A Vow of Blood and Tears

49. Cirri

Chapter 49

Cirri

W hen I opened my eyes, I didn’t feel as though I’d woken from sleep.

It had been something deeper, colder, a sensation of absolute nothing—an abyss, rather than the comforting darkness of true slumber.

But when consciousness returned, that feeling of icy null slipped away, and for a time I couldn’t quite place where I was.

My mind skittered over memories, flickers echoing in the dark: awakening in a swaying wagon, weakened by poison; Miro’s self-satisfied pride as he demonstrated his treacherous hidden skills; the eye-smarting darkness beneath the mountain. I thought I remembered the wind whipping through my ears as I fell, and the sight of an ancient crone bent over me, scowling and snapping words that came from a great distance.

And then Hakkon’s face came to life in my mind, his gaze thoughtful but cunning, assessing me as either a sheep or a wolf.

Hunt or be hunted , he whispered in my ear, the memory of his feverish, rancid breath so vivid my back arched up, my body uselessly trying to roll itself away.

And the hammer.

The hammer coming down over and over, Hakkon’s excited panting, the all-consuming agony…

I gasped for breath, shooting straight up, and looked at my hands, expecting to see the bloody, shattered stumps he’d left in their place, terrified that Hakkon would loom out of the darkness, hammer in hand.

But there were no stumps at the ends of my arms, no useless twists of flesh. They were bandaged severely, from fingertip to elbow, in soft cocoons of cotton and salve. Straight sticks stuck out from the ends, still smelling of fresh sap.

A shiver ran through me; what did they look like under there? But there was no sensation to tell me whether they were still attached at all; a pleasant sort of numbness filled me. I stared down at my hands with the odd sensation that they weren’t a part of my body at all.

A coarse wool blanket had fallen into my lap when I bolted upright. I was in a bed of sorts, the kind of camp cot I’d seen in Wyn’s tent before. There was no light but a single lantern, flickering weakly in the dark on top of a chest next to a glass of water.

“Cirri. You’re awake.”

His voice was heavy with relief, almost choked with it. But his words sounded thicker than usual, formed by a mouth that wasn’t meant for speech.

As Bane emerged from the shadows, I saw why. My breath caught in my throat at the sight of him, fully fiend, the face he hated above all else.

It had always been simple to pick out the parts of him that seemed more human than the rest. The general shape of him, the way he smiled… the vampire he used to be had been hidden in there, just glimpsed from the corner of the eye.

There was not so much as a whisper of that vampire now. His lips were gone, his jaw distorted with distended fangs, the bridge of his nose giving way to a blunt snout and slitted nostrils amidst the crags and valleys of his face. A crown of horns spiraled from his skull, and the sharp tips haloed him like armor. A fine down of black fur gleamed on his ashen skin.

And all of him had been torn to pieces. Harsh scars covered his smooth skin, half of his face ragged and shiny with newly-healed tissue.

He was hunched over to fit within the tent, resting on feet and hands as deformed as the rest of him, bulkier and more monstrous than I’d ever seen before.

And gods, what a sight I’d missed.

I held up my hands without thinking, but my fingers didn’t move at all, splinted and bandaged as they were.

Cold fear trickled down my spine. What if they never moved again?

I was grateful to be alive, unsure of how it had happened, but if I couldn’t communicate for the rest of my life… it would be a small death in itself, consigned to the one thing I’d always feared most before I met Bane.

But a greater fear had supplanted that one, twining through me in sickening tendrils.

Bane still hadn’t come to me. He remained half-shrouded in darkness, his black and gold eyes fixed on my bandaged hands.

Whatever Miro had written to him, it had hurt him deeply. Bane couldn’t know I wasn’t the one to write those things. And now… I couldn’t tell him.

What if I could never tell him? I imagined Wyn unwinding these bandages to reveal fingers so shattered they would never be whole, gnarled, stiffened twigs unable to grasp a pen.

“Cirri,” Bane said again, sounding bewildered. “Why are you crying? Does it still hurt? I’ll call for Wyn.”

Was I crying? I couldn’t feel it. My face was numb.

I shook my head, lifting my shoulders to rub my cheeks against them, and looked down. There were wet spots there; the tears were real.

I held out my shaking arms, terrified of the numbness, sickened at the thought that he’d reject me.

But with a single sentence, Bane managed to lift the terrible weight of terror that was pressing in my chest and behind my eyes: he shifted in place, ducking his horn-crowned head, and he muttered, “She’ll kill me if I touch you and disrupt the healing. She means it this time.”

I laughed a little even as a few more tears dripped out against my will. Gods, I hated to cry, but after the days spent in Hakkon’s tower, it was like a dam breaking; I’d spent so much energy holding myself aloof from the warg, denying him the satisfaction of my tears, that I had none left over to hold them back now.

