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Bane opened his eyes and began stroking my back slowly, from the first nub of my spine to the base. “Soon, Cirri. I know it pains you. Soon.”
I tried to flex my fingers within the bandages, but it was all bound too tightly, the sticks keeping them still.
But I trusted in him. So I laid my head on his shoulder, knowing everything would be all right, and slept.
I waited until nightfall, when the tent was empty. They had set no guards on me, perhaps expecting that I’d sleep through the night full of Bane’s blood and Wyn’s pain-deadening drugs, but my husband’s essence instead lit a fire inside me that refused to die.
He had whispered to me before he went, telling me that they needed help recovering the bodies of their own, those knights injured by fleeing wargs; I had kissed his hand, falling back into a light slumber.
And then I’d woken, sure that the moon was high, with the flame of his blood licking white-hot tongues of fire inside me, the sound of the brambles hissing in the distance like a whispering voice.
I couldn’t live without knowing. And Bane couldn’t walk through.
So I would have to do it.
I wore a simple dark shift, and had no way of holding a blanket around my shoulders, so I crept from the tent without it. The chill night air made me shiver only for a moment; the fire inside me held it back without effort.
The night was the vampires’ time, and I walked slowly, carefully, but confidently, moving between tents like I was meant to be there. Creeping secretively would draw far more attention, I thought, and my gamble worked; if anyone looked my way, I looked like one of the many servants striding through the camp on their own personal missions.
It was only the business of the camp that disguised my movements; legions were spread all along the thorny barrier, servants moving among them, tending the wounded, ru
But still, I huffed with surprise when I crossed the barrier of dry grass and stepped within arm’s reach of the wall of brambles and no one had stopped me.
The vines slithered, hissed, whispered.
Unable to touch, I leaned in, listening… and they parted.
The brambles lifted themselves away like a lady’s skirts, revealing a pathway just wide enough for one person. I stepped through, my bare feet landing on loose, churned earth, damp and soft underfoot.
I cringed, knowing that dampness was blood, the sweet, iron-tinged tang of its scent strong, but the brambles closed behind me as the path opened further.
At times, the whispers almost sounded like discernible words, but every time I stopped to listen, cocking my head, it degenerated once more into the dry rustle.
My legs and back ached, but I took step after step, following the path, keeping my eyes fixed ahead. The moon was bright enough to see by, and when my gaze drifted from the path forward, sometimes I saw things.
Empty sockets, gaping mouths, hands curled like dead spiders. The brambles would shift if I glanced their way, obscuring these things from sight, but sometimes they weren’t fast enough, and I’d had enough death.
So, step by step, I watched the brambles open for me, and the dark earth underfoot, and nothing else. Until my next step landed on cold stone.
With a shiver, I looked up the stairs at the tower door before me. The door hung off its hinges, overgrown and scarred from the vines’ thorns, a gaping mouth to swallow me whole.
I’d been willing to give my life to escape this tower, the tiny cell at the top that held a memory more hellish than anything I’d experienced. But that same cell contained answers, and I refused to leave Foria without them, or risk the vampires’ lives retrieving them.
I took several deep breaths, fortifying myself to walk willingly back into those memories, and climbed the steps. The vines whispered behind me, creaking and straining.
It was slow going, every stride more painful than the last. I felt my body consuming Bane’s blood, another droplet burned up with every step in the effort to propel myself upwards, and I had to stop and catch my breath more than once.
But the ice-cold stairs were empty and smooth, the brambles staying out of my way, the wargs… cleaned away. I didn’t think further than that, unwilling to frighten myself out this climb.
By the time I rounded a bend and the shattered prison door came into view, my spine was screaming, and I was convinced my feet were leaving a trail of blood with every step, but the stone behind me remained flawless.
I rested again, twisting my head to wipe sweat on my shoulders and sleeves, and climbed through the splintered gap.
The cell was as I had left it; dark, dry splotches on the table and floor, deep gouges from Miro’s claws dug into the stones. And there, on the bloody table, was my journal and the ritual book. My pen lay in the corner where it had rolled, and my bag was discarded by the cot.
I bit my tongue hard, wishing I could scream a curse. Collecting the pen would be hard at best, impossible at worst; the sticks extended past my fingertips and would be useless for getting a grip.
I used one stick to loop the edge of my bag’s strap, lifting it to the table and wedging my head and shoulder through. The stains didn’t matter; maybe it’d get blood on it, but at this point the bag was like an old friend who had suffered with me. A little blood was nothing to balk at.
Using the sticks to nudge and poke, I maneuvered the books to the edge and tipped them into the bag, which left the pen.
