Page 197 of A Vow of Blood and Tears

Parts of him were still recognizable… half a hand, a twitching foot, what might have been his jaw.

But nothing remained of him save an explosion of thorns, thrown wide, spread across the ground among Rose’s trampled petals.

I blinked, looking at his destruction.

No, it was not quite a circle. It was a savage ruin.

But it was close enough.

My throat ached, swelling up tight; I gazed back at the battlefield, where Bane and Hakkon remained locked in snarling, shredding combat, the monstrous vampire desperately beating his ruined wing to rise up.

My fiend was bleeding from a thousand wounds, his face half clawed away, his wings bitten and torn.

Was I willing to gamble my life on folk tales and fairy lore? More importantly, was I willing to gamblehislife?

I flinched as Hakkon angled those too-long jaws for his throat, drawing fresh blood.

Yes. I was willing. The whole time I’d been looking at the deciphered ritual wrong, because I hadn’t possessed all the keys to unlocking it. If I was right, if what Hakkon told me was true… it could help.

Maybe. But gambling on a maybe was better than doing nothing at all.

I nodded to myself, acknowledging that I was going to throw everything I had into this final action, the last thing I would ever do.

It would be worth it, simply to save Bane.

In a circle of thorns, I said silently,with blood freely given.

I held up my shaking, sluggishly-leaking hands. My blood was his. I’d offered it to him in life, and it was his in death.

Not allowing myself to think of the promise that would never be fulfilled, my crushed hopes and dreams, I looked out at Bane as he fought on, my heart both aching and full.

Tears shed in love.

I allowed them past my chest, through my aching throat. They spilled down my cheeks in a silent fall.

I hadn’t cried from love when we married, but I would cry for it now. He’d come for me. He loved me. And now he must flee without me. That was all that mattered.

I see you, and you hear me.

He had. I let them flow, making no effort to hold them back.

I turned from the window, to descend the stairs and water Rose and Thorn with my tears of love, my offered blood. My one last hope that there was something left to save any of us.

A furious growl echoed up the stairs, rising into a crescendo of a hundred voices, merged into one singular, monstrous echo.

Wargs.

I heard their claws scrabbling on stone, their high yips and excited, panting breaths, coming closer. Drawn by blood, the door now wide open for the feast, nobody left to guard me.

As the first claws ripped at the opening Miro had made, I fled back to the window.

Let the tears flow, let the blood run. They were getting in, fighting each other to be first to devour me, manic snarls drowning each other out.

One way or another, I would die here. The only choice left was how I chose to die.

I made myself look at Bane one last time, said,I love you, to unhearing air, and tipped myself over the edge.

Chapter 48

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