Текст книги "A vow of blood and tears"

Автор книги: Cate Corvin

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Текущая страница: 28 (всего у книги 41 страниц)

Chapter 36 Bane

The map spread before me, showing all of Veladar, the Rift a long valley to the east. And in the Rift I saw every weak point, every village and keep left open to the whims of the wargs.

The news had spread like wildfire. The minor nobility had opened their houses to the people, and I could finally breathe a little easier knowing they were safe in the walls of fortified keeps.

For now. The fields, the mines, the livestock… none of it could be left unattended for long. Eventually the Rift-kin would have to leave the safety of the fortresses and return to their own lives.

And then they would, like the people of Tristone, be left out as bait. I clenched my fists, examining the map with gritted teeth, pushing the little red stones we used to denote the legions.

In a time of peace, they would’ve been more than enough. In a time with Hakkon producing seven newborn wargs in a single night… not nearly enough.

Too many gaps in the legions, too many crumbled walls, too many stretches of endless, empty wood for the wargs to slip through.

I could not be everywhere at once.

I nudged a stone into place and closed my eyes, planning my route through the Rift. Someone had to watch the border on foot. I would have to leave Cirri alone, but I trusted her not to be angry. She wouldn’t put emotions over the safety of the Rift-kin.

My level-headed lady. Already I could see her giving me that look, the one that said, what are you waiting for? Telling me to get on with it, to do what must be done.

Truly, I was the luckiest fiend in the world.

But as I raised my eyes from the map, my gaze landed on the two portraits across from me.

I had brought my map into the tower, in the room full of paintings. It was the best place in the castle to get anything done, to think, free of prying eyes and questions.

The paintings of carnage reminded me of why I was here, why I had chosen this. The only problem was the portraits, though I couldn’t bring myself to move them.

Sitting side by side, I was reminded of the fairy tale again. The perfect couple. The prince and princess, a scene from a story.

I glanced at the man immortalized in paint, and snorted.

“You were too stupid to understand the weight on your shoulders,” I told him. “Too short-sighted to contemplate just how heavy it would be.”

He said nothing, of course. Even if it wasn’t just a canvas, that man was long gone.

Painted Cirri just smiled at me. Telling me to do what I had to do.

I exhaled, tearing my eyes from the portraits and putting my mind back to use where it was needed. This was no time to ponder past mistakes.

“East,” I murmured, touching the map. The fortresses would have legions to defend them. Hakkon would expect me to scout north to south, and back again; instead I would take the fight directly to him, pick off the young wargs one by one, thin his numbers.

The door to the tower crashed open, far below. At first, I felt a flicker of pleasure at the idea of seeing my wife, but those were not her footsteps on the stairs.

I swiveled an ear, listening to the echoes bouncing off the stone walls. A pair of feet in hobnailed boots, stomping steadily; a softer pair, scuffing along, mumbled protests.

The upstairs door slammed open next, and I was greeted with the sight of Visca, her blue eyes blazing cold fury, one of the maids held in front of her, her arms twisted behind her back.

I squinted at the girl… Ellena. Her hair was wild, a gag tied around her mouth. She stared at me, wide-eyed, struggling against Visca’s iron grip.

My commander marched the girl forward, heedless of her useless protests.

“Here we are, then,” Visca said, and her voice was cheerful in a way that meant blood was coming.

“What is all this?” I eyed Ellena warily. Cirri didn’t like her, but she wouldn’t take well to one of the women she’d worked with being manhandled.

“This—” Visca kneed the maid in the thigh, hard, and Ellena went to her knees with a muffled cry. “Is the reason everyone in Tristone is dead.”

I looked from Visca, her face taut with anger, to Ellena.

Ellena, a useless, spoiled girl. She could hardly handle mucking out the stables.

How could she be responsible for such a thing?

“Explain.”

Visca held Ellena’s arm with one hand, brushing her hair out of her face with the other. “I decided to dig around a little after that mess. The steward mentioned an unusual volume of letters going out from one person. The next time the courier came around, I questioned him. Ellena started with a few letters to Argent, addressed to the Cathedral. And then she started sending letters elsewhere.”

I nodded, still not seeing how this childish maid related in any way. “Perhaps she has family.”

Visca stared at me. “Come now, lad, do I strike you as the type to overreact?”

“No,” I admitted.

