Текст книги "A vow of blood and tears"

Автор книги: Cate Corvin

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Текущая страница: 21 (всего у книги 41 страниц)

Chapter 26 Bane

Iwatched her as she slept, marveling at my fortune, knowing that a century—if that—was not enough.

An eternity of a lifetime suddenly stretched before me in an endless expanse, empty and barren. It had once seemed a blessing, and now seemed more of a curse.

There would be lifetimes ahead of me… lifetimes of nothing. No Cirri. No feeling of coming home.

I exhaled, my breath stirring the clouds of her hair, and she yawned in her sleep. Curled up tighter against me, one hand clutching the blankets around her.

It was pointless to ponder the implications of later, of a hollow half-life. I wouldn’t waste what time I had dwelling on that terrible future. I stroked her cheek, the primitive creature in my brain pleased that she smelled like me, scented with roses and musk and sex. No vampire would walk by her without knowing that she was mine.

My tongue flicked out to taste her, bringing the roses into my mouth. All mine.

As I pondered how to take the next step, to fully enter her and mark her without damage, there was a low sound from outside, the scrape of claws on stone. I curled around her tighter, my hackles rising, eyes on the window.

But I knew that silhouette on the keep’s wall.

She didn’t stir as I tucked the blankets more tightly around her; my Cirri slept like a stone, entirely dead to the world until the sun rose. I crept from the bed, pushing the glass panes of the window open, and just managed to slide through the gap.

I scaled the wall like an overgrown spider, moving downwards until I reached the ground, and made my way to the keep wall.

In the dark, early hours of the night, only the wall guards were awake, skittering shadows cast by torchlight. They gave Wroth a wide berth; one fiend was as good as a legion for protection, and no one had wanted to get too close when it became clear my brother was not himself.

Not any longer.

He was perched on the outer parapet like a gargoyle, his thick, snow-white mane and ivory horns a gleaming beacon in the darkness. The fiend didn’t move, staring out into the misty forest, pale eyes slitted.

In days past, Wroth had been the most brash of us, always jovial, always raring to do something. To see him like this, crouched and watchful, was like looking at a stranger wearing his form.

One of his triangular ears swiveled backwards as I deliberately let my claws tap on the wall.

“You needn’t announce yourself,” he said bluntly, in a low voice. “You reek of fucking. I smelled it before you left your tower.”

“Glad to hear your nose still works.”

Wroth’s muzzle wrinkled, showing his teeth in a humorless grin. Vampires had heightened senses; fiends were a step above. Nothing that made a scent was a mystery to us.

I stood next to him, staring down over the wall at the forest. Only the foxes in the brush and the owls moved out there, but that was a good sign. No animals emerged in the presence of wargs.

“Tell me, brother. What happened to you?”

Wroth shook his head, but it wasn’t a denial of my question; looking at him now I could almost see the vampire he had been and the fiend he was now, both a twisted leonine creature and a Nord jarl occupying the same space.

“The Blood Accords. Why did we believe they were a victory for us?” he mused, still gazing into the dark wood. “We celebrated. We’d bought thrones for our people. We were set to annihilate the Forians and live forever as kings, as gods among mortals. What fools we were.”

I kept silent, wanting to deny it, and all too aware of my own dark thoughts in the early hours as I watched Cirri sleep.

“The price did not seem so high to me, then,” Wroth said quietly. “This body, the things I needed to do for it… those don’t disturb me. I enjoy the power.” He extended a massive arm, the torchlight catching his velvet pelt and making it shimmer as he curled his powerful hands into a fist. “I enjoy being the Lord of the Rivers. If you had told me then that a single vain, hateful woman could ruin it all, I would have laughed and laughed. And yet, here we are.”

“She will be dead soon.” I looked down at my clawed hands, braced on the wall. “One day she will be a distant memory.”

Ancestors knew I dwelled on that thought far too much.

“Not soon enough.” Wroth lowered his arm, ears folding back flat against his head. “Like I said… I was a fool. You know the nobles of the Rivers rebelled when I first took Owlhorn.”

I nodded, already aware of this history. Of the four of us, Wroth alone had had to contend with the human nobility attempting to renege on the Blood Accords.

