Page 54 of A Vow of Blood and Tears

He dropped his eyes to the bouquet, then they rose again, his brow furrowing. His gaze moved to my forehead where the scratch was already clotting within the smear of blood I’d made.

The primroses fell from his hands, falling at his feet in a scatter. His eyes widened with fear and rage, face going white as a sheet.

I frowned, already reaching for my slate, but the man was suddenly rushing towards me.

“Move away from her, Gilam!” he bellowed. “She’s Fae! The iron’s burned her!”

No, I wanted to say,it’s only blood, but the drunk man ripped a dagger from its sheath, putting on a final burst of speed and shoving a shocked Gilam aside.

There was no time to do anything but raise my slate as a shield.

The impact jarred me, the old warrior’s arm cleaving clean through and shattering it in my grasp—and then all I felt was the warm, thick splatter of blood across my face.

Chapter 14

Bane

He’d almost killed her.

A few seconds too late and my Cirri would’ve been dead, cleaved right through the heart.

Icy claws stroked my guts, my heart racing at how close she’d come to the ancestors, so close I could almost see them around us now, watching, waiting, their hungry souls eager to welcome her among them.

And the worst part was that IknewDerog. He had fought alongside me against the wolves, a brave man of honor.

A man of honor, and yet he’d tried to send my Cirri to the afterlife before her time.

Now he trembled in my grasp, his shattered arm held close against his chest, blood soaking into his patched shirt. In my haste to get to Cirri before the worst could happen, I’d been sloppy—tearing through flesh and bone instead of simply latching onto him, nearly ripping his arm off in my effort to turn it aside.

“Cirri,” I said, my voice rough. “My lady. Were you harmed?”

She still stood behind the table, face as white as the chalk she used to write with, Derog’s blood coating her in a bright crimsonspray. Hands trembling, she let the pieces of her broken slate drop to the table—then raised her fingers to touch the still-warm blood on her cheeks and lips.

Her eyes widened as she examined the scarlet smears on her fingertips.

She signed to me slowly, and Wyn touched a hand to her shoulder, nudging her to sit down. Cirri moved like a dreamwalker, sinking into her chair of holly and primrose, the petals now dripping.

I should never have let her leave the keep. This wedding… I was willing to make allowances for the beliefs of the Rift-kin, their deeply-held lore that governed their lives, until those beliefs threatened my reign or the defense of the Rift.

Or my wife. Her, most of all.

“This will only take a moment,” Wyn said to her, the bloodwitch’s clipped tones more gentle than usual. She pressed one of her healing cloth patches to Cirri’s forehead, the blood sigil inscribed on it flaring with crimson light, and I couldn’t stop myself from shaking Derog, my grip on the back of his neck unyielding.

“Do you see this?” I growled, as Wyn pulled the cloth away, now bloodstained, leaving smooth, unmarked skin behind. “She is no Fae creature. It was an accident, you fool—merely a scratch.”

Derog let out a strangled groan as I shook him again.

The celebration had ended abruptly, and now the people of Fog Hollow watched, waiting with bated breath. Gilam waited at my side, the lines in his hangdog face deepening.

I looked at them, only for a second, unwilling to keep my eyes from Cirri for too long.

“This ends now.” In the silence, the rumble of my voice carried. The pop and crackle of the bonfires were the only other sound. Even Derog’s tears were silent, pouring down his cheeksas he stared at my wife in horror. “I’ve been patient with you all, despite the troubles you’ve given me. You ask us for protection from the wargs, then refuse to step foot outside your houses at night when we need your sword-arms. You ask us to run supply lines so you do not starve—then refuse to eat the food we’ve brought, because there was a mushroom with three spots instead of five. You ask us for walls, and we put forth the effort to rebuild them—fighting with you every step of the way to reopen the mines, because of this foolish belief inghosts.”

Some of them shuffled in place, and others looked at the ground. Gilam examined his boots, his shoulders drawn up.

“And now one of your number has tried to assassinate my wife.” I made no effort to hide the deep rumble, nor the venom seeping into my tone. “A ridiculous, absurd superstition has nearly cost you all a heavier price than you could afford to pay. There are no Fae. There are no ghosts. We know this because we lived among them, and I will tell you: there is nothing beneath the ground now but shadows and dust. The only threat in the forest is the wargs.”

I paused, allowing them a moment to breathe. To appreciate how close they had walked to the razor’s edge, because if that had been Cirri’s blood spilled… there would be no Fog Hollow come morning.

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