Page 23 of A Vow of Blood and Tears

“Do you have any last words?”

The warg’s tongue flicked out, licking nervously at his teeth. “Eat… the girl.Musteat it.”

I rose to my full height, claws flexing. “Wrong words.”

The warg wasted a precious second of his life glancing at the forest—debating the outcome of flight.

He wasted another when he looked back at me, hackles rising in a ridge along his spine, preparing himself for the leap.

He never had the chance. I was not there, and then I was.

My fist buried in the warm, pulsing sack of his abdomen. Soft, slippery flesh split under my claws. The patter of blood on stone and the warg’s weakening breaths the only sounds in the forest.

The light began to fade from those thin eyes, and he raised a paw to claw half-heartedly at my chest.

“I would pity you, but you chose this. You chose the murder of a woman who had done nothing to you. You were too young to throw your life away so easily.”

The warg panted, jaws snapping weakly.

“Hakkon knew you didn’t have a prayer,” I told him, and ripped my claws upwards, tearing out his heart.

I dropped the twitching organ, slid my claws from the warg’s body, and let him sink to the ground.

The boy did not return to his human form, not even with his last breath. What the Forians did in Wargyr’s name was as permanent as the metamorphosis I had undergone.

It was the work of minutes to drag him deeper into the forest, obscured from the road by the swirling veils of fog. I left him curled in the hollow under a pine tree, a shallow grave for a lost soul.

In death, at least, he would serve a higher purpose: feeding the wild creatures of my keep. Within a fortnight, not even bones would remain.

Chasing after the carriage on all fours, I cursed Hakkon. To take young men, hardly more than children, to encourage them to bleed innocents to strike a blow he knew would not scratch my hide—he threw away their lives.

The Veladari did not share a shred of my pity for the young wargs. They had lived too long with the threat of teeth looming over them, always stalking from the forest.

But despite my hatred for the Forians, I understood all too well the allure of the monstrous.

I had felt it myself once, lying on the rocky ground and waiting for the end, my guts torn out of my body and the blood of a dead warg cooling on my face.

The moon had been full and ripe, shining down on me as I lay sucking in my last breaths. It had been a beautiful night to die, its silver light dimming as my blood poured out of me.

And then a woman, a predator wrapped in the skin of perfection, crept from the shadows of the trees. Her skin was as smooth as porcelain, eyes glowing in the dark.

“You poor, brave boy,” she had said, crouching next to me, fangs glinting in the fading light. The rough commoner’s vowels of her speech were full of admiration. “What a shame you found the wolf before I did. Such heroics… any vampire would be pleased with this death.”

I could not answer then. My throat was clotted with gore, every breath a struggle. The vampire was no more than a blur by then, but still her crooked grin shone brighter than the moon.

“It seems so wasteful to let such a fearless soul vanish. Would you like a second chance?”

I had, indeed.

She had shed her blood into my open veins, raising me from the sucking whirlpool of death into the burning thirst for blood, the perfection of a new life.

And later still, when the wolves seemed to hide behind every tree in Veladar and the people—who had barricaded themselves behind stone walls and lived in terror—finally broke and sent ambassadors Below, begging for aid and alliance, she had told me to do what I must… so long as I had the conviction in my heart to see it through.

Because the price to be paid would be my own monstrosity, and my own guilt, for as long as I lived.

I had accepted it with honor. But what Hakkon did was not for the good of his people. It was not for nobility, nor for the protection of what was his.

It was because they were always hungry for more, never satisfied with their own lot, and he would throw boys in the skins of wolves at me until he died or I did.

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