Page 43 of A Vow of Blood and Tears

We were quite the cavalcade, but I hadn’t anticipated the unwelcome in the cook’s eyes.

“You may wait in the hall,” she informed Koryek. “This place is for our kind.”

Koryek straightened, drawing a little closer to me. “We are under direct orders, ma’am.” He had a deep voice, with a faint Nord accent, faintly apologetic. “The Lady is not to leave our sight while outside the Tower of Spring.”

“And we have a cast-iron agreement with Lord Bane,” she retorted. “This place is forhumans, so we can eat comfortably.”

It was yet another lesson, coming at me sideways; I hadn’t expected the humans to consider certain parts of the keep their own, but I supposed it made sense, in a way. Because… I had never lived among vampires, so I had not yet seen one feed.

Perhaps these Rift-kin had all witnessed such a thing, and would rather not be reminded of it during their own meals.

Please, don’t argue on my account, I said.I will eat elsewhere.

I wouldn’t insist that my guards leave. Bane had given them to me for a good reason, and I wasn’t fool enough to tempt a fate of wolves, no matter how appealing a respite from being watched might sound.

The cook’s eyes softened as she glanced at me. “You’d likely be more comfortable dining in the Great Hall, my Lady. This place is for the staff, not the nobility.”

Light defend me, as though I were unfamiliar with the heat of a kitchen! I smiled at her and shook my head, taking a plate from cabinets where servants would help themselves, and Ellena followed my lead, along with Miro.

There was bread baked with a honey crust, fresh ham, and sliced melons. I filled my plate and waited for the others before heading out, not for the Great Hall, but for a place of peace and quiet.

“The Great Hall is this way, Lady Cirrien,” Miro said, his brow furrowed, but I kept walking. He could go eat alone if he wished. I wanted fresh air.

I found the strange, cramped hall Wyn had rushed me through the previous evening, and Koryek rushed ahead to get the door for me, opening it and checking that no wargs were lying in wait before allowing me through. It was a little ridiculous—as though a warg would be hanging around in plain sight—but I smiled at him nonetheless as I made my way to the outer courtyard.

And walked right into a hive of activity.

Human soldiers were drilling right there in the middle of it all, most of them younger men. Visca walked the rows as they moved through the practice motions with blunted swords, jabbing at an elbow dipping too low, a weak stance; she looked up as we emerged, tipping me a wink before smacking the back of a man’s head. “Straighten that arm, Godfrey!” she bellowed, fangs flashing.

It was too late to turn back now without looking like I was trying to hide.

“Are you sure you want to eat out here, around all this?” Miro wrinkled his nose, watching the soldiers drip sweat.

Yes. I signed curtly with one hand, balancing my plate on the other. If he and Ellena chose to go eat together, I’d breathe a sigh of relief.

I left the soldiers, keeping to the walls of the inner keep so I wouldn’t be in the way. There were raised garden beds in the back, with the mountains towering high above the wall that surrounded us; humans tended them. The stables were anotherhive of activity I avoided, and I kept going until I found a smith’s yard.

It was not the smithing nor the smith himself, nor the anxious-looking apprentices that caught my attention, but the vampire holding up the entire back half of an empty wagon as easily as breathing while the smith hammered at the underside of a wheel.

Bane was shirtless, sweat sheening the hard valleys of muscle beneath ash-gray skin, the sharp, striated ridges of his natural fiend form standing out in spikes over his spine and shoulders, even flaring up from his clavicle.

That was what I had felt beneath his shirt; even if he were stripped naked and dropped into the middle of a forest, he would still be armored against the teeth of wargs.

A mane of black hair fell over his shoulders, thick and wild; one of his massive arms rippled, and the entire wagon tipped further upwards, the smith crawling around under it without the slightest worry it would be dropped.

“Hm. Well of course he’s strong, being a fiend and all,” Miro whispered, breaking my focus, and I realized I’d been staring open-mouthed.

Which was fine. Because he was my husband, and I could stare at him all day if I wanted to. It was well within my rights… and, to be honest, I was curious about the body that was only human insofar as he possessed a torso with all the requisite parts attached.

But a furious blush raced over my cheeks. Miro’s whisper was not as quiet as he’d intended—or he’d wanted Bane to hear—because the fiend looked up, amber eyes a brilliant gold in the sunlight, looking displeased until his gaze found me.

The look in them, almost predatory, softened at once; he looked the way he had when I’d thrown the silver bells and rowan from the carriage, a tinge of hope.

Pushing aside thoughts of last night, I smiled at him. Or tried to, anyway. I couldn’t shake the guilt.

But Icouldtry to repair the damage I had done.

So I sat on a conveniently overturned barrel, kicked my velvet skirts out of my way, and balanced my plate on my knee, perfectly content to watch him lift wagons while I ate.

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