Page 192 of A Vow of Blood and Tears

My vampire advisors mounted up, and Visca wheeled her horse around, well away from the three of us fiends.

My brothers shifted, eyes on the golems.

“Lead on, Bane. We’re with you.” Andrus tossed his horned head; even as he burned his fingers on the silver pendant, he too craved bloodshed. It was the lot of a fiend to always want more.

The golems trembled, eager to run.

“What are we waiting for?” Wroth growled. “Let’s not let the lady down.”

“Find her,” I ordered Thorn, and they both burst into a quick stride, rounding the burned-out cabin in a split and meeting again on the opposite side.

The three of us followed at their heels, following the path. Below our feet were tunnels, warrens of the Below, but thegolems, following Cirri’s blood-call, didn’t need to maneuver in such things to follow her. If they halted at nothing, that would mean she was beneath us, and I would find a way under when that time came.

I thought of the rumors that Hakkon had tunneled deep beneath Foria, excavating Fae ruins; if we were to fight in that territory, we would require Voryan and the legions.

I hoped he was above ground, not only because the terrain would make our lives much easier, but because the thought of Cirri being trapped Below in the endless dark was a terrible one.

But the golems kept running north. North into the cold, into the empty expanse. Rose pulled ahead, her form lighter and more lithe than Thorn’s, until she was so far ahead she was nothing but a bright point on the plains. Even with her dark, bruised petals, she stood out brilliantly against the dreary backdrop of the ruined plains.

The rest of us followed, numb to all thought but the hunt, tasting the air and finding nothing, and despite myself, despite my brothers’ presence, my hope began to dwindle.

If the golems would die, sooner rather than later… what if they died before they found her? Wyn had never made them before; she had no idea if they would survive the coming night. There was every chance they would fall apart into their base components, and leave me with nothing but a direction—a direction that might be very wrong, if Hakkon were to move Cirri again.

Don’t think of it. Think of nothing but the hunt, nothing but finding her scent.

I ran mindlessly, driven only by desperation, the night crawling minute by minute as my four limbs ate the miles.

But Rose came back. Now a shadow against the night as she came to a halt in front of me, unwinded from the run but petals trembling, hands moving frantically.

Hope leaped in my heart as I read her words, the fire in my soul returning—not only because she was there, she was in sight, only a breath away, but because… it seemed there was a chance my Cirri had not been imprisoned in darkness.

I found her, the golem said.In the sky.A princess in the tower. I found her.

The toweritself loomed on the horizon, a lonely behemoth on these vast plains. It was slumped and ancient, a colossus left to rot and ruin, forgotten from a time when humankind, newly freed of the Fae, began their expansion into the wilds.

There was nothing left of the keep that had once been around it, but for the odd stone crushed into the muddy fields; it stood alone, wargs camping at its base, their pungent carrion reek carried on the wind.

And she was in there. Rose and Thorn stood before us, straining against their order to halt so intensely I could see them shivering. Their eyeless faces were fixed on the tower, heedless of whatever traps Hakkon would have ready.

And oh, there would be traps aplenty. Even now, I saw only six wargs in human skins, crouched around a fire; no scouts had come our way, no watchers’ spyglasses flashed from the tower window.

Which meant we were expected, and the empty expanse of ground between us and them had an unpleasant surprise waiting. Wargs, no doubt; the only uncertainty was how many and where, two minute details that could bring down the most vicious of armies. If he had six waiting, I had to assume a hundred more lay out of sight.

It was only the golems’ insistence that she was there in the tower that kept me sane and wary, more concerned for Cirri’s safety than my need to leap in and kill anything that moved.

When I’d first tasted the air and received nothing but blood and rot, I’d asked them, again and again, where she was. And every time, they insistently pointed to the top of the tower, that crumbling ruin.

So I had to believe she was there. My compasses were not sentient, thinking beings, with their own agendas and motivations; they lived to find Cirri, so she was there.

The legions were behind us, driving their horses as fast as they could gallop. Wyn and Visca were only a few miles away.

There were four of us. Four fiends.

We could hold the line until the legions arrived.

“They’rehidingfrom us,” Voryan whispered gleefully, his third eye so bloodshot it looked like it would leak scarlet tears. “Oh, I love games.”

I opened my mouth to growl the order to charge, and as soon as I did a taste hit my tongue, fresh and terrible.

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