Page 211 of A Vow of Blood and Tears

I nodded, but Cirri scowled harder, and I had to gently take her wrists to stop her from signing until her fingers ached.

“I believe you,” I said simply. “He shared his mother’s artistic talent, and possibly inherited some form of her memory. I’m not at all surprised to learn he may have hidden that talent and put it to his own self-serving uses.”

Cirri exhaled, her brow smoothing, but her lips were still turned down.Maid did not betray you.

“I know.” The moment she had told me of Miro’s hidden talent, I knew, a cold jolt to the heart. I had murdered Ellena even as she sobbed out her innocence. “But what’s done is done. I will carry that on my conscience forever.”

That’s why you can’t be the old you, she told me.Because you’re not at peace with your actions. He…

She frowned, and shaped the words ‘big wolf’.

“Hakkon?” I asked, and she nodded.

He enjoyed killing. You must love it, or be at peace with it, to shed the fiend skin again. That was how he looked human, Bane.

I looked down at my hands, braced on my knees, massive and misshapen.

To shed this hated skin… to be the man in the tower, handsome and confident that he deserved glory and his princess…

I didn’t deserve her, but I would take her. From the moment I’d realized she was gone, I had vowed to get her back.

But I would remain what I was, her protector, her monster. Not only hers, but the entire Rift’s. Even if I managed to make peace with my actions, the cold-blooded murders I’d committed, they required something of my kind to guard them.

°nowing that, I would never make peace with it. I was as terrible as Hakkon, and I would spend an eternity atoning.

“I won’t ever look human again,” I told her. “This is what I am. I haven’t made peace with what I’ve done, but I’ve made peace with who I am. Perhaps I am a beast, but I’myourbeast.”

Cirri smiled a little, and bent forward to kiss my forehead.And that’s who I love, she said.

That word, after we’d danced around for it so long. It wasn’t until she was gone that I understood I should have said it while I could, that they were the only words that mattered.

“I love you,” I said, with a great sigh of relief, and gave her my most hideous grin. “Gods, I love you more than anything.”

I’ve been waiting for you to say that.

I looked up at her, those green eyes shining, and debated with myself. I needed to tell her. The brambles would not lie. I should not lie.

“Then I hope you can still believe it… Cirri. Sit down.”

She sank onto the bed next to me, head tipped curiously, hair spilling over her shoulders.

“What you wrote… that wargs and fiends are the same.”

I didn’t… I didn’t mean to compare you to them, or to say you’re the same—

Cirri flushed, and I took her hands, stopping her. “No, listen to me. Wearethe same. You’re right. Cirri, I told you when I killed Ellena. I’m not noble. I’m as evil as they are. But I try… to do it for the right reasons.”

She kept her hands in mine, eyes boring into me.

“You know I drink—used to drink—from convicts. Some small way to try to repair the balance of what I’ve done.” I snorted derisively. “It will never repair it. To become a fiend is the same as a warg. To slaughter the innocent in cold blood. When I told you of the ritual to become a warg, I was also speaking of myself, and my brothers.”

She signed so slowly.I saw what they did. When they made the artist a warg.

I held her gaze, unwilling to look away. She deserved to be looked in the eye when I told her. “Cirri… that is what I had to do. That’s why my kind both loves and loathes me, and holds me at arm’s length. It wasn’t just my sacrifice, it was the sacrifice ofpeople who had never done anything wrong in their lives. It was necessary to become what I am… and it was true evil.”

He told me this, she said.That it was the same. That was what I meant.

“At least he spoke the truth about that,” I said bitterly. “I killed dozens of innocent people to become a beast. I bathed in their blood, I danced to their screams. The thorns and roses know. They reach for me, hoping to catch me in their trap and bury me.”

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