“Kajarin’s uncle led the rebellion against my reign—Lorik lai Orros. A brave man, if a stupid one.” Wroth shrugged carelessly. “My wife had vanished when they tried to storm the keep. When I reclaimed her, she swore her uncle had kidnapped her. And all seemed well afterward. We became friends, my brother. Perhaps she didn’t wish to mate, but she would sleep by my side, touch my hand, or take her meals with me. We spoke into the late hours, many nights. I… was genuinely a fool enough to believe she might come to love me as a husband.”

I swallowed, thinking of how it might be if one day Cirri turned on me… but that couldn’t be. I wouldn’t believe it of her.

“I did everything I could to keep her happy, hoping things would continue as they were. I spared her uncle’s life, though the man’s treason deserved death, and sent him into a rather comfortable exile, as far as exiles go. I gave her everything she asked for. If she wanted diamonds, I sent for the jewelers. If she wanted silk, I sent for the Serissan tailors. If she wanted a damn horse, I had the hostler in the keep within the hour. I thought if she had the things a lady would have, she would be pleased.”

He frowned at the sliver of golden light on the horizon. “I don’t think I did anything wrong. I was faithful to our vows. I never hurt her. I did not even harm her uncle. I never spoke ill of her family, nor did I keep her away from the matters of a lordship’s duties. But after two years, she finally told me… she hated me. That she wished Lorik had killed me, and since he hadn’t, I should have the decency to do it myself. That the sight of me made her sick, and she would make me miserable until her dying day.”

I found that I could say nothing. My throat was locked tight around a roar.

“So.” Wroth’s terrible smile had returned. “In one night, I went from believing Kajarin was at least a friend, a companion, if not truly a wife or lover—to knowing that she’d rather see me dead. That was when I offered to find another wife and release her from me. And she told me no.”

“You offered her freedom?” Even in my darkest moments, even when I realized I would rather die than be responsible for hurting Cirri, I had not considered releasing her. Perhaps I was the selfish one.

“In its entirety,” Wroth said. “I told her she could keep the jewels, the silks, and the horses. I would sever our vows, and she could live as a rich woman for the rest of her days.”

“And she said no,” I repeated, knowing where he was going, but I didn’t want to accept it. What a waste of a life, to be so full of pure spite that one would live in a cage solely to make another miserable.

“No.” He grinned. “She wants to be around me, day and night. If I leave Owlhorn, she follows. If I am home, she is underfoot—except when she’s fucking the stablehands, of course. She told me herself, that for as long as she lives, she will be a cloud of misery hanging over me. That is her sole purpose, her one true desire. My only consolation was to tell her that none of her children would ever inherit Owlhorn.”

The smile dropped abruptly, obscuring his fangs, but the icy gleam in his eye was no less dangerous.

Wroth shook his head, and leaned in conspiratorially. “Sometimes she likes to go several days without bathing, so I have to breathe in the stink of the men she’s rutted with. I have to look at this woman, whom I thought was a friend, and smell their seed rotting in her. And she will sit there in that stench and smile at me.”

As he spoke, his claws scratched deep furrows in the stone wall. “I don’t understand it, Bane. It is something beyond me. I would release her if I could. I would grant her freedom in a heartbeat. But she has finally found the one thing she does want—to drive the knife into my back, and keep twisting it, over and over. I never know what to expect. Some days she drives me to misery. Other days, it’s like it never happened—like it was in the beginning, when it felt like she could truly be my wife.”

“Get rid of her,” I said abruptly. “Before… before Cirri came here, Wyn had solutions. You don’t have to live with her breathing down your neck.”

“Believe me, brother.” Wroth sighed. “I’ve considered other options. I called in Auré to try to talk some sense into her, but Kajarin is… relentless. She knows she is untouchable. We thought the Accords were a boon for us? No. They’re a shield for her. So long as a pureblood woman is a requirement, she could fuck her many lovers right in my lap, and I cannot raise a hand against her.”

He examined his paw-like hand for a moment, as though imagining such a thing.

“I’ve considered whether it’s worth it,” he said softly. “Because this is the third year of living under the suffocating weight of her hatred, and it already feels like an eternity. I don’t know if I can last even another ten. Is it worth being the lord of anything, if I go to sleep every night to the sound of her screaming under another man, and never know if I’ll wake up to poisonous smiles or warm friendship? Some days I think I’m losing my mind.”

“You have eternity ahead of you. She will die, Wroth. You will be free of her one day.” I put a hand on his shoulder, feeling the hunched tension in him. “Give her the poppy syrup, and send her to sleep—”

“No, no, Bane.” He laughed aloud. “Don’t you see? We have an eternity as the Lords. It never ends. There will be another Kajarin after her, and another, and another. Forever. An eternity of being hated and despised. If I must take a new hateful bride every time the last one dies, I don’t… I think I’d rather give it up and be free.”

