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We were still in Foria. That should have been obvious, this being the same red canvas tent as the one she’d set up in Tristone, but my knees had begun to shake at the sight of the grass trampled underfoot.
We were still here, on the ground the wargs tu
I lurched towards the door, desperate to escape, to look out at that awful prison and be sure, absolutely sure, that Hakkon was dead.
But Bane didn’t release me, his claws tightening. “Cirri, wait.”
I shivered in his grasp, looking back over my shoulder pleadingly. I had to know. I had to see.
How were they alive after that? How were they so calm about standing on Forian soil? Did they not realize what lurked under us right this very moment?
“I’ll take you out, but walk slowly.”
Hakkon, I mouthed, still shivering. Hakkon.
Bane studied my mouth intently, and I knew I wasn’t forming the word quite right, but he finally nodded. “He’s dead, Cirri. I promise you that. Come now.”
Wyn sighed as she mixed something in a glass. “You might as well go look. It makes all my efforts with the wolfsbane look so… rustic.”
Despite myself, the grumpy scowl on her face brought a touch of a smile to my lips. I’d missed Wyn’s grumpiness.
Bane pulled the canvas door aside and another pained hiss slipped out of me, the light stabbing into my eyes after a week of sleep and darkness.
I blinked the tears away as I stepped out into the world, searching for the tower, expecting bodies and enough horror to fill my nightmares for years to come.
But the horizon had vanished. The Ravenscry encampment stood on the dry plains, the grass now well-trodden, tents placed in tidy rows, and where an endless sea of grass should have been was a wall.
I peered up at the wall’s rippling, sinuous surface, my eyes widening when I understood that it was a single enormous bramble swallowing the plains—countless vines woven together into a nearly solid organism, thorns like blackened spines warding off any outsiders. Myriad constellations of lush bloodroses dotted its shifting vines, accompanied by the tiniest of fresh green leaves.
I blinked as the vines shifted again, and a warg’s dead face slid past: eyes dull marbles, mouth lolling open, tongue pierced with thorns. It looked like something that had been mummified a thousand years ago.
And then the vines closed again, swallowing it whole.
“This is what you did,” Bane said softly. “I don’t know how, but where your blood touched this ground… this grew. Hakkon and his army were swallowed whole. Believe me, no warg that comes near it has lived to speak of it. It lives, and it hungers.”
Blood and tears. I had hoped for some small protection, perhaps a charm that would turn the tides of war in my people’s favor, but I hadn’t expected something of this magnitude.
Bane’s hand tightened on my shoulder, and I looked down, wanting to kiss his fingers, and saw them. The deep lines scored across his knuckles and forearm, pale and ragged, deep divots as though thorns had sunk into his flesh.
He felt me still, and looked down at his hand. He smiled, stretching it out and splaying his fingers so I could see the full extent of how the thorns and brambles had grasped and clawed at him.
“I can’t go into it, either,” he said quietly. “None of my brothers can. The thorns are just as hungry for us as they are for the wargs. Visca tried to enter, and made it a few feet. She came out with a single scratch. But if I go near…”
He released me, and stepped towards the thorny wall. He was still twenty feet away when the vines began to slither frantically, reminding me of a feeding frenzy in a fish pond, but they were nothing so pleasant.
Several creeping tendrils extended from the wall, crawling through the grass as Bane approached. He held out his hand to it, and they slithered faster, sprouting long, sharp needles.
The sound they made as they moved… raspy, hissing, the furious sound of a nest of snakes. It made me shudder to hear the fury and hunger in it.
Bane was still smiling crookedly as he backed away. The vines began to settle, and by the time he’d returned to my side, they were almost still again.
I stared at them, sickened, wondering what I’d created. But for once, there was no bitterness in Bane’s smile. “Because wargs and fiends must be the same. You could walk through unscathed, but it senses what we are.”
“It senses our sins,” a deep male voice said behind me, and I fell into Bane as I jumped, my heart throbbing so painfully I tasted copper.
The fiend had approached on silent, cloven feet. I gazed up at his long, skeletal face, at the rack of antlers spread wide and still stained red. I had a vague memory of those antlers draped with bodies, a face like a blooming flower full of needles, but he appeared about as monstrous as Bane, in a different way—something terrible that somehow didn’t frighten me much.
He was tall and broad, his claws curled dangerously, a strange pattern burned into his chest like a necklace. The fiend inclined his head to me.
“Andrus,” he said, touching a hand to his chest. “I’m glad to see you well.”
I smiled crookedly; my bandaged hands were hanging limp at my sides, useless to me. I was alive, certainly, and glad of it, but well… it might be some time before I could claim that.