“Very well, then, let me say my piece and you can be the judge.” Visca pulled Ellena’s arm a little tighter. “So I had a little peek for myself before the next round of letters went out. And what was it, hmm?” She nudged Ellena in the back with her knee. “Was it sweet nothings to lovers, happy tidings for family members?”

Ellena was breathing hard, snorting air through her nose over the gag. She tried to pull away, whimpering wordlessly.

“Of course it wasn’t,” Visca said sweetly. “It was maps. It was the location of our legions, with fairly accurate numbers. It was the details of the security kept on Cirrien lai Darran, not to mention quite the dossier on her lineage and family’s estates. It was details on our schedules, where you or the Lady can be found in the keep.”

A touch of frost crept over my heart. “Who were these letters addressed to?”

“Well, that’s another strange thing, isn’t it?” Visca smiled at Ellena. “I’d think a girl from the Cathedral would be sending these letters to Argent, but no, they’re addressed to a man in Port Coran to the south.”

Port Coran… a sprawling seaside city south of the Rift. It lay half in Foria, half in the Rivers of Veladar. It was where most of the goods came in from Serissa, and traders from Nordrin came down through the Rift to deal freely in that market.

It was also its own territory. It might be half settled in the Rivers, but even Wroth allowed it to maintain its sovereignty. In Coran, there was no care for one’s nation, only for trade and gold.

And information.

“I sent a trusted man down to Coran to have a look for himself. All of these girl’s letters were sent to a Forian man, by the name of Makariy Agripin. Sounds familiar, no?”

I closed my eyes. I remembered one Captain Agripin, one of Hakkon’s right-hand men. I also remembered tearing a leg from his body. Seemed he must have lived. A shame.

I looked down at Ellena, her eyes downcast now, cheeks and cloth soaked with tears.

“What could you gain from selling information to Foria?” I asked her, my voice quiet. “What could Hakkon give you that I could not? I would have released you from service with handfuls of gold, had you asked. I would have given it simply to get rid of you.”

She shook her head, sobbing through the gag.

“Agripin still had some of the previous letters,” Visca said grimly. “Detailing just how behind schedule Tristone was on repairing those fortifications, how the mines and quarries have gone abandoned for the last year. She sold them to Hakkon.”

“Does he live?” I asked, still watching Ellena quiver.

“Not any longer.”

“Good.”

The maid tried to pull away from Visca, and my commander tugged her arm up sharply. “I’ve got one of her letters. Go ahead and cross-compare, but after forcing her to write, I’m convinced of it.”

“Visca.”

My commander, my creator, gazed up at me, eyes so cold with fury they no longer looked vampiric, let alone human.

“Leave her here. I’ll question her.”

Ellena sucked in a snotty breath as Visca released her, dropping her bodily to the floor. The maid curled in on herself as my commander drew herself up, nodding to me. She withdrew a letter from her pocket and handed it to me.

“Make it hurt, my lad,” she said softly. “Those women, those children… even the damn pups. All of that suffering is on her head.”

It was unlike Visca to editorialize when execution was at stake. She walked stiff-legged from the room, shoulders drawn up, fists clenched.

Ellena peeled the gag from her mouth with shaking fingers. “I never…” she whispered.

“Shut up.” I knelt, staring at her like I’d never seen her before. “And sit up when you speak to me.”

In a way, I hadn’t seen her before. I hadn’t paid any attention at all to the woman sent with Cirri. I supposed she was thought of as pretty, but the little I knew of her made her ugly in my eyes.

The Eldest Sister had probably sent her as a spy. Both Wyn and I had known the sour bat wouldn’t be able to resist having eyes in our house, and any knowledge the girl had sent on would have been useless to the Sisterhood. It was worth letting the old woman’s spy live, where we could keep an eye on her.

But to ally with Foria… that was unforgivable.

“When did you start sending letters?” I kept my tone low, soft, reasonable.

Ellena scrambled to obey, straightening her back, her shoulders and chest quaking with suppressed sobs. She gasped for breath between words, her voice strangled. “When we got here, my lord. I sent letters to Argent, to the Cathedral, but I never—”

“What did you send, in these letters to the Cathedral?”

Her face crumpled, and she made an effort to calm herself. It crumpled again almost immediately. She started with halting tentativeness, and the words quickly turned into a flood. “I told… Eldest Sister… about the keep. She wanted to know. I was supposed to tell her everything, what Cirri was doing, if she was… if she was getting on with you or if she might agree to send information back to the Sisters, but then she was getting on, and I told Eldest Sister that she wouldn’t agree to be a spy, she was too much in love with being the Lady—”

“Stop talking.” I considered as she slammed her mouth shut, wiping her nose on the back of her sleeve.

