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Bane sent off another well-wisher with thanks, leaning in towards me once more. “But as to your question, yes. The Rift-kin have greater reason than anyone else to still fear the Fae. Some of them believe Wargyr himself was once Fae; I’m not so sure of that. But much of the folklore here is entirely true, in all its ugliness.”
Are there any books on such lore? I wrote, and Bane nodded. “I’ll have the steward bring them out for you.”
Having never been anywhere but Argent and the lai Darran lands in my life, I knew so little of the Rift that it was a little appalling I was now half of its ruling duo. Why not choose a woman of this valley, who grew up on its soil and knew its lore, to become the Lady?
Writing quickly, I posed the question to Bane, who let out a small laugh.
“Please, my lady.” He touched a hand to his mouth. “The men know and trust me. The women have never… quite taken to me. And if not for that, very few of the Rift-kin are of pure Veladari descent.”
I glanced at Bane, studying his strange profile, the almost muzzle-like tilt of the lower half of his face, the flared nostrils, the swiveling ears. I was growing almost used to it.
But I did notice that women did not approach. The men had no problem walking up to Bane, congratulating him on his marriage, offering me tight smiles—they weren’t unfriendly, but word of my silence had spread, and they covered their awkwardness with head nods before sidling away.
Not for the first time, I felt entirely invisible—much like the ornament I really was. My only purpose was to sit at Bane’s side.
I craved to ask the Rift-kin about their history, the lore of the valley, and thought I found my chance as Bane enthusiastically discussed the rebuilding of defensive walls with one of the soldiers, a man he was clearly familiar with. A younger man, not appearing quite old enough to have served on the front lines of the Forian War, eyed me sidelong as they spoke.
I attempted to write out a question, hoping to establish a rapport with someone, since the women wouldn’t come anywhere near our table, and I wasn’t quite willing to leave the comfort of Bane’s presence.
But as I considered how to phrase it, chalk in hand, the man slid away, striding off towards the kegs.
Very well, then. I would be content with quiet.
“We can have the shipment made within the next year, but we don’t have enough men in the new quarry yet,” Bane was saying as I wiped my slate clean. “No one is willing to re-enter the old mines—”
“Of course not, man,” the soldier said with a snort. “Not unless they want the faeries comin’ for their souls.”
“The Fae are dead, Gilam.” There was a hint of impatience in Bane’s tone. “And the walls are far more important against living wargs, who hunt in the here and now.”
“Riiight…” Gilam drank deeply, beer dripping into his beard. “Except for the old ghosts. You know their ghosts still haunt the ground. I seen them myself.”
Bane let out an inaudible sigh, and I sat close enough that I felt his shoulders slump from the futility of the argument. For the first time, I really appreciated exactly why Visca had scoffed at the Rift-kins’ superstitions.
Unfortunately, with the Rift-kin unwilling to speak, I had no idea what to suggest that might put their fears of Fae ghosts to rest.
I laid my hand over Bane’s, and he took a breath, and tried another argument.
My attention wandered from thoughts of quarries and haunted mines, listening in on other conversations. Many of the guests were already plenty drunk, with the kegs flowing like water; I watched the young man who had walked away refill his mug, standing with several other men who were clearly deep in their cups.
They had reached the point where their voices carried, unaware of the world around them. And then I realized what they were talking about.
“She’s pretty, though. And if she can’t talk, she can’t nag,” one of them said, slurring heavily. “Kind of makes you think, it’d be nice to have a dumb wife. She keeps her mouth shut unless you got something to put in it.”
They laughed. A flush of anger spread across my cheeks and I ducked my head, staring intently at my lap to pretend I hadn’t heard.
It was bad enough when people walked away from me, unwilling to try to understand, or treated my slate like a cute trick. It was worse when they called me dumb, as though I were an animal beyond understanding just because I couldn’t speak… and to imply the only thing my mouth was good for was taking a cock.
My hand moved, and I realized Bane was rising from his seat, his shoulders stiff, the muscles in his arms taut.
