37. Cirri
Chapter 37
Cirri
M y 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.
Miro folded it in half, handing it back to me. I tucked it in my pocket again, his eyes on every movement as I smoothed it flat, adjusted my bag, straightened the bloodrose tucked behind my ear.
I made a common gesture that amounted to ‘ get out of my way’ , but Miro remained in place, leaning on the stall door and blocking my exit.
He smiled. “So you finally see. They’re the same.”
I shook my head, not bothering to sign. He wasn’t worth the words, and Bane needed to know I cared. He couldn’t drive me away with a few snarls and roars.
“Well, I’m glad you’re here. It makes my life so simple. I’m going to give you one chance, Cirrien.” Miro’s smile had faded a fraction, and though his lips were still curled up, the look in his eyes was completely serious and cold. “One chance to leave with me peacefully while your husband is dealing with the hindrance I sent him. If you fight, you lose.”
I tilted my head, looking up at him quizzically, his statement not making any sense at first.
The two seconds it took to make sense of his words was two seconds too long.
Miro reached for my arm, and I struck at him, clawing with my nails. A scratch opened on his hand, blood welling, but Miro was quicker, stronger, faster.
“A fight it is, then.”
He twisted my arm behind my back, forcing me back into the empty stall.
“Feisty,” he muttered, pushing my chest and stomach to the rear stone wall and keeping me pinned there. “You’re such a little mouse, I didn’t think you had it in you.”
His weight forced the air from my lungs, and even if I could have screamed, there was no air to scream with.
He was fumbling with something with his other hand, and an awful thought struck, that he would rape me right here in the stables and no one would know until it was over.
I kicked, raising my heel, but Miro drove his knee into the back of my thigh, sending a sharp jolt of pain through my entire leg before the muscle went dead. Dark splotches spread across my vision, painting patterns like bloodstains across the wall. By the Light, I needed air ...
“You fought and you lost, no great surprise,” he said, his other arm snaking around me. “By this time tomorrow, we’ll be in Foria. Good night, Lady Silence.”
He pressed a cloth over my face, smothering close, covering my mouth and nose. Despite my thrashing, it didn’t dislodge.
Most of his weight drew back and my lungs filled against my will, desperate for air, but the sweet, acrid stench of the cloth burned down my throat instead.
The dark splotches grew. Blossomed into shadows, the imaginary bloodstains becoming bloodroses. I heaved against Miro one last time, but I could no longer feel him, even as he dragged me across the stable.
He laid me on a saddle blanket, lowering the rear hatch of a supply wagon. I could no longer feel my own limbs. I was floating, the shadows deepening, my mind numb.
The bloodroses flowered into an endless night.