I held my arms out again, and Bane crept closer, until I could carefully maneuver the awkward bandages around his shoulders. I kissed his hard, jagged face, breathing in his familiar, musk-and-woods scent that felt like coming home, and simply rested my head against him for a moment.

But he didn’t curl his arms around me. A small shudder of fear went through me again, cutting through the haze in my head, as Bane gently pushed me back down onto the cot.

“Don’t move. There’s nothing to worry about here. The war is over, the wargs are gone, and you must rest.”

I shook my head, licking my dry lips, and Bane picked up a glass of water from the chest. “You need to drink this.”

By the Light, I didn’t want water, dry throat or not; I didn’t want to do anything but find a way to tell Bane that I never would have left him, that I’d been taken, that anything wrong between us could be repaired.

But he held the glass to my lips implacably. “Drink.”

I finally obeyed, hoping that obedience would earn me the reward of leaving the cot to find some new way to communicate. I supposed I could mouth the words if it came down to it, though it would be imprecise and awkward.

But as Bane returned the empty glass to the chest, I squinted at it, seeing the finest white sediment sliding down the side and into the bottom.

The haziness became more blurry with every breath, the impression of sinking filling my limbs.

I accused him with my eyes. You drugged me.

“Sleep, Cirri. I’m right here.” He stroked my hair carefully, his jagged claws catching the hairs. “I’m going nowhere, and you will never leave me again.”

Good , I wanted to say, but the fog reached out and pulled me down, down, down.

Later I was told that I had slept for a week without interruption, kept numb by some ungodly concoction of Wyn’s designed to create a dreamless, healing sleep. Nobody would tell me exactly what had been in it, which made me think that it was probably better to live in blissful ignorance.

But although that wasn’t the first thing I was told upon awakening, I knew perfectly well the moment I opened my eyes again that something was missing, and whatever it was, it had held an ocean of pain at bay.

I sucked in a ragged breath, shifting under the blanket as the mild discomfort of sore, bedridden muscles gave way to the relentless agony of shattered bones knitting themselves back together.

There was a strange sensation in my abdomen, a tender soreness like I’d been ripped apart and sewn back together, a creeping ache in my back. I felt… like I’d fallen a long, long way, and if I closed my eyes, I could just recall the moment the horizon tipped over and the ground rushed up at me…

“Cirri, breathe.” Enormous hands clasped mine, and the soft scent of forest pines and musk fell over me. “Breathe. Don’t think about it yet, not yet.”

I cracked my eyes open, the light fractured by tears.

“Move aside,” a familiar voice said, and Bane’s rumbling reply resonated through my bones.

Wyn replaced my husband’s presence, though I could still see his shadow, a watchful, looming gargoyle overseeing what she did.

And Wyn… was shocking in appearance. An old woman, her hair thin and white, stooped over as she palpated my ribs and sides with knotted fingers.

Her frown, carved through a web of wrinkles, was even more alarming than usual, but the verdict she delivered was comforting. Wyn rocked back on her heels. “She’s healing well. The spinal damage has repaired itself, and her vital organs might feel rather tender for a while, but she should get up and walk around, get the blood flowing.”

Hurts , I tried to mouth, and Wyn gave me a beady-eyed glare. “Of course it hurts. You threw yourself from a tower window.”

Had to .

She gazed down at me, expression unreadable, and finally her mouth settled into a smile. “Indeed. It’s as they say, with extreme actions come great innovations. It’s a shame you’re not a bloodwitch with an attitude like that.”

“Nobody says that,” Bane growled, nudging the bloodwitch aside. “Stop encouraging her. Let me help you, Cirri. You have to move, or…”

He trailed off, carefully sliding his hands under my arms and picking me up like a doll.

I staggered as my feet hit the ground, blood prickling painfully in unused extremities. With my hands bound so tightly, all I could do was try to jerk upright, but Bane kept a careful grip on me. He slid one hand around my waist, holding me close.

“You have to move or you won’t heal, and you can say goodbye to your legs as well as your hands,” Wyn said bluntly. “I admire the conviction it takes to fling yourself sixty feet to the ground, but Bane’s blood can only do so much without your cooperation. You’re not a vampire, dear, you’re a human thrall, and you need to get the blood flowing.”

I closed my eyes, trying to pull deep breaths into sore lungs. Everything ached or screamed, but… I was alive, and Bane was here.

I would force myself to handle the pain.

With my husband’s help, I tottered about the tent several times, until the prickling had faded from my feet.

And then I noticed what I walked upon: heavily trodden Forian grass, the same dry, yellowed grass that covered the plains around Hakkon’s tower. I stiffened, and Bane held me tighter.

“What is it, love?”