I felt for him, torn between awful choices. If Cirri had loathed me, had made it her life’s work to see me miserable and downtrodden… I could see how I would find this a thankless task, a pointless, empty title.

But it was not only about us. Not us fiends, and not the women who had been chosen by a twist of fate in their bloodlines.

“Then you would return Owlhorn to the humans.” I squeezed his shoulder. “How long would our kind be welcome in the Rivers? How long until they would feel secure enough in their grip on power to begin burning the bloodwitches? Would you have all your people there return Below?”

Wroth shuddered at the name of the hell far below our feet.

“Our people have made lives for themselves under the sun.” I felt truly awful for what I was telling him, but we were only eight sacrifices, against thousands upon thousands of other lives. The balance was clear. “We can’t force them back under again, Wroth. I will do what I can for your… situation. I will speak to Wyn and Auré. Believe me, not all of them are like Kajarin. There are other chances, other choices.”

Wroth rippled his shoulder, knocking my hand away. “Did you hear nothing, brother?” He turned on me, teeth bared. “You and your pretty little wife, all cozy in bed… did you think that was not me as well? Truly believing the best? That she could love me?”

He unfolded himself from his crouch and dropped to the wall’s floor, standing upright to look me in the eye. “I was exactly like you, Bane. I thought Kajarin was not like Voryan’s weeping wretch, or Andrus’s dead-eyed, poppy-swilling slob. I thought we were happy. That I was lucky. And instead I came to find that she loathed me with every fiber of her being, that two years of growing to know each other was all part of her plan to make me feel the true weight of her contempt when she showed her hand.”

His tail was thrashing wildly; he paced back and forth on the small stretch of wall. “You waited until the last possible second to marry, brother. You waited, and you’ve known this girl for—how long? A week? Two? And you think she’s not like the others? No. She will turn on you. None of us are lucky. We’re all trapped in a cage of our own making, and so long as we choose to remain inside it, we will live an eternity of misery.” He jabbed a claw towards me. “I want you to remember this—I offered to end it. I gave you a chance to escape before she could crush your hopes and spit on the remnants.”

I waited until he’d settled, his torrent of words morphing into a stream of snarls.

His hatred for Kajarin was like a seed that wanted to take root—but I would allow it no fertile ground. I would not, could not, believe it of my Cirri.

Perhaps I was naïve as well as selfish. So be it; I loved her.

“I will take my chances with her,” I said, keeping my own voice hushed. “If she crushes me—then she crushes me. At least I will have had the pleasure of loving her for a little while. At least I will still live under the sun, and my kind here in the Rift will live free. But even if it means agony forever, I agreed to this. I agreed to become a fiend, and to marry a stranger for the sake of our kind, not myself alone. And so did you, Wroth. We both signed our lives away for them.”

He stopped moving, standing statue-still as he gazed at me. “So we did,” he muttered. “But this… might be more than I stand.”

“Then we find another way. We will remove her.” I clenched my fists, feeling claws dig into my palms. “Perhaps I cannot kill her with my own hands… I can’t break the Accords in that way. The risk is too great. But Wyn will give her the poppy syrup, and Kajarin will be too deep in dreams to spend every second tormenting you. Or… take another lover, someone to bolster you against her hatred. The vows meant nothing to her. She is a political requirement, not a true wife.”

Wroth’s ears twitched, and then he shook his head. “No. No, I will not do that; I will be nothing like her,” he snarled.

He descended into pacing and growls, striding back and forth on the wall; I had nothing else I could tell him. Nothing I could do.

I remembered thinking of the Accords as a paper prison, and my wife the warden; that was before I’d thought I was inexpressibly fortunate. The luckiest vampire in the world.

A shiver of foreboding went down my spine at the parallels to Wroth’s story.

No. I wouldn’t poison what I had with Cirri. She’d been too patient, too kind. She spoke her mind. I didn’t believe she would hide it if she despised me.

She wouldn’t come up with games, or be worried about a vampire who was like my own sister.

No, I truly believed Cirri was my friend, and now my lover. She was everything I could have wanted, more than I deserved.

But Wroth… I looked back at him, leaving him alone to his fury and baffled misery.

