Page 200 of A Vow of Blood and Tears

“Gods, no,” I whispered. “You cannot leave this world yet.”

Her tears were spilling over, dripping off her cheeks; they landed in bright pools on the petals and thorns of the ruined golems. Her lips shaped more words, but blood bubbled up, dripping from the corner of her mouth.

Her body was broken, held together only by stillness… soon that blood would fill her lungs and she would drown.

I would not allow her last moments to be unheard. Not while she still had breath in her lungs.

“You cannot die.” The words snarled out of me, incomprehensible to her. “You made your vows tome, and I do not give you permission to die. There is no world in which you do not exist. I won’t allow it.”

I didn’t realize that my eyes were wet until I sank my teeth into my wrist, a fresh rill of blood spilling over her broken body, and there was no shame in letting those tears run free.

“Drink.” I held my bleeding wrist to her mouth, letting the blackened drops spatter across her lips. “I love you, Cirrien, and you are going nowhere without me. You are mine. I gave you my body and my soul, and now I give you my blood. It’s yours. It’s always been yours.”

But her eyes were unfocusing, and her chest struggled to rise with the next breath.

Agony was crawling over my back, my shoulders; I ignored it, squeezing blood into her open mouth, forcing the darkness down her throat.

She was mine, and none could have her. I would bleed my last before I allowed her to pass on without me.

The darkness was all-consuming, hazing everything I saw, as the wound began to seal. Her lips were smeared with gore, but as I touched her, her chest rose once more.

Another breath, the gift of life, as another sharp stab of pain tore through my neck.

Gods. She somehow still lived, clinging to a single thread of life.

I exhaled, dragging a hand across my face and wiping the tears away. I needed to bring her away from the battlefield…

Her chest arched, shattered hands loosely flopping, and without thinking, I reached for her, cradling her in my arms.

But even as I held her close, I understood it was not Cirri that had moved. She was still in my grasp, still breathing, her eyes closed and cheeks glazed with tears, her heartbeat thready but wonderfully alive.

It was the warg under her.

He jerked, head tilting towards me, and under the milky haze of death I saw the bright jade color of his eyes; even with those distorted bones and terrible features, I saw Miro in the thing he’d become.

His jaws slid open, and a vine crept through his mouth, snaking around his muzzle. It was like watching time move faster, thorns exploding from the vine, glossy black needles that pierced Miro’s body with every inch of the vine’s creeping expansion.

His entire body was moving, the ground beneath him a roiling mess not of wargs, but of more vines. They glistened, red with blood and wet with glassy tears, the thorns and petals of the golems shivering in the dirt where those liquids had touched.

They swallowed Miro whole, dragging his corpse into the earth, and the vines spread outward.

I stood, Cirri in my arms, and the agony in my back grew bright and hot as I pulled away from the thing that had latched onto me.

I turned my back on the churning ground and saw what had bitten me.

Not a warg, no, but blackened brambles bursting out of the earth. Wargs were tangled within their thorny branches, screaming and fighting, but the brambles grew through them, bursting through eyes and piercing mouths.

The golems’ remains were reaching for me, trying to send sharp thorns into my skin and hold me in place.

Clutching Cirri, I backed away, and the vines swirled up my ankle like living things, needles bursting outward and driving through my skin.

I couldn’t fly, my back a mutilated mess. But I needed to bring Cirri from the terrible Fae magic erupting around us. She had my blood, but she needed Wyn to put her back together.

That became my sole thought.Get her away. Take her from the magic.

I tore my foot away from the vines, leaving blood and skin behind.

We walked from the battlefield surrounded by thorns, only a step ahead of their slithering, hungry masses, the thorns lengthening into tiny blades and reaching for me with every step.

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