Page 189 of A Vow of Blood and Tears

The pen was cool against my sweaty hand as I surreptitiously palmed it from the table. Cool and reassuring.

Not entirely solid, but it was only one blow that counted; after that, I would be dead.

Hakkon exhaled slowly, turning back to the window; I remained slumped against the wall, the portrait of defeat, my clenched hand hidden in the folds of my skirt. I didn’t have to fake the single tear that rolled down my cheek. I hadn’t wanted Bane to come, and yet he’d come anyway, because he loved me.

“You were a better gift than I could’ve anticipated. He is hunting you. He will finally find the tide that turns him back, and drowns him. I will howl in memory of him when he is gone.”

I forced myself upright, wiping the tear away with my free hand. Hakkon stood at the window, feet braced, his hands clasped behind his back as he gazed out at the trap.

His neck was open, naked, unguarded. I tensed, accepting that I would have to kill a man, and put all my strength into the blow.

The nib skated over his shoulder, opening a line of dark blood, and Hakkon’s hand snapped up before it plunged into his throat. He gripped my wrist, squeezing, the bones grinding together. The pen dropped to the floor; I opened my mouth, and no sound came out, though I screamed on the inside as he grinned.

“Thereit is. I was wondering when you’d find it in your heart to kill me.”

Hakkon drove me backwards until my back slammed into the wall, the stones driving the breath from my lungs. He had both of my wrists, nails digging between the tendons, splitting skin. Blood seeped between his fingers, and still I couldn’t scream, only kick and thrash wildly.

His bulk trapped me there, making my struggles useless. A terrible smell emanated from him, the reek of hot metal and blood, and his body heat was burning.

Hakkon’s panting breath touched my ear, raising goosebumps on my neck. “I smelled it on you.” He took a deep breath, his nose buried in my hair, and I squirmed away. “I saw it in your eyes. No part of you is a mystery to me.”

I turned my head away, gagging silently at the carrion stench of his breath, unable to look into his mad eyes: his pupils had eaten the brown iris, merging into the sclera, and the white pinpricks in their centers were growing brighter.

“I am an honorable man, despite what you may think. If you had not struck first, I would never have touched you, but you have let anger overcome your better sense.”

His face was warped, pushing outwards under his human skin.

“Our pups will be ferocious wolves,” he said with no small amount of pleasure, his brogue thickening. “But, little one, you forgot a terrible and very important detail.”

I bared my teeth, wishing I had Bane’s fangs, that I could rip his throat out myself.

Hakkon chuckled, and whispered in my ear. “You don’t need your hands to bear my children, redling.”

Icy terror emanated outwards from my spine.

Breath frozen, knees shaking, he tore me from the wall and slammed me into the table. Pain radiated through my ribs and my chin, my mouth filling with hot blood as I bit down on my tongue.

And oh, it would become so much worse.

“Daniil!” he called cheerfully, and I felt his hardness press against my hip, the bastard getting excited over what was to come.

The door opened, and the tattooed warg in a man’s skin gazed at us with dead eyes. No surprise, no shock, only expectation.

“Bring me a hammer.”

Chapter 46

Bane

Tension trembled in every limb. Thirst scorched my throat, a burning ember of need in my belly. Rage coursed through me, from being held back from what I wanted most.

The day was sinking towards night, and the golems still hadn’t moved.

The legions had caught up. Wyn had visibly aged another twenty years. Voryan had found a dead rabbit and was carefully separating flesh from bone and tendon, laying out veins plucked free with surgical precision. Just like the old days.

Exactlylike the old days, like the past had been preserved in amber out here on the plains, a sliver of time where nothing had changed and we played out the same actions we had before: a bloody night, followed by a bloody morning, and too much gods-damned waiting in between, all of our hopes hinging on a single miracle.

But the miracles weren’t awakening this time.

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