If I killed Kajarin and my crime came to light, I would lose the Rift. I couldn’t do that to my people.

Once, when we were young and stupid, everything had seemed so amusing. Why not become beasts, if we could steal thrones and claim glory? We were already killers, one and all; it had only been one step further.

Now I felt the chains of obligation, the weight of responsibility, and I knew my brothers were now suffering under that same weight.

I climbed the tower, slipping back through the window to my sleeping bride, curled up in my bed. I looked down at her, smoothing hair back from her face, watching her dark lashes flutter against her cheek.

I would not allow Wroth’s fears to grow inside me. Not my Cirri. Not her.

She frowned in her sleep as I took her into my arms, cradling her tightly against my chest, then settled again. One hand flopped back onto the pillow, her fingers moving in her dreams, spelling letters in nonsensical fashion.

I smiled at the sight, tickling her palm carefully with my claws until she made a fist.

Very well, then. I would refuse to believe she harbored hatred towards me. Our time together was too short as it was, a mere human lifetime not nearly enough.

But I could no longer ignore my brothers, and their struggles. I hadn’t the slightest idea how to help them, how to fix it—but if things continued as they were, the other fiends might give up over time, crushed under the wheel of a constant stream of abhorrence.

And then the humans would take the seats of the Lords again, and everything we had worked for, everything we had sacrificed, would be for nothing. The vampires would be hunted down and staked with silver. The bloodwitches would be burnt in the Arks, the vast iron ovens meant for bodies. The families that had sprung up in the last decade would be driven Below, into a nightmare realm.

All of it for nothing.

“You will be my proof, lover,” I whispered into Cirri’s ear as she dreamed. “You will be the one to turn the tides.”

She shifted closer, her hand closing around one of my fingers and holding me tightly.

Ancestors, please… let her be the one to break the mold.

I needed my brothers to have hope to live for.

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Chapter 27 Cirri

Iwasn’t upset when I woke to an empty bed; I knew Bane was with a Silent Brother, making strides every day to understand me. I could forgive opening my eyes and stretching out a hand to cold sheets for that.

Especially when I saw that my journal was open on the nightstand. Bane’s broad, rough hand, written in Low-Country Nord, filled half the page.

I dream of a girl

With blood like wine

Sweet as nectar

A brilliant mind

As sharp as thorns

She will always be mine

I could imagine the look on his face as he came up with this—half concentration, half embarrassment. But it made me smile so wide my cheeks hurt, clutching the journal close to my chest in a tight hug.

He’d written it in his native tongue for a reason. It was a secret between us; as far as I knew, only Visca could read it, and she wouldn’t pry through my things.

I kissed the page, closed the journal, and jerked at the sight in the corner of my eye, nearly falling out of bed.

Thorn stood by the door, a shadow within the shadows.

You scared me, I said, calming my racing heart. He signed in apology, but he didn’t move an inch, guarding the door with his life.

Rose emerged from the washroom, a dress draped over her arm and today’s hairpins—gold and amethyst—stuck through the petals of her skull. Come, she said cheerfully, and I listened. There was no fighting the golem.

I explored the Tower of Winter’s washroom as Rose put me in order. My wardrobe had appeared overnight, packed with dresses and slippers. So… Bane had finally decided that the Tower of Spring was redundant, when I never stepped foot in there anymore except to wash and dress.

I bathed cheerfully, feeling that I’d put my stamp on my territory; these were Cirri dresses in Bane’s tower, and it no longer felt like I was simply visiting him at night, to be banished back to my own tower in the morning. Perhaps I would leave some hairpins on the nightstand to fully claim my territory.

When Rose was finished with me, no one had knocked on the door. There was no Wyn waiting outside to drag me off for decoration or comportment lessons for Bloodrain, no Visca to give me hair-raising tales of how to behave around groups of vampires; perhaps they’d decided I’d learned all that was necessary.

Nor was Miro around for another portrait session. I waffled in the corridor for a moment, and finally slipped off to the library on silent feet, checking around corners as I went.

It felt like it’d been eons since I’d been allowed to work on the translations, though it was really days in reality. My books were right where I’d left them; I pulled down the small ritual book from the pile, opening it to the page bookmarked with a ribbon, and found the dictionary I’d been compiling in the back of my journal.

I had left off on a rune that had my curiosity aflame, because it made no sense in the context of the others.