“Sins,” Bane said, and to my surprise, shrugged carelessly. “I’ve spent years wallowing in guilt. If not for those sins, Cirri wouldn’t have lived through this. Now their weight seems so much lighter.”
Andrus tipped his head, silver eyes glimmering as he studied the thorns. He touched the silver pendant around his neck, the scorched darkness of his fingertips displaying how often he must do that. “Perhaps it is deliverance.”
“Don’t try it,” my husband growled, muscles tensing. I shook my head; bad enough to see the wargs torn apart. I didn’t want one of Bane’s brothers to think of it at all.
That wasn’t what I had meant this for.
Andrus laughed softly, and turned back the way he’d come, cloven feet as silent as his arrival.
I stared after him, and only after he’d vanished into the multitude of tents did I look back at the thorns, hungry for the blood of wargs. For the blood of fiends.
Bane clutched me as I leaned against him. “Back to the tent,” he said, guiding me away.
Wroth nodded as he passed, carrying barrels of creek water; I smiled at him, and the fiend’s tail thrashed lightly.
Bane helped me into the tent, and when I sat on the cot, winded and sore, I understood that it was going to take many, many days of small walks to fully recover. That had barely been fifty feet, and I felt like I’d run for miles.
“Cirri…” Bane knelt before me, carefully grasping my bandaged hands. “I’m going to ask you to do something you may hate.”
I stared into his eyes, sinking into the ash-scattered gold. There was nothing I wouldn't do for him. When he was with me, I was whole.
“Wyn has worked her fingers to the bone to keep you alive, and done an admirable job of it. But you are bound to me now. Mine, now and forever.” He took a breath, holding my gaze. “You will heal faster if you drink my blood.”
My tongue ran over my teeth, a phantom taste filling my mouth at the thought of it.
I recalled thick liquid, an iron tang, almost spicy… or was I thinking of something else? My memories were muddled.
“I know it hasn’t been long since you’ve overcome your fear of me feeding from you. But… I must ask you to overcome any disgust you might feel about feeding from me—”
I leaned forward, cutting him off with a kiss. It was a hard kiss, full of fangs and sharp edges, his lips still warped by the fiendish transformation, but a touch I had craved from the moment I’d woken up outside the keep.
When I finally pulled away, Bane was silent, gazing up at me and breathing hard.
I nodded. Yes. Yes. Yes.
Anything to have my hands back, so I could touch him, feel him, speak to him. The thought of drinking from him, using my own blunt human teeth to pierce flesh and the hot warmth of fresh blood, didn’t cause me any disgust at all.
How could it? It was so simple; we were meant for each other in all aspects.
His nervous swallow was loud in the dark bubble of the tent. “Then you should drink now, if you think you can. The sooner you’re better, the sooner we can leave Foria.”
I nodded again, slipping from the cot, and Bane took me into his arms as he folded himself on the floor, holding me with my legs wrapped around his hips, chest to chest.
I settled against him, the curves of my body molding against his hard planes as they always did, and rested my head on his shoulder. My arms remained pi
I sat up, licking my lips and preparing myself to bite. How was I going to manage to cut through that thick, armored flesh—
Bane reached up, a claw poised over his throat. In the flickering light, I saw the beat of his pulse, the shimmer of his ashen skin, the black gleaming ridge of the sharp tip pressing through it…
With the tiniest, most careful crook of his finger, he opened a wound; dark blood welled, shining, and the phantom taste was stronger than ever.
I almost flushed with embarrassment—to think he’d expect me to try to bite through that armored skin myself.
“There,” he breathed. “Come drink, lover. Take all you need.”
Shockingly, I craved the blood; my mouth watered at the sight of it, like dark syrup. But I had needed him. ‘Missed’ wasn’t a strong enough word.
I required him in order to live, and now that he was here, I wanted him to know that the letter was all lies, that he was mine as much as I was his.
I kissed his mouth again, tongue flicking out to lap at a fang, and trailed my lips over the scarred ridges of his jaw. Bane exhaled, his breath rattling in his throat as I kissed a path down to the glistening wound.
The spicy iron taste filled my mouth, the heat of his blood burning down my throat and lighting a glowing coal in my belly.
He tipped his head back slowly, heart pounding against mine as I drank. His arms wrapped around me, holding me possessively.
The taste of his blood was almost intoxicating, the lingering pains in my broken body subsiding into a warm serenity.
He exhaled with every pull, clutching me close. “More. Anything you need.”
I ran my tongue over the corded muscles of his throat, tasting spice and skin, the wound healing slowly. The glowing coal became a fire, warming my limbs, suffusing my limbs with energy.
But my hands remained motionless.
As it closed into a scar, I pressed another soft, lingering kiss to the mark, licking his thick blood from my lips.