Page 53 of A Vow of Blood and Tears

They had reached the point where their voices carried, unaware of the world around them. And then I realized what they were talking about.

“She’s pretty, though. And if she can’t talk, she can’t nag,” one of them said, slurring heavily. “Kind of makes you think, it’d be nice to have a dumb wife. She keeps her mouth shut unless you got something to put in it.”

They laughed. A flush of anger spread across my cheeks and I ducked my head, staring intently at my lap to pretend I hadn’t heard.

It was bad enough when people walked away from me, unwilling to try to understand, or treated my slate like a cute trick. It was worse when they called me dumb, as though I were an animal beyond understanding just because I couldn’t speak…and to imply the only thing my mouth was good for was taking a cock.

My hand moved, and I realized Bane was rising from his seat, his shoulders stiff, the muscles in his arms taut.

I looked up into his face, seeing nothing gentle in him now. There was only cold rage, eyes glowing amber.

Gilam backed away slowly, his eyes flicking between Bane and the drunk youths, and even as my hands moved in frantic signs—Bane, no, don’t do this—he shoved the entire chair aside, climbing over the table with the grace of one of the large cats in the south, straightening up to his full height only feet from the men who were still crowded around the dwindling fire.

The man who had spoken didn’t realize Bane was there, even as the men facing us went as still as hunted deer, mouths hanging open and eyes bulging.

Bane’s claws closed around the man’s skull.

In the sudden silence, we heard a series of smallpop pop pops—his spine crackling as Bane lifted him entirely from the ground, raising him to face-height with the fiend himself. The mug fell from the man’s fingers as he dangled limply in his grasp.

“What was that, Embry?” Bane asked softly. “Are those words you would repeat in front of me?”

The drunk man gasped for breath, gone bloodlessly pale, and Bane strode towards me.

He slammed Embry onto the table, shattering my plate with his face. The man’s sharp cry of pain rang in my ears. “You’ve insulted the Lady of the Rift, you fucking fool. Make your apologies, andmeanthem.”

Bane was crushing Embry’s head into the wood, but the man slobbered out a series of breathless apologies. I smelled the sharp scent of his own piss filling the air.

With nerveless fingers, I scrambled for my slate, writing so fast that my letters were almost childish:He’s forgiven. Don’t hurt him any more, please.

Embry was a fool, but I didn’t think I could stand to see his skull crushed before me. I would never be able to look at a plate again without seeing his brains before me, and even if he was horrendously rude, he didn’t deserve to die like that.

Let this be enough of a lesson for him, I added, hands shaking.

The fear of fiends had returned in full force, my chest tightening so it was hard to breathe. Bane could be gentle, could kiss my knuckles, could make me laugh… but he could pick a man up by his head and crush it as easily as an egg.

Bane waited a long moment, his eyes on my slate, and finally released Embry.

Instead of slithering to the ground, Embry came up flailing, letting out braying sobs. One of his hands, with his rough nails, clipped my face, leaving a sharp sting on my forehead where the priest had pressed the cold iron.

I touched it and felt the warmth of blood.

Bane snarled, lips drawing back to reveal all his teeth in an exaggerated parody of a smile, but there was nothing amusing in it. He looked like he could unhinge his jaw and tear the man’s heart out of his chest.

It’s only a scratch!I stood and signed frantically. There was no time to write.Please, Bane!

My husband closed his eyes, and finally exhaled a long, low snarl. Embry, doing the first wise thing he’d done this evening, crawled away, then got to his feet and stumbled, and finally ran.

“I apologize, Cirri. I’ll find Wyn. There won’t be a mark left when she’s done.” He opened his eyes, looked at me and the smear of red on my forehead. They still glimmered a hot gold,pupils narrowed so fine they were almost invisible. “It’s better if I’m not near your blood—not while I’m still angry.”

I nodded, standing there on quivering legs as Bane stalked away, and a completely out-of-place thought drifted through my head:when had he last fed?

Gilam cleared his throat. “Apologies, my Lady,” he said quietly. “The young lads know better. Some of them know better than others.”

Apology accepted, I told him, still feeling dazed. It seemed surreal that past this table, this small circle where the spectacle had taken place, the party was ongoing. Plenty of people had neither seen nor heard what had happened. The laughter that reached my ears didn’t seem real.

And even as I stared out into that oblivious crowd, reeling from how quickly my husband had shifted from good-naturedly arguing with an old friend, to picking up a man like a handkerchief and preparing to sink teeth into his flesh, I saw someone walking towards me through the throngs, with the now-quite-familiar, lackadaisical stroll of a drunk.

It was another man marked by the war, holding a small bouquet of hand-picked primroses. He looked up at me, almost bashful, and I wanted to smile—it was a sweet gesture of him to make—but the shock still held me in its fist.

---