In addition to the twelve runes the scholars of the Library had already translated, I’d added nearly eighteen more to the lexicon; at this point I could see from context that Bane had been correct: this was legitimately a ritual book, and the very first chapter contained a ritual that appeared quite similar to the ceremony we’d performed at our vows, except… off.

There was ‘given’, and ‘thorn’, the latter of which was known to me thanks to the Silver Cathedral’s single page. With the help of the parallel text on another page, I’d added ‘tears’ and ‘petals’ into the lexicon.

Combined with the gilded illumination of roses and thorns around the border of the text, I had decided that this was, if not the exact wedding ceremony we’d performed, then something very close—unless all vampiric rituals involved their Mother’s sacred images.

Except for the rune at the top.

It was an ugly shape, possessing all of the sharp edges and points of the High Tongue, but none of their flowing grace. There was, in fact, something vaguely lupine in the shape of it, a suggestion of sharp fangs and crazed eyes.

But maybe I was just seeing things, based on my suspicions. This rune had no place in the wedding vows, but I’d also found it in a parallel corpus depicting the wargs.

If the other text was aligned perfectly—and it was, in every other respect—then this rune meant ‘Wargyr’.

I compared the texts, including the charred, fraying scrap of paper that described a battle of wargs and vampires, including those ‘cursed by Wargyr’, and came up with a perfect match for that rune yet again.

But why would it be over a ritual that appeared to outline the wedding ceremony?

I decided to add it to a new page for now, pending new discoveries. Maybe I was completely mistaken, and it would just happen to turn out that the other words aligned perfectly by mere chance.

Sure, Cirri, I told myself, inking the repulsive rune into my journal and adding a question mark after the supposed translation. You have an entire, intact parallel text and added nearly twenty new runes to the lexicon, but it was just chance.

It took a strange effort to form the rune in ink; my hand cramped as I wrote it. I hissed through my teeth as I shook my fingers out, eyeing the rather crooked rune balefully. Never had I struggled to form a symbol before, which made me even more sure that my translation was accurate. If Wargyr possessed the power to turn man into monster, no doubt his name held some of that same power.

I moved on to the next rune, double-checking my translation across the few sources I had.

When I was sure that I could reasonably add the word ‘circle’ to my notes—‘a circle of thorns’, the first line appeared to read, a clear reference to the thorns binding our hands, followed by ‘blood’ and ‘given’—I turned back to the first page of the lexicon and steadied my pen.

There was a soft thump in the back of the library, the muffled sound carrying in the silence. My shoulders tensed, and Thorn and I both looked up at the same moment. The golem, taking his usual post on my right next to the table, had his spiky hands fisted at his sides.

I saw no one, not even guards; Koryek and his men had been reassigned to the wall once Thorn was gifted to me. No shadows moved in the dark corners I could see.

There was another thump, the sound of a book hitting the floor, and then a flurry of soft giggles and a man’s whisper. One of the curtains over the far windows shifted.

I closed my eyes and exhaled, counting to five for patience.

Feel free to roust them, I signed to Rose, wanting Thorn to remain by my side. If they’re going to canoodle, they can do it somewhere other than the library.

That high-pitched giggle was a little too familiar to me now after that particularly trying dinner.

My petal-bodied golem took off with her usual graceful strides, flowing into the stacks, and moments later I heard a sharp intake of breath, a hand being clapped to a mouth, and fading footsteps. Then a feminine voice: “By the Lady, what ungodly thing are you? No, get your hands off me—!”

I smiled to myself.

Rose returned, a bit of bounciness to her gait. Silence once more predominated the library, and I returned to my work, inking ‘circle’ into place.

A sky blue blur whipped in front of me, and I made a giant ink splotch over my rune as something flopped heavily into the velvet couch on the other side of the table.

Kajarin raised a brow, kicking one foot up onto the couch and casting her gaze across my table. Her dress, more Serissan silk, the color of the peacocks Visca found so useless, frothed around her in actual billows. How did she walk in those things?

“My. Aren’t you the most studious little mouse.” She ran her pinky around the corner of her lip, where her rouge had smeared.

Which castle guard or servant was walking around right now with that crimson smeared all over his face? I hoped Wroth would not see it.

“If you’re going to ruin my fun, the least you could do is bring me more wine.” Kajarin glared up at Rose, and I realized the shiny glaze in her eyes was that of being extremely drunk, first thing in the morning.

I flipped back to the front of my journal to a blank page. She won’t answer to you, I wrote, and held it up for her.

