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Chapter 14 Bane
He’d almost killed her.
A few seconds too late and my Cirri would’ve been dead, cleaved right through the heart.
Icy claws stroked my guts, my heart racing at how close she’d come to the ancestors, so close I could almost see them around us now, watching, waiting, their hungry souls eager to welcome her among them.
And the worst part was that I knew Derog. He had fought alongside me against the wolves, a brave man of honor.
A man of honor, and yet he’d tried to send my Cirri to the afterlife before her time.
Now he trembled in my grasp, his shattered arm held close against his chest, blood soaking into his patched shirt. In my haste to get to Cirri before the worst could happen, I’d been sloppy—tearing through flesh and bone instead of simply latching onto him, nearly ripping his arm off in my effort to turn it aside.
“Cirri,” I said, my voice rough. “My lady. Were you harmed?”
She still stood behind the table, face as white as the chalk she used to write with, Derog’s blood coating her in a bright crimson spray. Hands trembling, she let the pieces of her broken slate drop to the table—then raised her fingers to touch the still-warm blood on her cheeks and lips.
Her eyes widened as she examined the scarlet smears on her fingertips.
She signed to me slowly, and Wyn touched a hand to her shoulder, nudging her to sit down. Cirri moved like a dreamwalker, sinking into her chair of holly and primrose, the petals now dripping.
I should never have let her leave the keep. This wedding… I was willing to make allowances for the beliefs of the Rift-kin, their deeply-held lore that governed their lives, until those beliefs threatened my reign or the defense of the Rift.
Or my wife. Her, most of all.
“This will only take a moment,” Wyn said to her, the bloodwitch’s clipped tones more gentle than usual. She pressed one of her healing cloth patches to Cirri’s forehead, the blood sigil inscribed on it flaring with crimson light, and I couldn’t stop myself from shaking Derog, my grip on the back of his neck unyielding.
“Do you see this?” I growled, as Wyn pulled the cloth away, now bloodstained, leaving smooth, unmarked skin behind. “She is no Fae creature. It was an accident, you fool—merely a scratch.”
Derog let out a strangled groan as I shook him again.
The celebration had ended abruptly, and now the people of Fog Hollow watched, waiting with bated breath. Gilam waited at my side, the lines in his hangdog face deepening.
I looked at them, only for a second, unwilling to keep my eyes from Cirri for too long.
“This ends now.” In the silence, the rumble of my voice carried. The pop and crackle of the bonfires were the only other sound. Even Derog’s tears were silent, pouring down his cheeks as he stared at my wife in horror. “I’ve been patient with you all, despite the troubles you’ve given me. You ask us for protection from the wargs, then refuse to step foot outside your houses at night when we need your sword-arms. You ask us to run supply lines so you do not starve—then refuse to eat the food we’ve brought, because there was a mushroom with three spots instead of five. You ask us for walls, and we put forth the effort to rebuild them—fighting with you every step of the way to reopen the mines, because of this foolish belief in ghosts.”
Some of them shuffled in place, and others looked at the ground. Gilam examined his boots, his shoulders drawn up.
“And now one of your number has tried to assassinate my wife.” I made no effort to hide the deep rumble, nor the venom seeping into my tone. “A ridiculous, absurd superstition has nearly cost you all a heavier price than you could afford to pay. There are no Fae. There are no ghosts. We know this because we lived among them, and I will tell you: there is nothing beneath the ground now but shadows and dust. The only threat in the forest is the wargs.”
I paused, allowing them a moment to breathe. To appreciate how close they had walked to the razor’s edge, because if that had been Cirri’s blood spilled… there would be no Fog Hollow come morning.
“From this moment on, it ends. If we require a night patrol, you will leave the safety of your homes and do what must be done.” I stared at a young man, who no doubt hid behind a hearth covered with cold iron charms and trinkets while my vampiric legions stood guard by moonlight.
I turned my eyes to one of the women. “The food shipments will not be wasted. I don’t give a damn if there’s a daisy mixed with the wheat or a four-leafed clover stuck to the driver’s coat, you will eat the food that is brought, or you will starve. I will not send more.” She swallowed, her fingers curled around a beaded charm of holly and iron, but she nodded slowly.
Finally, I turned my eyes to Gilam. He, at least, had the stones to meet my eyes. “The old mines will be reopened, and I will not hear a word about ghosts from any of you. As you’ve endlessly hammered into my head, Tristone’s walls must be fortified. So, now we will fortify it—and if any of you fear the dead enough to shirk your duties, believe me… I will give you a reason for fear.”
