13. Cirri
Chapter 13
Cirri
I pushed my slate and chalk back into my bag, astonished at how woeful I was that our all-too-brief hour together had come to an end. I’d been walking on clouds the whole time, happy to finally speak to him, utterly unaware of the disaster that lay ahead of us that night.
At times, that creeping fear of what he was crawled back into my bones, urging me to run far and fast, to hide. But… he had made me laugh. It had been a long, long time since I’d genuinely laughed at anything.
Wyn had provided the bag for my use, and when I’d been informed that I would be traveling alone with my husband, I’d gone out of my way to make it clear that I wanted something for quick communication. The slate and chalk had been brought as Wyn had Yuli and Lissa bathe me within an inch of my life in preparation for meeting the people I would rule over.
It was a strange thought. I knew nothing of noble duties, or anything that might prove useful in leadership. I was as out of my depth as a horse dropped into deep waters.
But Bane made me feel like things were… possible . I knew I was a figurehead, important in name only, but perhaps there would be something I could do, some tangible use, to help foment friendly relations between our kinds. That was my only purpose now—be his wife, and ensure Veladar’s stability.
Embarrassment at what I’d said still burned hot on my cheeks as Eryan pulled us into the midst of Fog Hollow. Comparing vampires to the trap spiders of Serissa… it was unconscionably rude.
But it seemed Bane had entirely forgiven my lapse in judgment, his little jokes to put me at ease—and then he’d held my hand, studying my face with the intensity of a blind man seeing for the first time… had he been wanting to… kiss me?
I considered that notion, trying to ignore the prickle of goose flesh that rose over my back and arms at the thought. At times, I could see the vestiges of what had once been a finely-carved mouth, with an arched cupid’s bow, a full lower lip, stretching in easy smiles—before it was distorted by his thick, jutting jaw and the sharp teeth beneath.
Would his lips be as warm as his hands? I thought so, glancing at him sidelong as he studied the town outside the carriage.
But would they be as gentle? Or would those teeth ache to break flesh?
Could he kiss at all, with a mouth like that?
My musing came to a halt along with the carriage. Through the dark glass windows, I saw that Fog Hollow was not quite the provincial village I’d imagined: roaring bonfires in the harvested fields drew the eye first, then the garlands of primrose draped between stone houses and over tents. Even the fortress, much smaller than Ravenscry but no less imposing, had been festooned with the Fae-warding flowers.
Hundreds of Rift-kin surrounded us, some rolling kegs towards the bonfires, others dancing under flower poles hung with holly. My breath caught in my throat at the sight of how many people awaited us—at that moment, it felt like more people than I’d ever seen in Argent—and my fingers twitched.
This is much more than I expected , I signed, and found Bane watching me.
“I would expect you to be nervous, but I will be with you at all times, Cirri.” He reached out to touch my fingers; despite my fear, I loved the way he said my name, the slightest hint of a Nord accent turning it from a pet name into something infinitely more seductive.
As long as you stay with me , I said, touching his arm again. Not even his fine linen shirt was as smooth as the skin beneath; a strange thing to think about a fiend. I’ve never had to be the center of attention in my life. I don’t want to start now.
To be sure he understood, I patted him and then myself.
His lips curled upward. “I won’t leave you.”
Relieved, I watched as he unbarred the carriage door and shifted himself outside, the entire carriage tipping to the side. He offered his hand and I took it without reluctance, clutching my bag close with one hand and wrapping the other through his arm, holding him tight.
For a moment I almost smiled to myself; I’d been terrified of him the night before, and now I clung to him like he was a shield.
Wyn and Visca were behind the carriage, Visca on a large black gelding, Wyn riding a dainty white mare. The bloodwitch dismounted and handed off the reins to one of the soldiers. “Time to go make nice,” she muttered to herself, and for once I found myself in total agreement with her.
The supply wagons were some way behind us, but from what Wyn had told me, they contained shipments of weapons and preserved food that would be distributed to the smaller settlements outside Fog Hollow. For now, we weren’t here to make deliveries, but to prove to these people that their lord protector was keeping his throne.
So I did my best to fix a smile, however tremulous, on my mouth, all too aware that these people would not look at me as a scullery maid.
Bane led me toward the bonfires, and outside the carriage I could see clearly that the entire village had gathered in this field for the celebration; long tables had been dragged out around the bonfires, what seemed like a thousand beer and wine kegs were already tapped, and every available surface was covered in red cloth or strewn with flowers.
There was a table reserved for Bane, made obvious not only by the fact that it was in pride of place in the celebrations, but by the enormous carved chair, big enough to sit a fiend.
