Page 35 of A Vow of Blood and Tears

Then I added a symbol, no more than a single word in itself, in the delicate yet sharp runic alphabet of the vampires:blood.

One of the twelve known runes of the vampires’ High Tongue, what little of it remained. From a single scorched piece of paper, known as the Silversun Fragment, the Librarians had managed to translate those twelve runes.

Visca stared at the symbol for a long moment, and I erased the list and added in Nord:There are only a few known words of the High Tongue in our Library.I learned what I could.

She nodded slowly. “Very interesting. Oh, thank the ancestors, my wife has come to save us from the endless tedium of mandatory parties.”

I looked up to find Wyn striding across the ballroom towards us, smiling and relaxed for the first time I’d met her.

“I’d like to collapse with relief in the privacy of our own bedroom now that our hopes and dreams are complete, so I’m going to announce that it’s time for the bedding and drive them all out,” the bloodwitch said, and my blood ran cold.

The bedding. Oh, Lady of Light, let them not listen at the door to make sure, because…

I watched Bane over her shoulder, my heart thumping unevenly. Because he was kind, and gentle, but that didn’t mean my body wasn’t aware that he was every inch a predator. Something designed to tear me to pieces and drink my blood.

My lungs felt squeezed, breath coming in shallow sips.

Visca wiped her hands on her trousers, shedding sugar, and I looked down to find that she had erased my last words. But my curiosity vanished as Wyn took my arm, leading me, blood and dirt and all, across the room to my new husband.

“Let’s see them off,” she said loudly, motioning to the guards stationed around the perimeter of the room. “Give our Lord and Lady your well-wishes for the night.”

One of the human men, already well on his way to drunk, judging from his reddening cheeks, held up his glass. “Paint her red, brother.”

The sentiment was echoed by the soldiers Bane had fought with, the women a little more sedate. I didn’t miss the pity in the looks they gave me as Bane offered me his arm.

I took it, feeling numb.

The pinprick of Wyn’s needle, the bite of her knife, was nothing compared to what was coming.

Bane led me from the room, and I heard Wyn hissing at the guards behind me, instructing them to see the humans to their carriages and well out of her way so she could get some sleep sometime this century.

Walking at his side, I tried to focus on the warmth of him, seeping through the thin white silk I wore. On the gentleness of his hands, touching mine as lightly as a butterfly’s wing.

On the way his shoulders were stiffened, as though walking to his own execution, or his ears, pinned back flat against his head.

Struggling to breathe slowly, I followed his lead to a tower door, this one banded just as thickly with iron as my own, and Wyn pushed it open.

“Well,” she started to say, looking us over. She trailed off, bit her lip. “Well. Good night, then.”

I stepped into the first floor of Bane’s chambers, taking in the massive bed, thick with pillows and fine linens, ensconced by lush scarlet brocade curtains. The floor beneath my slippers was cold.

It was the wolf pelts hanging from the walls that took my breath away. What had I been expecting, exactly? Not the lair of a beast, nor piles of skulls—but to see the skins of wargs,hundredsof them… black, gray, white, brown, russet…

An entire defeated army.

My lungs felt frozen, that iciness slipping down into my stomach.

Just because I had not seen him act like a beast in the few days I’d known him did not mean there was no brutal side to him.

The door shut behind me, the sound of a jailor locking me in.

There was a long silence. All I could hear was the quiet sound of Bane’s breathing, and my own racing heart.

He stepped past me, shuffling so we would not touch, walking on shoeless, clawed feet towards the bed. I noticed that his ankles bent backwards, like the legs of a creature, ending in feet far more paw-like than humanoid, tipped with sharply-curled claws.

He sat on the bed, silently, looking at me.

When the silence grew too loud, I stepped forward. Made my cold, frozen feet take one step, then another, until I was within arm’s reach of him.

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