It was impossible. I crouched, sharp pains shooting up my newly-healed spine, scrabbling with the sticks to move it along or balance it, and then the slippery metal would slip free once more and clatter on the floor.
I used my feet, rolling it along to the door. What I would do is get it to the edge of the stairs, and scoop it off the edge into my bag.
Vaguely, I knew that I was being irrational and unreasonable; it was just a pen, and I was sweating and hurting and alone in the middle of a vast field of death, in a tower of nightmares.
But Bane had given me that pen, one of the very first gifts from his hand, and that pen had traveled with me through all of this. I wouldn’t leave it now.
Using my shoulder to wipe away tears of pain, I flipped it with my foot, and it rolled through the shattered door and came to a sudden halt on the first stair.
A hand as dark as night had stopped it dead, long fingers splayed over its barrel.
My heart skipped a beat, then another, and began racing so fast I could hear its drumbeat in my ears as the hand carefully picked it up.
I stood frozen in place as the dark figure stepped through the door, holding the pen out like a precious gift. In the shadows of night, only the spiny, eye-smarting edges of its body stood out, no longer skeletally thin but full and dense.
Thorn, I mouthed, the word unfamiliar to my tongue, but the golem nodded, motioning to my bag.
I held my hands back as he carefully held it open and dropped the pen inside, and then he looked about the tower, bristling at it like an angry guard dog, and nudged me to the stairs.
Bad place, he signed. Go.
My pounding heart settled with the golem at my back, and his silent, watchful company made the descent faster, easier; I didn’t fear that a warg would claw its way from the brambles, jaws snapped wide open.
When we emerged from the base, there was a bare spot in the bramble wall, vines broken open and oozing sharply-scented greenish sap; the shape was like someone had torn themselves free.
My eyes moved up to the bulbous green receptacle of a bloodrose, its petals torn away, yellow pistils crushed and broken; there was a sound out in the brambles that wasn’t quite a whisper, nor hissing movement.
I stumbled onto the open path, wondering if I should dare to hope.
And there she was, on the path ahead. Large parts of her were missing, like chunks had been bitten out of her body; her hip dipped inward in a sickening swoop, one shoulder and arm was missing entirely, and the back of her skull was caved inwards, but it was Rose, and she reached up one-handed to grip a bloodrose, tearing its petals away, and smeared them across her collapsed hip.
It filled in as I watched, the curve slowly rounding out. She poked at it, shaking her head, prodding the petals until they lay flat and orderly and smacking a stubborn one into place.
Bruised in color, halfway missing, but undeniably Rose.
I huffed out a laugh and a sob at once, and she turned in surprise, faceless head turning towards us.
Rose’s soft hands gripped my chin as the tears fell, wiping them away with velvet fingers, and even in the moonlight I could see that everywhere they touched, the dark bruised edges of her petals became a vibrant crimson once more.
They had rebuilt themselves from my blood, healed themselves with my tears.
It didn’t seem right or fair, but I had long since learned nothing in the world was fair, and when you were given a good thing, you did everything you could to hold onto it.
So I sniffed a few times, smiled at Rose, and kissed her cheek. The golem took my hand, Thorn watched my back, and they walked me back through the bramble path.
The doorway split open, releasing us onto the grass, and Bane was there waiting for me.
His ears were pressed flat against his head, nostrils flared wide with alarm, arms crossed over his chest, but he stared down the reaching vines narrowly, risking being this close to wait for me.
I looked up at him, half expecting to be admonished, ready to defend my decision.
I was his, yes, but my life’s work was in this bag. Nothing could have stopped me from retrieving it.
But Bane just held out his arms to me. “You couldn’t have left a note, could you?” he asked lightly. “Spared me a few gray hairs?”
I smiled, shook my head and shrugged—what gray hairs?—and stepped into his embrace. Bane brushed a kiss over my head, surreptitiously checking me for injuries as he ran his hands over my arms and back, and studied the golems.
“Fae magic. It must be.” He tipped his head as Rose began harvesting the bloodroses on the outside of the barrier, filling in her concave skull. “Everything they’re made of came from you—the roses and thorns from our vows, your blood. And it was you who created all of this.”
I gazed out at the sea of thorns, disguising an army of dead wargs hidden within their embrace; that was what worried me, now that I considered it.
Fae magic, all of them; and who was to say what this field would awaken, sown with the seeds of a Fae being’s body, watered with blood and tears?
But that was a question for another day. For now, it was enough that the wargs were gone, bound and drained of blood. Hakkon’s reign of terror was ended, his cult buried beneath roses on a grave, and one day the rite of Wargyr would be as thoroughly erased from history as this had been.
We could go home now.