Page 205 of A Vow of Blood and Tears

And then the vines closed again, swallowing it whole.

“This is what you did,” Bane said softly. “I don’t know how, but where your blood touched this ground… this grew. Hakkon and his army were swallowed whole. Believe me, no warg that comes near it has lived to speak of it. It lives, and it hungers.”

Blood and tears. I had hoped for some small protection, perhaps a charm that would turn the tides of war in my people’s favor, but I hadn’t expected something of this magnitude.

Bane’s hand tightened on my shoulder, and I looked down, wanting to kiss his fingers, and saw them. The deep lines scored across his knuckles and forearm, pale and ragged, deep divots as though thorns had sunk into his flesh.

He felt me still, and looked down at his hand. He smiled, stretching it out and splaying his fingers so I could see the full extent of how the thorns and brambles had grasped and clawed at him.

“I can’t go into it, either,” he said quietly. “None of my brothers can. The thorns are just as hungry for us as they are for the wargs. Visca tried to enter, and made it a few feet. She came out with a single scratch. But if I go near…”

He released me, and stepped towards the thorny wall. He was still twenty feet away when the vines began to slitherfrantically, reminding me of a feeding frenzy in a fish pond, but they were nothing so pleasant.

Several creeping tendrils extended from the wall, crawling through the grass as Bane approached. He held out his hand to it, and they slithered faster, sprouting long, sharp needles.

The sound they made as they moved… raspy, hissing, the furious sound of a nest of snakes. It made me shudder to hear the fury and hunger in it.

Bane was still smiling crookedly as he backed away. The vines began to settle, and by the time he’d returned to my side, they were almost still again.

I stared at them, sickened, wondering what I’d created. But for once, there was no bitterness in Bane’s smile. “Because wargs and fiends must be the same. You could walk through unscathed, but it senses what we are.”

“It senses our sins,” a deep male voice said behind me, and I fell into Bane as I jumped, my heart throbbing so painfully I tasted copper.

The fiend had approached on silent, cloven feet. I gazed up at his long, skeletal face, at the rack of antlers spread wide and still stained red. I had a vague memory of those antlers draped with bodies, a face like a blooming flower full of needles, but he appeared about as monstrous as Bane, in a different way—something terrible that somehow didn’t frighten me much.

He was tall and broad, his claws curled dangerously, a strange pattern burned into his chest like a necklace. The fiend inclined his head to me.

“Andrus,” he said, touching a hand to his chest. “I’m glad to see you well.”

I smiled crookedly; my bandaged hands were hanging limp at my sides, useless to me. I was alive, certainly, and glad of it, butwell… it might be some time before I could claim that.

“Sins,” Bane said, and to my surprise, shrugged carelessly. “I’ve spent years wallowing in guilt. If not for those sins, Cirri wouldn’t have lived through this. Now their weight seems so much lighter.”

Andrus tipped his head, silver eyes glimmering as he studied the thorns. He touched the silver pendant around his neck, the scorched darkness of his fingertips displaying how often he must do that. “Perhaps it is deliverance.”

“Don’t try it,” my husband growled, muscles tensing. I shook my head; bad enough to see the wargs torn apart. I didn’t want one of Bane’s brothers to think of it at all.

That wasn’t what I had meant this for.

Andrus laughed softly, and turned back the way he’d come, cloven feet as silent as his arrival.

I stared after him, and only after he’d vanished into the multitude of tents did I look back at the thorns, hungry for the blood of wargs. For the blood of fiends.

Bane clutched me as I leaned against him. “Back to the tent,” he said, guiding me away.

Wroth nodded as he passed, carrying barrels of creek water; I smiled at him, and the fiend’s tail thrashed lightly.

Bane helped me into the tent, and when I sat on the cot, winded and sore, I understood that it was going to take many, many days of small walks to fully recover. That had barely been fifty feet, and I felt like I’d run for miles.

“Cirri…” Bane knelt before me, carefully grasping my bandaged hands. “I’m going to ask you to do something you may hate.”

I stared into his eyes, sinking into the ash-scattered gold. There was nothing I wouldn't do for him. When he was with me, I was whole.

“Wyn has worked her fingers to the bone to keep you alive, and done an admirable job of it. But you are bound to me now.Mine, now and forever.” He took a breath, holding my gaze. “You will heal faster if you drink my blood.”

My tongue ran over my teeth, a phantom taste filling my mouth at the thought of it.

I recalled thick liquid, an iron tang, almost spicy… or was I thinking of something else? My memories were muddled.

---