I didn’t give a damn what the Eldest Sister knew. I’d send the old hag the maps myself, for all I cared; she would never betray Veladar, no matter how much she hated my kind. The Silver Sisterhood was a dying institution, and she was desperately trying to hold on to power, playing little spy games to feel like she was accomplishing something.

“I want you to answer exactly what I ask. Don’t ramble at me about anything else, understood?”

She nodded slowly, staring at me through puffy lids.

“Where did you get Makariy Agripin’s name? Who told you to contact him?”

Ellena shook her head, eyes filling with tears again. “Nobody. I’ve never heard of him before! I swear I’m telling the truth!”

I stared at her, and unfolded the latest letter Visca had given me.

It was written in a delicate feminine hand, simplistic, with swirls under her g’s and y’s. I looked it over briefly, scanning the damning report: Mines reopened last week. Shipments aren’t scheduled for another month. Walls in Fog Hollow weak to the east and south, repairs discussed…

“Is this your handwriting?” I held it up for her inspection.

Ellena opened her mouth, closed it. “I didn’t write that.”

“Is it your handwriting, or not?”

“I swear to the Lady, I didn’t write it!” she shrieked, breaking out into fresh sobs.

I picked her up by the scruff of her neck, keeping a tight rein on my anger. She would be easily crushed. I dragged her to the table, shoving the map aside and laying the letter out flat, picking up a pen I’d used to mark likely spots for new legions.

Ellena exhaled a long, shuddering breath as I put the pen in her hand.

“Go ahead. Write anything you damn well please. Right here, in this blank space.” I pointed at the empty bottom of the paper.

Her face crumpled again as she wrote: I did not write these letters and I don’t know how they came to be. I have never heard of Agripin. I wouldn’t betray you.

“Why not? I certainly have never shown you any gratitude, nor any love.” I picked up the paper as she dropped the pen like a hot coal. “How much gold were you promised for this information? Did Agripin tell you that Foria would welcome you with open arms after you’d leeched us dry?”

She simply shook her head again, face twisted into an unrecognizable mass, wet with tears. The sounds coming from her were more animal than human.

“It’s a perfect match, Ellena.” I held up the letter, both top and bottom written in the same hand. “This is written in your hand. Shaking your head does not change the truth.”

It was the only motion she seemed capable of, a constant negation and an obvious lie.

I had made a terrible mistake in trusting that we couldn’t be brought low by a single conniving, petulant woman with an ax to grind. Ancestors only knew what she’d been doing, a silent pair of eyes and ears, collecting information and sending it along to Agripin and Hakkon. All this time we’d thought she was simply writing the Sisterhood, when she was keeping far more damning secrets locked in her head.

I dropped the letter to the table, her choked sniveling the only sound in the room.

“What did he promise you?”

I had to know what they’d been worth. I didn’t know why, nor why I wanted to carry that pain inside me, but I felt that at least one person needed to know what all the denizens of Tristone had cost. What their lives had been worth. How much gold could be weighed on the scales against their souls?

Hypocrite, the monster inside me breathed, self-recrimination a hot flush of shame beneath my fury. But at least I wore my shame where everyone could see it.

Ellena collapsed to the floor, quivering. “Nothing! I was promised nothing, I don’t know who he is!”

Disgust welled in me as I watched her shake and writhe, sobbing into her hands again. And under the disgust, anger churned, an unstoppable tide that grew in fury with every second that passed.

How pathetic, that she could so easily sell my people, and then cry about it when she was caught out.

“Please,” she gasped, reaching out to touch my foot with shaking fingers. “I didn’t—”

I knelt and grabbed her by the throat, the fury getting the better of me. “Don’t touch me.”

The urge to reach into her chest and pluck out her heart, to eat it whole as the light died in her eyes, nearly overcame me, and yet I sounded as calm as if we were discussing the weather. I felt like an observer in my own body, watching a demon take over and operate my limbs, fingers squeezing tighter and tighter on that fragile column of a neck.

I lifted her upright, and Ellena let out a soft wheeze. Maybe a word. Maybe ‘help’.

She was past help now. Past anything. I would not only punish her, but leave her unburied and unmourned. Perhaps I’d toss her remains into one of the sinkholes leading Below, let her soul rot down there for all eternity.

