Page 33 of A Vow of Blood and Tears

Cirri

It took less than ten minutes for the nobility of the Rift to realize that there wasn’t going to be much small talk between us. One of the ladies, an older woman in pink, frilly satin for the occasion, had recoiled slightly as I signed to her, my hands still covered in blood and dirt.

“Oh, you poor thing,” she said, pressing one hand to her chest. “How kind of our Lord to… offer you such an advancement despite your, ahh… hardship.”

Visca appeared on my left, pressing a wine glass into my hands and giving the woman a toothy grin. “I think she’ll manage.”

“Indeed.” The human noble glanced at me askance, and gracefully extricated herself.

Clutching the glass with white knuckles, terrified I would drop and shatter such an expensive vessel, I took a sip of the pale, bubbly wine and silently pondered whether it was appropriate to hide myself behind a tapestry until this was all over.

Bane had been monopolized by the men as soon as we entered the room. I felt their approving gazes on occasion,tempered by skepticism as the human women shared their discovery that I did not speak. Although they were all low nobility, each with a fel in their name, I wasn’t their kind despite the lai in mine.

The fact remained that my inability to speak aloud didn’t figure into the greater workings of this union. They got to keep their Lord and protector now that we were wed in vampire custom; the men had relaxed as soon as Wyn’s proclamation was announced, the women had fluttered fans open and breathed sighs of relief. Wyn herself had been stolen by the keep’s steward, one of her omnipresent lists in hand.

Soon enough, I had been left to linger alone near one of the columns, braided with boughs of roses so thick I couldn’t lean against it for fear of the thorns, my hands still stinging, and Visca had come to rescue me from boredom.

“They’re a bit like those Serissan birds, aren’t they?” she asked, sipping from a metal cup as she eyed the nobles. I appreciated that the vampiric guests did not drink blood from clear glasses. “What are they called? Peacocks? Decorative, obnoxious, and rather useless overall.”

I snorted into my wine. Indeed. I had a hard time picturing these frilly women defending their own fortresses from the blood-maddened Forians, when I’d grown up around women who ate, slept, and breathed with their weapons.

“This is only a small fraction of them; Wyn invited the busybodies to witness, and to give them something to gossip over besides the state of our legions,” Visca confided in an undertone. “And my apologies in advance. This is not the last celebration you’ll have to endure.”

I gave her a long-suffering look.

“Fortunately for you, it’s only one more, really. The feast will be held in one of the larger towns, and all the Rift-kin are invited. They’re a superstitious lot, these valley folk. They’ve gotto lay eyes on the bride, sit her in a throne of holly and primrose, and touch her with cold iron before they’ll accept the marriage as legitimate.”

My brows raised of their own accord. Cold iron had gone out of fashion several thousand years ago for the rest of the country, when the last of the Fae had died or disappeared. Even holly and primrose were considered more decorative than necessity now.

“No, there’s no Fae here. Long dead, those twisted bastards. We would know.” Visca’s fangs gleamed. “We lived in their underground cities for the last few centuries.”

I glanced at the knots of humans, the women who congratulated Bane from a safe distance, the curl of a lip or flaring of nostrils as they looked up into his warped face.

He was magnanimous about it, giving no sign that he saw or acknowledged their fear and disgust of him.

A hand squeezed my heart painfully as I watched him smile and turn aside from one of them, his expression carefully neutral, his black-and-gold eyes guarded.

It was strange how they could be repulsed by him so deeply, and yet so intensely relieved that they would keep him as their overlord. It made me wonder exactly what Bane had been like during the war… what he had done to earn such trust.

I was also bothered that my presence had been anticipated, and yet none of them seemed to want to speak to me, despite my presence in the room. If any further confirmation was needed that I was simply a figurehead to fulfill a role, this was it. But why had Wyn kept me from them?

I motioned to Visca, a tentative movement that I cut off abruptly. I had left my journal in my chambers; with a glass in hand, I didn’t have it in me to mime my questions. I needed to begin carrying at least a few scraps of paper with me, or find a new slate, until they understood the basic gist of what I was saying.

But Visca saw my gesture, and tilted her head. “Let’s make a mess, what do you say?”

And I was left with the option of either hovering around the pillar alone, or following her to the far side of the room, where a long table had been pushed against the wall and piled with platters of cakes and tidbits, and servants were keeping the wine and blood flowing.

Visca pushed a platter aside, leaving an expanse of bare, polished wood, and gestured to one of the servants. “Let’s get a bowl of sugar over here, right quick.”

The human woman blinked at her, opened her mouth, then snapped it shut and scurried away. Five minutes later, we had a large bowl of sugar, which Visca dumped on the table unceremoniously.

“And there we go. I don’t suppose you can write in Nord, can you? I was never much for reading Veladari, but I’ll give it a shot.”

With a wide smile, I put my empty glass aside and smoothed the sugar over the glossy table, making a clean slate for myself, and used my fingertip to inscribe the harsh, geometric figures of Low-Country Nord:You were born in Nordrin, weren’t you?

Her request wasn’t surprising; her thick, curling crow-black hair and sky blue eyes gave away her heritage, vampiric perfection or no.

Visca watched me write in her native language, her own smile broadening. “I was, yes. Pure Nord, here. Your lord himself is half Nord, half Veladari, we think. A bit of a mongrel, at any rate.”

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