I looked up into his face, seeing nothing gentle in him now. There was only cold rage, eyes glowing amber.
Gilam backed away slowly, his eyes flicking between Bane and the drunk youths, and even as my hands moved in frantic signs—Bane, no, don’t do this—he shoved the entire chair aside, climbing over the table with the grace of one of the large cats in the south, straightening up to his full height only feet from the men who were still crowded around the dwindling fire.
The man who had spoken didn’t realize Bane was there, even as the men facing us went as still as hunted deer, mouths hanging open and eyes bulging.
Bane’s claws closed around the man’s skull.
In the sudden silence, we heard a series of small pop pop pops—his spine crackling as Bane lifted him entirely from the ground, raising him to face-height with the fiend himself. The mug fell from the man’s fingers as he dangled limply in his grasp.
“What was that, Embry?” Bane asked softly. “Are those words you would repeat in front of me?”
The drunk man gasped for breath, gone bloodlessly pale, and Bane strode towards me.
He slammed Embry onto the table, shattering my plate with his face. The man’s sharp cry of pain rang in my ears. “You’ve insulted the Lady of the Rift, you fucking fool. Make your apologies, and mean them.”
Bane was crushing Embry’s head into the wood, but the man slobbered out a series of breathless apologies. I smelled the sharp scent of his own piss filling the air.
With nerveless fingers, I scrambled for my slate, writing so fast that my letters were almost childish: He’s forgiven. Don’t hurt him any more, please.
Embry was a fool, but I didn’t think I could stand to see his skull crushed before me. I would never be able to look at a plate again without seeing his brains before me, and even if he was horrendously rude, he didn’t deserve to die like that.
Let this be enough of a lesson for him, I added, hands shaking.
The fear of fiends had returned in full force, my chest tightening so it was hard to breathe. Bane could be gentle, could kiss my knuckles, could make me laugh… but he could pick a man up by his head and crush it as easily as an egg.
Bane waited a long moment, his eyes on my slate, and finally released Embry.
Instead of slithering to the ground, Embry came up flailing, letting out braying sobs. One of his hands, with his rough nails, clipped my face, leaving a sharp sting on my forehead where the priest had pressed the cold iron.
I touched it and felt the warmth of blood.
Bane snarled, lips drawing back to reveal all his teeth in an exaggerated parody of a smile, but there was nothing amusing in it. He looked like he could unhinge his jaw and tear the man’s heart out of his chest.
It’s only a scratch! I stood and signed frantically. There was no time to write. Please, Bane!
My husband closed his eyes, and finally exhaled a long, low snarl. Embry, doing the first wise thing he’d done this evening, crawled away, then got to his feet and stumbled, and finally ran.
“I apologize, Cirri. I’ll find Wyn. There won’t be a mark left when she’s done.” He opened his eyes, looked at me and the smear of red on my forehead. They still glimmered a hot gold, pupils narrowed so fine they were almost invisible. “It’s better if I’m not near your blood—not while I’m still angry.”
I nodded, standing there on quivering legs as Bane stalked away, and a completely out-of-place thought drifted through my head: when had he last fed?
Gilam cleared his throat. “Apologies, my Lady,” he said quietly. “The young lads know better. Some of them know better than others.”
Apology accepted, I told him, still feeling dazed. It seemed surreal that past this table, this small circle where the spectacle had taken place, the party was ongoing. Plenty of people had neither seen nor heard what had happened. The laughter that reached my ears didn’t seem real.
And even as I stared out into that oblivious crowd, reeling from how quickly my husband had shifted from good-naturedly arguing with an old friend, to picking up a man like a handkerchief and preparing to sink teeth into his flesh, I saw someone walking towards me through the throngs, with the now-quite-familiar, lackadaisical stroll of a drunk.
It was another man marked by the war, holding a small bouquet of hand-picked primroses. He looked up at me, almost bashful, and I wanted to smile—it was a sweet gesture of him to make—but the shock still held me in its fist.
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.