She would be forgotten. I would ensure it. The Sisters would not receive her body, nor would I grant her peace in the afterlife with a pyre to free her soul.

“I am responsible for every life in the Rift.”

Her mouth opened and closed, pulling the threadiest whisper of air into her lungs. Her nails scrabbled ineffectually at the back of my hand.

“Every man. Every woman. Every child.” Her cheeks were turning red. “Every word you sold to Agripin was a direct betrayal of that responsibility.”

Ellena stared at me in disbelief, and shook her head again.

Red washed over my vision.

“How dare you shake your head at me?” My fingers tightened, and the veins in her eyes burst, sclera turning bright red. “How dare you deny their blood on your hands?”

I was roaring, but it sounded distant. I felt like I was squeezing air, but her bones were cracking against the palm. I would break her; I would ruin her. With every word the rage grew hotter, brighter, until I gave into the primordial beast screaming in my head.

Flesh tore; bones cracked beneath my fingers, as delicate as glass. I gripped the pulsing organ in her chest, squeezing it until my claws dug into my palms.

As the last burst of life left her crushed heart, the fury cooled.

Finally I stopped, staring at the thing I held. A bag of meat. No signs of life. Her face was nearly black, eyes bright red, blood trickling from a corner of her mouth. The sharp scent of her piss filled my nose. She’d voided herself in death, a final insult.

I dropped her, unsure if I was more horrified with myself, for losing my temper after so long keeping it chained, or with Ellena, for selling my people and having to gall to piss herself in her final minutes.

Her corpse twitched, and I snarled at it, wishing I could bring her back and murder her again, feel the life leave her flesh once more.

Something moved in the doorway. I looked up, fists still clenched, lips still drawn back in a snarl. Cirri took a tiny step back.

How long had she been there? Had she watched me kill her? Watched me become the beast I tried so hard to hide?

Her wide eyes went from me to the twisted remains of Ellena, and back again.

What have you done?

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Chapter 37 Cirri

My palms were sweating, heart racing with nerves.

How was I going to ask him? I would be as good as accusing him of being kin to the wargs. I could only imagine what the vampires of Ravenscry would think if they heard me making such a suggestion… but it needed to be done.

For whatever reason the vampires had seen fit to include Wargyr’s rune in their book, it was part of the root of a shared history, and even if every vampire alive in the Red Epoch was dead, there had to be some small hint of the relation between the two.

It could be as simple as gossip, a rumor passed down through the ages, a story told once upon a time. But, I told myself, no matter what it was—even if the vampires had a ritual just like that of Wargyr—I would hear him out.

I wiped my hands on my skirts, pushing open the Bloodgarden’s doors and stepping back into the cool darkness of the keep. All was quiet, the entire castle in shock and mourning of the loss of an entire village, and with the legions spread far and wide over the Rift, there was much less ambient sound. No training in the yards, no clanking armor or weapons, no dirty jokes and laughter.

I had to steel myself as I walked towards the Tower of Winter, my hand going to the paper tucked into my pocket. I would burn or shred it at the first opportunity. Any vampire who saw it would think me offensive at best, and heretical at worst.

But worse than that, I didn’t want Bane to think, even for a moment, that he was like the thing I’d seen in the woods.

The thing that haunted my nightmares, with those too-thin limbs, the thousand teeth, that glazed pinprick of white in its glare.

With a shudder, I turned the corner and nearly walked into Visca.

The vampire was moving at a speed just short of a run, her face grim. I began to sign in the basic version of the priests’ tongue, but she stepped aside, not even looking me in the face.

“Not now, my Lady,” she said curtly, and strode past, leaving me staring after her.

She vanished around the corner, and a tinge of disquiet settled in me. Visca had never brushed me off, not once.

Which meant something had happened.

My stomach knotted several times over, the ice in my veins freezing me to the marrow. What else, on top of the carnage in Tristone? What else could they have done, with all the legions watching and waiting?

I wasted no time in entering the Tower of Winter, my heart pounding painfully against my ribs, and stopped. Listening.

Bane’s roar came from overhead, his voice distorted and deep. Furious.

I took the stairs slowly, barely managing to stop myself from flinching as a feminine shriek echoed down the stairs. The stifled sound of sobbing and another roar echoed down to me.

I didn’t want to know, and yet I had to know.

I swallowed hard, and crept across the landing to the open door, my knees going loose at the sight before me.