We were still in Foria. That should have been obvious, this being the same red canvas tent as the one she’d set up in Tristone, but my knees had begun to shake at the sight of the grass trampled underfoot.

We were still here, on the ground the wargs tunneled beneath. One might be under me right now, crouching in the darkness, eyes pinpricks of white light and ear cocked to hear every step I took…

I lurched towards the door, desperate to escape, to look out at that awful prison and be sure, absolutely sure , that Hakkon was dead.

But Bane didn’t release me, his claws tightening. “Cirri, wait.”

I shivered in his grasp, looking back over my shoulder pleadingly. I had to know. I had to see.

How were they alive after that? How were they so calm about standing on Forian soil? Did they not realize what lurked under us right this very moment?

“I’ll take you out, but walk slowly.”

Hakkon , I mouthed, still shivering. Hakkon .

Bane studied my mouth intently, and I knew I wasn’t forming the word quite right, but he finally nodded. “He’s dead, Cirri. I promise you that. Come now.”

Wyn sighed as she mixed something in a glass. “You might as well go look. It makes all my efforts with the wolfsbane look so… rustic.”

Despite myself, the grumpy scowl on her face brought a touch of a smile to my lips. I’d missed Wyn’s grumpiness.

Bane pulled the canvas door aside and another pained hiss slipped out of me, the light stabbing into my eyes after a week of sleep and darkness.

I blinked the tears away as I stepped out into the world, searching for the tower, expecting bodies and enough horror to fill my nightmares for years to come.

But the horizon had vanished. The Ravenscry encampment stood on the dry plains, the grass now well-trodden, tents placed in tidy rows, and where an endless sea of grass should have been was a wall.

I peered up at the wall’s rippling, sinuous surface, my eyes widening when I understood that it was a single enormous bramble swallowing the plains—countless vines woven together into a nearly solid organism, thorns like blackened spines warding off any outsiders. Myriad constellations of lush bloodroses dotted its shifting vines, accompanied by the tiniest of fresh green leaves.

I blinked as the vines shifted again, and a warg’s dead face slid past: eyes dull marbles, mouth lolling open, tongue pierced with thorns. It looked like something that had been mummified a thousand years ago.

And then the vines closed again, swallowing it whole.

“This is what you did,” Bane said softly. “I don’t know how, but where your blood touched this ground… this grew. Hakkon and his army were swallowed whole. Believe me, no warg that comes near it has lived to speak of it. It lives, and it hungers.”

Blood and tears. I had hoped for some small protection, perhaps a charm that would turn the tides of war in my people’s favor, but I hadn’t expected something of this magnitude.

Bane’s hand tightened on my shoulder, and I looked down, wanting to kiss his fingers, and saw them. The deep lines scored across his knuckles and forearm, pale and ragged, deep divots as though thorns had sunk into his flesh.

He felt me still, and looked down at his hand. He smiled, stretching it out and splaying his fingers so I could see the full extent of how the thorns and brambles had grasped and clawed at him.

“I can’t go into it, either,” he said quietly. “None of my brothers can. The thorns are just as hungry for us as they are for the wargs. Visca tried to enter, and made it a few feet. She came out with a single scratch. But if I go near…”

He released me, and stepped towards the thorny wall. He was still twenty feet away when the vines began to slither frantically, reminding me of a feeding frenzy in a fish pond, but they were nothing so pleasant.

Several creeping tendrils extended from the wall, crawling through the grass as Bane approached. He held out his hand to it, and they slithered faster, sprouting long, sharp needles.

The sound they made as they moved… raspy, hissing, the furious sound of a nest of snakes. It made me shudder to hear the fury and hunger in it.

Bane was still smiling crookedly as he backed away. The vines began to settle, and by the time he’d returned to my side, they were almost still again.

I stared at them, sickened, wondering what I’d created. But for once, there was no bitterness in Bane’s smile. “Because wargs and fiends must be the same. You could walk through unscathed, but it senses what we are.”

“It senses our sins,” a deep male voice said behind me, and I fell into Bane as I jumped, my heart throbbing so painfully I tasted copper.

The fiend had approached on silent, cloven feet. I gazed up at his long, skeletal face, at the rack of antlers spread wide and still stained red. I had a vague memory of those antlers draped with bodies, a face like a blooming flower full of needles, but he appeared about as monstrous as Bane, in a different way—something terrible that somehow didn’t frighten me much.

He was tall and broad, his claws curled dangerously, a strange pattern burned into his chest like a necklace. The fiend inclined his head to me.

“Andrus,” he said, touching a hand to his chest. “I’m glad to see you well.”

I smiled crookedly; my bandaged hands were hanging limp at my sides, useless to me. I was alive, certainly, and glad of it, but well … it might be some time before I could claim that.

