a fiend. The fangs alone sent chills down my spine. Every cell in my body recoiled at the thought of stepping into his embrace.

But his hand had been surprisingly soft and warm. He’d held mine like it was made of porcelain, although I’d pulled it from his grasp before he could feel the calluses on my fingers.

I exhaled, staring at the cover.

Sometimes a book was merely a book. It didn’t have to mean anything, except that my new husband was trying to show me kindness—which was far more than anything I could have hoped for. Or worse, more than I deserved after I’d shut him out last night.

Perhaps… we could be friends, at the very least. It would not be a dissatisfying life, to appreciate my husband’s company. Plenty of women married to human men didn’t have even that.

I rewrapped the novel, trying to hide it under the journal before I left my room in search of a place to wash my face.

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