Bane gripped Ellena around the throat, holding her up so her toes barely brushed the floor, and there was nothing of the fiend I knew in his face.

His features were twisted, lips pulled back to bare the full rack of his fangs, pupils so narrow the gold almost glowed, but with a predator’s light. A hunting glow, the nightshine of turning around in the dark and seeing something watching you.

He squeezed, the muscles of his arms shaking, and with a bestial grunt he plunged his splayed claws through her chest.

The rip of tearing flesh, the crack of shattered bones, the soft drip of her blood puddling on the floor… I was frozen, breathless, unable to look away and too afraid to watch.

With terrible clarity, as Bane crushed Ellena’s heart in his hand, I remembered Miro whispering in my ear: There is no difference between your husband and what he hunts.

He tore the organ from her chest with unfeigned pleasure, his mouth spreading in a terrible grin as he held it up, digging his claws tight into her heart, squeezing out a stream of blackened blood.

He dropped her, and her neck twisted when she hit the floor. Her empty eyes, the whites now a brilliant red, seemed to stare directly at me.

Bane let out a low snarl, still glaring at her body, and I took a step back at that sound. It was like nothing I’d ever heard before. The sound of a hunting fiend, pure satisfaction and violence in it.

His eyes flicked to me, pupils wavering. That awful smile became a grimace.

What have you done? I asked, unable to tear my eyes from his hand, bloodied to the elbow. The same hand that had stroked me to sleep, the hand that touched me with such gentleness, wearing a wet red glove.

What had Ellena had done to deserve this? To be butchered like an animal?

I swallowed again, the stench of blood thick in my nose, and all I could think of was the pieces of people strewn around in Tristone, so much effluvia after a night of carnage.

Bane exhaled, his fingers still punched deep into her heart. He looked at it like he had no idea of what he held, but he slowly retracted his claws, letting it drop to the floor beside her.

The gaping wound in her chest was sickening. She no longer looked human.

When it comes down to it, he only sees you as meat, Kajarin whispered.

“She sold them,” he hissed. “She’s been selling information, passing it on to the Forians. What I did was no more than she deserved.”

I couldn’t help but shake my head, because I couldn’t see it. Ellena? Sell us out to the Forians?

I would never claim we’d been friends, but I couldn’t see it. She had been loyal to the Silver Sisters her entire life. She could’ve walked away at any time, but because the Eldest Sister had asked her to come, she’d obeyed.

“You tell me I’m wrong?” he rumbled. “I have proof!”

He held up a letter, leaving vivid streaks across the page.

Bane… I gestured weakly, not wanting to look into Ellena’s burst eyes again, nor see the gaping rent in her torso. Did you have to do it like this? 

By the Light, she was like Tristone all over again. I wanted to be sick.

He let the letter flutter to the ground. It landed in the spreading pool of blood, soaking through immediately. “Do my methods displease you, my Lady?”

For the first time since we’d met, there was something cold, almost mocking, in the way he said that. It was hard to believe that could sting at a time like this, standing in front of a butchered girl, and yet it did.

“How else should I have done it? What do you take me for? Did you believe that I would stand back and hold a trial for a woman who caused the death of my people?” Bane snarled, pacing through the blood, leaving clawed prints on the floor.

You could have made it less like… I stopped myself, clenching my hands.

I would not compare his actions to the wargs, not now. He was hurting; he was responsible for those people, and they’d been slaughtered under his watch. If she was the one responsible, then it was only right she experienced the same.

But to see it done in here, right over the bed where we slept… butchered like a lamb. That I could have lived without.

And all I could think of when I looked down at her was the tree of limbs. The woman in front of the church, savaged to death.

How similar that primal rage was.

“Less like what?” Bane’s lips stretched, showing all his fangs. “Less like a warg?”

There was a horrible silence after his accusing hiss, in which I could have denied it and didn’t, because my hands didn’t want to obey.

Because that was far too close to the mark, and as much as I hated to see him descend into this bloody fury, I couldn’t stand to tell him that yes… this reminded me of the wolves.

The joy in the killing. The pure, unbridled fury.

I’d been caught off guard. The first time Bane sentenced a man to death in front of me, he’d been cold but fair. He hadn’t taken pleasure in the act. I’d somehow come to believe that if he had to kill another, it would be the same.

But this… this was complete savagery.

Here was the answer I’d come seeking.

He laughed, but it was a twisted sound, half a scream.