Kajarin had to lean forward and squint to read it. Her strawberry blonde curls hung around her face in boisterous disarray. “Then have her fetch me some. Hell, you can join me. Why lurk around in dusty old books all day when you could…” She waved a hand languidly. “Entertain yourself?”

This is entertaining to me. 

“Huh.” The woman adjusted one of her hairpins, a lacy gold filigree studded with sapphires. “You have odd notions of fun, Cirrien.”

I debated asking her to call me Cirri, and decided I didn’t care. It’s necessary work.

Kajarin’s laugh was loud and brash. “No, darling, you’ve got it all wrong. Don’t you get it? You’re the Lady of the Rift. There is no work for you.”

I raised my brows, giving up on the translation for now. It was impossible to focus, not while she wriggled around on the couch, kicking her feet up, the rustle of her skirt driving me mad.

If I didn’t have work to do, I’d feel useless, I wrote pointedly.

She reclined on an overstuffed cushion, stretching luxuriously, and cut her eyes at me in a sly sidelong glance. “Would you? We’ve done our jobs. We’ve both married hideous freaks of nature. Now here comes the reward—a lifetime of luxury for sacrificing ourselves.”

I just shook my head, and Kajarin wrapped a lock of her hair around her finger, twisting to re-curl it. “By the Light, he’s already warped your pretty little head, hasn’t he?”

What do you mean by that?

“Are you serious?” Kajarin laughed again. “Is he asking you to do this? Dig around in old books, day in, day out? Let me guess—he’s also told you that you’re responsible for all the little hayseed peasants in the Rift, that you have a duty to the keep, so on and so forth?”

I hesitated before writing, I suppose as the lady of this hold, I am responsible for their wellbeing. Right now, this is what I’m best at, what I can do for them.

“Oh, no no no, dear girl.” Kajarin sat up abruptly, swaying ever so slightly as she stared at me across the table. “That’s where you’re wrong. Are the stories I heard about you true? You were a servant to the Silver Sisterhood?”

I nodded, my lips flattening. Glad to know that story was going around.

Kajarin shrugged one shoulder expansively, letting her puffy little sleeve slip down around her arm. “Honestly, what would a servant know about duty to a hold? About keeping the peasantry safe? Nothing! You know absolutely nothing.”

That much was true, even though I knew she was saying nothing of worth. Farting between her teeth, Sister Aletha would’ve said.

“So… think about it. Why would they take a servant?” Kajarin’s eyes widened. “Because your blood is all that matters. You’re a pureblood. That’s your sole worth, Cirrien. You fit the qualification, and now here you are.”

That requirement was demanded by the human Lords, I wrote.

She ignored it entirely. “So, you were born to the wrong bloodline, and you performed their quaint little ceremony. That’s it! Now we’re both trapped forever, married to those… those things.”

I bit the inside of my cheek. She had guest-right, and I couldn’t haul off and slap her.

Bane is not a thing or a freak of nature. My pen tore through the paper a little from the force of my writing.

“You poor girl. You still don’t see it.” She gestured to my books. “He’s given you make-work to make you feel important, to blind you. That feeling of pride you’re indulging in right now? It’s so you don’t run off and leave him thirsty. At the end of the day, all you are to him is a warm meal—and a warm hole, if you’ll let him go that far. You’re just a name he needs on paper.”

A name that ensures our people are protected against wargs. A meal that keeps him prepared to defend us. 

Kajarin gave me a falsely sympathetic smile. “Oh, no. You’ve swallowed the bait.”

Are you delusional? I asked. Weren’t you around for the Forian War, when wargs were slaughtering entire villages in an hour? We heard the bells at least once a night in Argent, and that was the most defended city in Veladar. If our marriage is necessary to keep the vampires on our side and ready to fight for us, then it was entirely worth it to me. 

I didn’t add that I would marry Bane all over again just for the sake of himself; she didn’t deserve that level of trust. Not with the way she treated Wroth.

“They could have helped without taking the titles, and without marrying us!” she hissed. “These castles belonged to humans! How can you not see this? You were part of the Sisterhood.”

Prices must be paid in times of war. The cost was the four thrones. Why cry about it now, when they’ve done nothing but rebuild our prosperity together? I thought it over, and added: All four keeps were built by vampires, so they belonged to them first, in fact. If anything, the Blood Accords have granted equilibrium between our kinds. Both humans and vampires rule them now.