He flipped it open, frowning as he carelessly flicked by the pages, and then he stopped. “Ahhh, there it is. I recognize the hand of my old enemy.”

Deep in the calm, sane part of my mind, where there was no warg breathing down my neck, I noted that he moved his lips, slowly sounding out the words; he was not a native speaker of Nord. It took what felt like an eternity as he parsed through the poem Bane had written, and finally his gaze moved up over the edge of the journal to my face.

“I wouldn’t call it proof,” he mused, slowly closing the journal in one hand and waving off the warg. “But never have my spies brought back word of Bane with such romantic notions. I suppose that whatever love he is capable of, he has given to you, little redling.”

To my surprise, he gave the journal back to me. I hugged it close, not realizing how afraid I’d been that he’d simply throw it in the fire when he was done.

Hakkon slowly rose with a fluid grace, silhouetted against the flames like a titan.

“I suppose a lovesick poem has saved your life, Kyril,” he said with a chuckle. “Never let it be said that I can’t admit when I am wrong. You’ve brought me something of very, very great value.”

Miro exhaled slowly, his face taking on a greenish tint as he understood how close he had come to joining his poor horse.

“Bring the girl.” Hakkon nodded to me. “And tell me about these estates of hers.”

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Chapter 42 Bane

The guards were not on the wall when Ravenscry came into view. The torches flickered over empty parapets.

I launched myself from the ground, landing heavily on the stone and making it shudder, clawing my way up and over the side.

I half expected to see an abattoir as I crested the wall, slithering over the parapets with a thirst burning in my throat.

Blood. I needed the dungeons, the prisoners, and there would be no decanting, no consideration for them at all. I would sink my teeth in and suck them dry one after another, until every cell was engorged, every fiber prepared to make the full shift into the primordial beast under my skin.

The ultimate hunter, the apex predator, the one chance I had to reclaim my bride.

But the guards were gone… no, not gone.

They had abandoned the wall, surrounding something in the torchlight of the keep’s bailey.

I bared my teeth, descending into the open inner keep, prowling towards them. Deserters of their posts, useless under command…

It was Koryek who saved their lives.

“My Lord.” His handsome face gleamed warily in the flickering light. “The Fae things have moved from the library—are still moving. They’ve been at it for hours.”

Several guards stepped aside, all of them frowning, and I saw why they had abandoned the walls.

The golems, Rose and Thorn, stood there, facing the gates. They were positioned strangely, like people fighting against a strong headwind—no, like people fighting a hurricane-force gale, shoving forward and yet completely still.

There was something uncanny and disturbing in their forms, so humanoid and yet so alien, hunched over like that.

I drifted closer, looking over Rose. Her head was down, bowed against the intangible force, one foot forward, fists curled.

Perhaps it was the wavering flames, but it looked as though she were moving, as slow as a bead of sap rolling over a frozen tree.

I held my breath, watching, and as the minutes passed her foot came forward, centimeter by centimeter, the fell thing struggling against an unstoppable force…

No. She struggled against a command.

Thorn did the same; as I watched, he heaved himself forward, so inert to the eye that it was impossible to pick out any actual forward momentum.

My lungs emptied of air.

They were made of Cirri’s blood; as they had followed her through Ravenscry, they would follow her anywhere. They faced northeast, struggling against her orders to stay put.

I’d last seen them in the library, standing at the windows; had she told them to wait there? Combined with the weight of the order to never leave Ravenscry, it was astonishing they could move at all.

But they could serve as my compass. With them I would find her, unerring and unfaltering; they were neither of flesh nor blood, and would have no need to rest until they’d found her.

“Leave them be,” I said harshly, and the guards immediately backed away. “Do not touch them, and do not open the gate until I command.”

I touched Rose’s cheeks, and did I imagine it, or did I feel the golem’s head strain towards me, every line of her body screaming to be released?

Blood. My throat burned, a dusty, aching fire begging to be quenched. First—to save Cirri’s life, I had to take life.

The guards returned to the wall, keeping wary eyes on the golems.

I went to the dungeons.

The Ark was still warm, heating the cool stones of this miserable place. The warden, a vampire woman with hair the color of fresh-churned butter and a face chiseled from stone, stood from her post and bowed to me. Her brown eyes were usually as cold as frozen Nordrin earth, but there was a touch of confusion in them at my presence.

“There have been no orders to prepare a harvest, my Lord—” she began, but I held up a hand.

“Quickly now,” I said, casting my gaze down the lines of cells. How many prisoners did we have? Almost forty, at my last recall, but I wouldn’t need them all. This was not a full transformation, merely a glut. “Begin with the worst of them—the child killers. Bring them to me directly, as quick as you can. Do not stop until I tell you otherwise.”

She stared at me, the little color in her porcelain face blanching away.

All vampires knew what this meant. I wondered if it was simple disgust with fiend appetites that put them off, or envy that they were forbidden from doing the same while they fed.

I didn’t look in the cells or observe the prisoners as I passed them. I would look into their eyes soon enough, and drain them dry without so much as a last word.

Thus I would begin with those whose lives had caused the most pain, the deepest damage to others; now their blood would serve some purpose besides keeping those miserable hearts pumping.

I stepped into the room with the Ark, the heat still radiating from Ellena’s pyre. Their corpses could fill its iron gut for its next meal.

The warden shoved a human man through the door.

He was filthy, in chains, his hands clasped behind his back in shackles; she kicked out the backs of his knees, sending him to the floor, and turned her back on him even as he babbled through tears, begging her for another chance.

“Please, please,” he gasped, and I gripped him, claws sinking into the meat of his shoulder, cutting through his scalp, and wrenched his head to the side, exposing his corded neck. His pleas became cries of pain.

A shudder of disgust went through me as my teeth sank in, cutting off his sobbing screams. After Cirri’s sweetness, it was like drinking sewage, unclean and filthy.

But now he could do some good with his worthless life. Remorseless, unfeeling, I drained him dry, and waited for the next.

The world was torn between satiation and agony.

The soothing warmth of blood in my throat, overridden by the pain of my body melting, warping, expanding; and then my teeth would batten on another throat, a new hot flood, and the relief of the blood would soothe the pain—only to fuel my transformation further, a fresh wave of agony swamping the relief.

In this form, the world was simple.