“Sins,” Bane said, and to my surprise, shrugged carelessly. “I’ve spent years wallowing in guilt. If not for those sins, Cirri wouldn’t have lived through this. Now their weight seems so much lighter.”

Andrus tipped his head, silver eyes glimmering as he studied the thorns. He touched the silver pendant around his neck, the scorched darkness of his fingertips displaying how often he must do that. “Perhaps it is deliverance.”

“Don’t try it,” my husband growled, muscles tensing. I shook my head; bad enough to see the wargs torn apart. I didn’t want one of Bane’s brothers to think of it at all.

That wasn’t what I had meant this for.

Andrus laughed softly, and turned back the way he’d come, cloven feet as silent as his arrival.

I stared after him, and only after he’d vanished into the multitude of tents did I look back at the thorns, hungry for the blood of wargs. For the blood of fiends.

Bane clutched me as I leaned against him. “Back to the tent,” he said, guiding me away.

Wroth nodded as he passed, carrying barrels of creek water; I smiled at him, and the fiend’s tail thrashed lightly.

Bane helped me into the tent, and when I sat on the cot, winded and sore, I understood that it was going to take many, many days of small walks to fully recover. That had barely been fifty feet, and I felt like I’d run for miles.

“Cirri…” Bane knelt before me, carefully grasping my bandaged hands. “I’m going to ask you to do something you may hate.”

I stared into his eyes, sinking into the ash-scattered gold. There was nothing I wouldn't do for him. When he was with me, I was whole.

“Wyn has worked her fingers to the bone to keep you alive, and done an admirable job of it. But you are bound to me now. Mine, now and forever.” He took a breath, holding my gaze. “You will heal faster if you drink my blood.”

My tongue ran over my teeth, a phantom taste filling my mouth at the thought of it.

I recalled thick liquid, an iron tang, almost spicy… or was I thinking of something else? My memories were muddled.

“I know it hasn’t been long since you’ve overcome your fear of me feeding from you. But… I must ask you to overcome any disgust you might feel about feeding from me—”

I leaned forward, cutting him off with a kiss. It was a hard kiss, full of fangs and sharp edges, his lips still warped by the fiendish transformation, but a touch I had craved from the moment I’d woken up outside the keep.

When I finally pulled away, Bane was silent, gazing up at me and breathing hard.

I nodded. Yes. Yes. Yes .

Anything to have my hands back, so I could touch him, feel him, speak to him. The thought of drinking from him, using my own blunt human teeth to pierce flesh and the hot warmth of fresh blood, didn’t cause me any disgust at all.

How could it? It was so simple; we were meant for each other in all aspects.

His nervous swallow was loud in the dark bubble of the tent. “Then you should drink now, if you think you can. The sooner you’re better, the sooner we can leave Foria.”

I nodded again, slipping from the cot, and Bane took me into his arms as he folded himself on the floor, holding me with my legs wrapped around his hips, chest to chest.

I settled against him, the curves of my body molding against his hard planes as they always did, and rested my head on his shoulder. My arms remained pinned between us, useless and aching; I would have given anything to be able to wrap them around him now.

I sat up, licking my lips and preparing myself to bite. How was I going to manage to cut through that thick, armored flesh—

Bane reached up, a claw poised over his throat. In the flickering light, I saw the beat of his pulse, the shimmer of his ashen skin, the black gleaming ridge of the sharp tip pressing through it…

With the tiniest, most careful crook of his finger, he opened a wound; dark blood welled, shining, and the phantom taste was stronger than ever.

I almost flushed with embarrassment—to think he’d expect me to try to bite through that armored skin myself.

“There,” he breathed. “Come drink, lover. Take all you need.”

Shockingly, I craved the blood; my mouth watered at the sight of it, like dark syrup. But I had needed him. ‘Missed’ wasn’t a strong enough word.

I required him in order to live, and now that he was here, I wanted him to know that the letter was all lies, that he was mine as much as I was his.

I kissed his mouth again, tongue flicking out to lap at a fang, and trailed my lips over the scarred ridges of his jaw. Bane exhaled, his breath rattling in his throat as I kissed a path down to the glistening wound.

The spicy iron taste filled my mouth, the heat of his blood burning down my throat and lighting a glowing coal in my belly.

He tipped his head back slowly, heart pounding against mine as I drank. His arms wrapped around me, holding me possessively.

The taste of his blood was almost intoxicating, the lingering pains in my broken body subsiding into a warm serenity.

He exhaled with every pull, clutching me close. “More. Anything you need.”

I ran my tongue over the corded muscles of his throat, tasting spice and skin, the wound healing slowly. The glowing coal became a fire, warming my limbs, suffusing my limbs with energy.

But my hands remained motionless.

As it closed into a scar, I pressed another soft, lingering kiss to the mark, licking his thick blood from my lips.

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, running supplies.

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.