“I know,” I said gently, inwardly wincing at her sluggish, pained movements. “You don’t have to—”

She shook her head. Listen to me. Artist could… imitate. He wrote a letter. I did not.

Artist… she meant Miro, unable to spell names phonetically with her brittle fingers. With the way she was moving, stiff and healing but determined to say her piece, it was already a struggle to understand.

“Miro wrote it?”

I had realized, almost too late, that Miro was almost certainly the fox in the henhouse. I had rejected the letter she had left me, determined to have her back, and at times, I had wondered if he had forced her to pen it… or if she had written it, and Miro had merely taken advantage of her plans to leave.

Cirri pushed me until I sat on the cot. It creaked alarmingly under my weight, but she stood in front of me, forming her words with deep concentration. Some were difficult to decipher, her fingers too swollen and stiff to move with her usual grace, but she moved slowly enough to follow along.

He imitated my words perfectly, she said. And he used… the girl. Maid. 

The maid. Ellena. And I knew instantly what was coming.

He said any writing he saw, he could recreate. He sent letters in her writing, too. And he took me from the castle. He told me what he had written. I would never write such a thing, Bane. I was coming back to you when he took me. 

I thought of the letter, the words that had carved out pieces of my heart until there was nothing left in my chest but a hollow cavity, an endless abyss of nothing.

But I had ignored those words, turning on them, choosing to disbelieve them… because deep down, I didn’t truly believe she had meant it. Or written it.

I nodded, but Cirri scowled harder, and I had to gently take her wrists to stop her from signing until her fingers ached.

“I believe you,” I said simply. “He shared his mother’s artistic talent, and possibly inherited some form of her memory. I’m not at all surprised to learn he may have hidden that talent and put it to his own self-serving uses.”

Cirri exhaled, her brow smoothing, but her lips were still turned down. Maid did not betray you.

“I know.” The moment she had told me of Miro’s hidden talent, I knew, a cold jolt to the heart. I had murdered Ellena even as she sobbed out her innocence. “But what’s done is done. I will carry that on my conscience forever.”

That’s why you can’t be the old you, she told me. Because you’re not at peace with your actions. He… 

She frowned, and shaped the words ‘big wolf’.

“Hakkon?” I asked, and she nodded.

He enjoyed killing. You must love it, or be at peace with it, to shed the fiend skin again. That was how he looked human, Bane. 

I looked down at my hands, braced on my knees, massive and misshapen.

To shed this hated skin… to be the man in the tower, handsome and confident that he deserved glory and his princess…

I didn’t deserve her, but I would take her. From the moment I’d realized she was gone, I had vowed to get her back.

But I would remain what I was, her protector, her monster. Not only hers, but the entire Rift’s. Even if I managed to make peace with my actions, the cold-blooded murders I’d committed, they required something of my kind to guard them.

˚nowing that, I would never make peace with it. I was as terrible as Hakkon, and I would spend an eternity atoning.

“I won’t ever look human again,” I told her. “This is what I am. I haven’t made peace with what I’ve done, but I’ve made peace with who I am. Perhaps I am a beast, but I’m your beast.”

Cirri smiled a little, and bent forward to kiss my forehead. And that’s who I love, she said.

That word, after we’d danced around for it so long. It wasn’t until she was gone that I understood I should have said it while I could, that they were the only words that mattered.

“I love you,” I said, with a great sigh of relief, and gave her my most hideous grin. “Gods, I love you more than anything.”

I’ve been waiting for you to say that. 

I looked up at her, those green eyes shining, and debated with myself. I needed to tell her. The brambles would not lie. I should not lie.

“Then I hope you can still believe it… Cirri. Sit down.”

She sank onto the bed next to me, head tipped curiously, hair spilling over her shoulders.

“What you wrote… that wargs and fiends are the same.”

I didn’t… I didn’t mean to compare you to them, or to say you’re the same—

Cirri flushed, and I took her hands, stopping her. “No, listen to me. We are the same. You’re right. Cirri, I told you when I killed Ellena. I’m not noble. I’m as evil as they are. But I try… to do it for the right reasons.”

She kept her hands in mine, eyes boring into me.

“You know I drink—used to drink—from convicts. Some small way to try to repair the balance of what I’ve done.” I snorted derisively. “It will never repair it. To become a fiend is the same as a warg. To slaughter the innocent in cold blood. When I told you of the ritual to become a warg, I was also speaking of myself, and my brothers.”

She signed so slowly. I saw what they did. When they made the artist a warg.

I held her gaze, unwilling to look away. She deserved to be looked in the eye when I told her. “Cirri… that is what I had to do. That’s why my kind both loves and loathes me, and holds me at arm’s length. It wasn’t just my sacrifice, it was the sacrifice of people who had never done anything wrong in their lives. It was necessary to become what I am… and it was true evil.”

He told me this, she said. That it was the same. That was what I meant. 

“At least he spoke the truth about that,” I said bitterly. “I killed dozens of innocent people to become a beast. I bathed in their blood, I danced to their screams. The thorns and roses know. They reach for me, hoping to catch me in their trap and bury me.”

She was shaking her head, but I didn’t stop.

“I slaughtered my own to protect my own.” The words were blunt but true. “A necessary evil, but still a great evil. Which is why I must tell you. I love you so much that I cannot let you go. I never will. I’m too selfish to allow it.”

I sighed, knowing that I had put all my happiness on the line. “But you should know what loves you, and if you can love it in return. You should at least have a choice in that.”

Cirri gazed at me, and I wondered if it was judgment that I felt burning in her eyes, a kindling hatred that would cut me down over time, piece by piece.

The minutes trickled by, until I thought I might explode. My claws tightened, pricking my own skin. A pain I deserved.

Finally she lifted her hands, and I prepared myself for the worst; the knowledge that she would despise me forever, my love her cage.

I still love you, she said. I don’t care if it’s wrong. I’m selfish, too. I love you and that’s final. But I expect you to show a little restraint in the future. Don’t let your anger add more deaths to your conscience.

I stared at her, not entirely believing what I’d heard. How could she love me, after what I’d told her?

But the selfish part of me howled with victory. She loved me, and she was mine.

“I will,” I said hoarsely. “Whatever you ask of me.” Cirri touched my cheek, smiling slightly.

I have so much to tell you, she said. But please, Bane, take me home.

I raised her hand to my lips and kissed it, tasting newly-spun skin. It already smelled like her, the familiar scent I craved.

“As you command, my lady.”

We left the sea of thorns by moonlight, nothing but blood and trampled grass left to mark our passage.