“This is what I am, Cirri!” He flung his hand towards Ellena. “This is what a fiend does! Did you have pretty notions that I was some noble beast, a fair and just man? Let them be dispelled now, then! I am a fiend, and everything terrible you’ve heard about me is true.”

A low growl tore from his chest, a sound almost like he was in pain.

“I am a monster!” he roared, and turned to the portrait behind him, slashing through it. “What did you take me for? Of course I’m like the wargs. That’s what you married.”

His claws ripped through his old face. Blood spattered what was left of the canvas. With every rending blow, his face warped further, the peaks and valleys of his face growing more monstrous; the fabric over his spine and shoulders began to strain from the form mutating beneath it.

“I might as well be one,” he hissed, ripping the painting from its stand, and one of his wild slashes caught my portrait, tearing through the painted representation of my face.

I flinched, waiting for him to throw it aside too.

Bane paused, staring at the shredded canvas with an unreadable expression, and turned that gaze on me. His eyes were two pale pinpoints of light in the darkness of the tower.

“Stop looking at me,” he snarled. “I don’t want you to see me.”

My heart was galloping hard enough that my throat burned, the taste of copper on my tongue. I had never seen him lose control. The depth of self-loathing as he glared between me and what he’d made of Ellena.

Bane– I started to sign, and he turned with a roar.

“Just go!”

I dropped my gaze, taking a few steps backwards. He remained hunched over Ellena, his feet in her cooling blood, his body completely warped beyond anything I’d seen before.

I crept down the first few stairs, then I was suddenly fleeing, nearly tripping in my haste to be gone.

I didn't remember making it to the bottom of the stairs, nor bursting through our bedroom. I didn’t remember running through the halls.

The next time I had a conscious thought, I was in the stables, tucked into the same stall where we’d kissed and fumbled with each others’ laces only a few days ago, hidden from prying eyes with the paper clutched in my hand.

I unfolded it, my fingers shaking, and read my own words.

And as much as they were right, I also knew they were wrong.

I didn’t believe he would hurt me. I thought instead… that he was hurting.

And why wouldn’t he be? The deaths of hundreds, all in a single night, were weighing on him. A mountain of slaughter, piled on his shoulders and dragging him down with every step.

I’d seen the signs there in Tristone. The quietly-simmering fury, the self-recrimination.

They were his people, his responsibility, and under his watch they’d been destroyed. If Ellena was truly responsible for that, then she did deserve death. He’d given her the same sentence he’d have given to anyone else.

He was a fiend, a monster, but only because these people had needed a monster. And despite that, he was still sunk deep in shame and hatred for himself.

Because he had once done as the wargs had done. I knew that now, believed it whole-heartedly. In this case, Miro had been truthful with me. No one could look upon Ellena’s remains and not see that Bane derived some satisfaction out of her agony… but he had only done it for vengeance, not his own pleasure.

He had once destroyed innocents, sacrificing a few to protect the many.

I don’t want you to see me. But I knew that I loved him. Enough to take his blood. Enough to spend eternity at his side.

And that meant seeing him in all his facets, as complex as anyone else. Of course I didn’t believe he was a noble beast. There was no such thing as nobility in a time of war, when a single girl could send a letter and doom hundreds with her words.

He was what he needed to be. The same fiend I loved. The one who would take the weight of the shame and guilt to defend everyone else. The one who would commit unspeakable acts, and live with the mark of it written all over his body, so he would have the power to destroy the wolves when they came for us.

Bane had told me why himself. Why does a man use any weapon? Because it will help him win. 

Even if that weapon destroyed his own sense of worth.

Maybe he didn’t want me to look at him after he’d butchered a woman, but to hell with it. He was my fiend, and that meant seeing him with blood on his hands, and guilt in his heart. I knew that when I claimed him as my own.

I shouldn’t have run. I shouldn’t have left him alone at all.

I needed to go help him, to tell him he was nothing like a warg. I wouldn’t let my silence widen the fracture in his soul, nor let him believe he deserved to be punished. He’d done it for his people, not for the love of savagery.

I got to my feet, carelessly swiping straw from my skirts, and as I emerged from the stall someone plucked the paper from my hands.

“What’s this?” Miro asked, turning it over. He read it quickly, his expression going from mild curiosity to a strange sort of glee.

None of your business, I signed, reaching for the paper and irritated at his presence. I couldn’t stand the thought of my fiend in the tower, brooding over the body of a traitor and drowning in his own guilt, while Miro stood in my way.