Gilam nodded, face as pale as Cirri’s. I gazed at my wife as she folded a napkin, wiping the blood from her face. She was still moving slowly, her eyes on the broken pieces of slate before her. Wyn gave her a cup of wine, diluted with fruit juice, to calm her nerves.
Had Cirri ever been attacked in her life, living among the Silver Sisters?
I thought not. She had never truly been one of them, with violence expected around every corner. She had been a maid, an indentured servant—her experiences were with domestic duties and her studies, not with weapons.
I’d seen this reaction before, in the men who were young in the begi
So, she was in shock. I imagined that she’d felt the cold touch of the ancestors’ fingers on the back of her neck as Derog plunged his knife towards her chest…
I inhaled, savoring the deep breath and the tinge of iron-sweet blood it brought to my tongue, and drove my mind away from that terrible thought.
Never again would I be able to look at Derog and not want to destroy him, his entire house, his family.
He had come too close.
“And from this moment forth, let it be known: if a hand is raised against the Lady of the Rift, that hand, and everything attached to it, is mine. You would not have tried to murder me—and the offense of attempting to murder Lady Cirrien is far worse in my eyes. She is neither Fae nor vampire. She is as human as you are.”
Derog’s tremors grew worse, bordering on violent shaking. My fingers tightened, so gently, only enough to hold him in place and not snap his spine.
“Derog… if you had only stopped to think,” I said bitterly. “I wish you had not done it.”
Cirri stopped wiping at her cheek, looking up. Some of the glassiness had finally left her eyes. She shook her head once.
I’m sorry, Cirri, was what I didn’t say, because it must be done.
“I… I thought she was Fae,” the man in my grip whispered. “I thought it had burned her.”
“After years of us telling you—from the experience of our own lives, our own eyes and ears and the things we’ve killed—that the Fae are dead and gone? And yet you still raised a knife to her and almost slayed an i
Cirri shook her head again, harder, but Wyn laid a hand over her shoulder and squeezed, then bent down to murmur in her ear.
My wife signed something, her fingers still unsteady, but I couldn’t understand—and even if she’d still had the slate that had slowed Derog enough to save her life, there was nothing she could have written to change my mind.
“This man attempted to murder his liege, the Lady of the Rift.” I spoke loudly, letting my voice carry to them all. “The punishment is death. Let it be heard and carried out.”
No one spoke in his defense. Not for this.
Cirri tried to rise, but Wyn kept her in place. Visca strode towards them, thunderclouds on her face, but I twisted Derog’s arm behind his back and marched him away, past the crowds that remained.
He had been a man of honor before, so he would be given a modicum of dignity now, to die in privacy without his last throes witnessed by his people.
I brought him out to the forest, to a still, silent clearing where the fog wreathed the ground in playful tendrils and the pines stood as silent sentinels.
“Because I respected you, Derog, I will let you choose the ma
The old soldier exhaled, looking up at the sky and the sliver of moon above. “I didn’t mean to, my Lord. I truly thought she was one of them. One of the faeries, with all that fire-hair and the mark on her forehead.”
“I know,” was all I said. I believed him.
I was also unwilling to let him walk free—to become an example for the Rift-kin, that they might try to strike at Cirri and walk away unpunished.
Derog swallowed. I heard the dry click in his throat, the thickness of unshed tears in it. “Will you make it quick?”
“I won’t draw out your suffering.”
He sighed, staring at the moon again. “Then take my blood. Why waste it? At least it goes to a good use now.”
For a moment, I hated myself. That my thirst roared to life at his offer, parching my throat. That I felt relieved it would soon be slaked.
Slaked by the blood of a man I’d called a friend.
“Look at the moon,” I told him. “You’ll go to sleep, and the ancestors will be there to greet you.”
He looked up, exposing his throat. I tilted my head, my gums aching with the anticipation of fresh, hot blood, and bit into the pulsing vein, the one that would bleed him dry within moments.
Derog sucked in a sharp breath, but I held him steady as I drank. The rush of blood over my tongue, down my throat—ancestors, the relief. For the first time in days, the monster in the back of my head went still.
All thoughts of friendship faded, replaced by the gluttonous desire for more, the ravenous craving for every last drop in his veins.
But I remained steady, and as Derog wavered and slumped, I lowered him to the ground, still drinking. Still feasting.
He watched the moon as he slid towards unconsciousness, and I continued to drink. Taking deep pulls, until he was dry… the thirst faded, becoming satisfaction, a feeling of fullness I experienced only rarely.
I raised my head, looking into Derog’s sightless eyes, already clouding over with death. I tried to arrange him so it did look like he was just sleeping. For all my rage, he had been a good man. I would not leave him in ignominious disarray.