And by the slightly smaller chair next to it—heavily entwined with elaborate garlands of primrose and holly. It would feel like sitting in a shrubbery.
But if it made these Rift-kin feel better about me, so be it. I’d sit in the shrubbery and touch cold iron all night if it eased their minds.
As we passed, Bane greeted many of the Rift-kin by name, reaching out to clasp shoulders and exchange quick pleasantries, particularly with the men. I realized these men—most of them scarred, some missing eyes or limbs—were the men he had fought with against the Forians.
They knew him, trusted him. He was not a shadowy figurehead in the castle to these people; he had shared blood, sweat, and tears with them, crawled through the same hardships day in and day out.
My stomach suddenly churned with a cramping ache. I had no place here. He belonged to them, and I was merely an outsider.
“May I introduce my wife, Lady Cirrien lai Darran?” he said to them, and the old warriors tipped their heads politely, all of them eyeing me with poorly-disguised curiosity.
I kept my smile in place and released Bane for a moment to sign. It’s a pleasure to meet you .
A lifetime of the same reaction had prepared me for the sudden confusion, quickly stifled, followed by skepticism. One of the men squinted at me. “Are you like… one of the Silent Brothers?”
I tipped my head and shrugged, gesturing. In a way .
Comprehension replaced skepticism. “Oh. So you made a vow of silence? I thought they didn’t take women.”
I shook my head, still smiling—by the Light, my lips were frozen in this position now—and touched my throat.
“She is unable to speak,” Bane said, the slightest, deeper warning growl in his tone.
They nodded slowly. A man with a scar that had carved out a good portion of his nose and upper lip shrugged. “Well, if you tell me there’s a warg over my shoulder, I’ll understand that, at least. We got that twelve times a day on the frontlines.”
One of the others laughed, and though the joke wasn’t funny, the tension dissipated. The man without a nose bowed gallantly, took my hand, and kissed it.
His lips were wet and unpleasant after the warm gentleness of Bane’s touch, but I squeezed his fingers in return regardless. Never had I suspected that these men who had fought alongside the Silent Brothers might be a boon to me, with some rudimentary understanding of my primary language.
I fended off several more questions about the Brotherhood before we made it to the table, but by the time Bane pulled out the garland-draped chair, word was spreading that his new wife was as silent as the sworn Brothers, who had vowed never to speak so as not to offend the Lady of Light with their mortal, male voices.
I glanced at the shrubbery with a silent sigh, and then realized that all the Rift-kin in the field—from the children poking sticks in the bonfires to the adults clutching mugs of beer—were watching. Some openly, some surreptitiously, but now their superstitions were on clear display.
The wedding might be over, the vows were made, but this wasn’t done until the people Bane ruled were satisfied.
I touched my husband’s hand and sat in the chair, a thick holly leaf poking the back of my neck. He pushed it in for me, and when I didn’t burst into flames or fling myself screaming from the braided greenery, the Rift-kin relaxed a little.
But a sudden silence fell, the raucous shouting and conversations coming to a halt.
Bane remained behind me, one hand braced on the chair back, as a village priest of the Light, wearing white robes and carrying a gnarled staff, came to me. The Rift-kin watched as he placed a crown of primrose on my head, and pulled out a gnarled iron lump on a cord around his neck.
The priest smiled at me, and pressed the cold iron to my forehead. Long moments passed; he finally took it away, and I kept my hands in place, though I wanted to rub the spot.
“She is human,” the priest announced, and the Rift-kin seemed to release a collective breath of relief, some of them lifting their mugs to Bane before draining them.
“Now the worst is over,” Bane murmured to me, taking the larger seat at my side. “All you have to do is drink and be merry.”
I pulled out my slate once more, hiding it in my lap under the table. I wrote in small letters and tilted it towards him surreptitiously: Are they still that afraid of the Fae? They’re long dead.
I erased it as soon as Bane read it, not wanting to insult our hosts.
“They’re as dead as it gets, yes. Those of us who lived in the Below made sure of that.” Bane’s teeth flashed. “But there is a long, long history in the Rift, between all of our kinds. Ravenscry was the last of the four keeps to be built, if only because the Fae that remained after their great migration fought long and hard to keep the Rift, and its people, in their possession. If there’s one thing we can all thank Liliach Daromir for, it was the eradication of their kind.”
I considered that, watching as more men came to offer their congratulations to the Lord of the Rift. Odd to think that our once-greatest enemy, the Blood Empress, had done us a good turn, even if she hadn’t meant to.
Odd to think that humans and vampires, brutal enemies for centuries, were entirely united against a common foe both then and now.
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 pop s—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.