Page 25 of A Vow of Blood and Tears

My creator glanced sidelong at me. “So she may, but this is necessary. And in time she might see past what the humans believe. Bane, you’re an honorable, selfless man; no matter what you see in the mirror, no matter what you believe about your choices, you are one of the best among us. Given the chance, I think she may come to see things in the same light.”

Like Wyn, who worked tirelessly to ensure her fellow bloodwitches would never be burned at the stake again, Visca would never back down on ensuring the Accords were upheld and our people maintained their freedom.

She wouldn’t allow us to return to the dark ages, when her wife would need to be hidden in the shadows of the Below for her own safety. The sight of a bloodwitch in peril was the one sure thing that would turn Visca into a howling whirlwind of death.

Even if Cirrien had to be dragged kicking and screaming to the altar, this wedding would happen. Wyn and Visca would make sure of it.

The tower windows flickered as shadows moved past the lights: Cirrien and Wyn, the latter bringing the former to be made up in the proper way of a vampire bride.

She was not fighting; she walked into this arrangement with her head held high.

And she was expecting me. I had made my choice years ago; I wouldn’t fail now because I was afraid of what she might think. The Rift-kin’s protection, and my people’s sovereignty from Foria, depended on this contract.

I could only do what I could to ensure I gave her no reason to fear me.

A ragged sigh escaped me. I touched one claw to my deformed face. “As always, you’re right.”

“I knew I did well when I found you,” Visca said smugly, but her eyes were level and hard, brooking no argument. “It’s been many years since you’ve been a lad, but you were always our most steadfast warrior. I’m proud of what you’ve become, and we know you’ll do right by our people… no matter what it takes.”

She rose from her crouch with fluid grace and offered a hand.

“Come with me now. Let’s get you ready for your vows and give her no reasons for regret, hmm?”

Chapter 7

Cirri

For the first time in my life, I did my best to not move my hands so much as an inch, afraid that the calluses of my work-roughened hands would catch on the spidersilk-thin fabric of my wedding dress and ruin all of Wyn’s hard work.

From the moment she’d ushered me into Ravenscry I hadn’t had so much as a second to admire the finery of the vampire architecture around me. Tension lines had appeared around Wyn’s eyes and mouth, and she’d herded me through long, dark halls lit only with beeswax candles guttering in pools of wax, past half-glimpsed portraits in gilded frames, and through a thick oak door bound with iron.

On the other side of the door were my future chambers. This was the Tower of Spring, domain of the Lady, I’d been informed rather tersely as Wyn knocked a pattern on the door, and when it opened, showing a human maid, she nearly shoved me through.

The bloodwitch exhaled a sigh of relief at the sight of a copper bath full of steaming water, set behind a painted silk screen. “Oh, thank the ancestors. We don’t have time for any delays. Yuli, take this list to the Bloodgarden and ensure Eryanhas checked offevery single thingon that list. Once that’s done, the servers will need extra hands.”

She handed one of her papers to the maid, and a second appeared from behind the screen, a folded towel over her arm. Both watched me sidelong with interest, and Yuli slipped out the door a little slower than necessary.

Wyn plucked my journal and book from my hands, laid them on a dresser, and spun me around. I heard the soft snick of a knife being unsheathed and straightened, my back prickling, but she simply sliced through the stays of my red bodice.

“Out of that travesty, and into the bath,” she ordered, tucking the knife away. “Lissa, help her wash—oh for the ancestors’ sake,what, Cirrien?”

I’ve been washing myself for two decades. I think I can handle this, I signed sharply. I didn’t care if she said she didn’t give a damn about my past, or if I’d been torn from my own indentured servitude and placed into a fairy tale. I was still myself, and I could handle my own baths and scrub the floors just as well as they could.

Wyn gritted her teeth, which was more than a little unnerving given the length of her incisors, but she pinched the bridge of her nose and gestured to Lissa. “I will make an educated guess as to what you’ve said. Scrub yourself within an inch of your life. Lissa, you may take this… thisthing, and throw it in the kitchen fires. Or one of the watch fires. I really don’t care so long as it’s out of this keep within the next ten minutes.”

I stepped out of the remains of the red dress and Lissa swept it up, red lace and satin frothing over her arms.

“Wed in red, indeed,” Wyn muttered to herself.

I eased myself into the copper tub before she could admonish me again or summon Lissa back, but there was no time to enjoy the first hot bath I’d had in months, and in a rather massive tub,too. I scrubbed myself hard, from the top of my head to my toes, using soaps scented strongly of roses and spice.

Wyn waited impatiently, double-checking another list and tapping a pen with undisguised anxiety as I pulled myself out and dried off. Lissa returned in that time, the red dress now a distant memory.

No sooner had I dried my legs than they had me in a chair before a vanity, wrapped in my towel and staring at myself in a huge mirror carved with roses and thorny brambles at the edges. I looked paler than usual, but perhaps that was the flickering candlelight. In the Cathedral, mirrors were few and far between; vanity was discouraged.

But at this very clear glimpse of myself, I could see what the Eldest Sister and Aletha saw. My family was of old blood, the lai Darrans undiluted even after decades of conquest. Red or blonde hair marked Veladari blood, as well as the green eyes I thought I’d inherited from my mother. My memories of my parents were foggy and distant, but I thought I remembered a fine-boned woman with pale hair and deep green eyes.

If not for these damned eyes… but as Lissa began rapidly combing through my hair, my gaze drifted to the background in the mirror, to the journal and book laying discarded and waiting for me.

---