Honestly, it made me feel a little better that Bane had not always been an indomitable warrior. I would always think of myself as a scullery maid, a lowborn, no matter the letters in my name or the title thrust upon me; perhaps a maid and a one-time farmer were a perfectly fine match.

And, in thinking about what Bane had once been, I found myself wondering what he had looked like. Who had he been, before he became a fiend?

But I couldn’t ask. It didn’t matter if he had been the loveliest man in all the Seven Kingdoms. Whatever he had been before… this was what he was now.

My hand paused, resting in the gritty sugar crystals. Speaking to Visca had given me far more questions than answers, but before I could dig into vampiric history, I needed to know more about the here and now. The customs I had blindly walked into, the things that seemed obvious to them, yet were as opaque as dirt to me.

Before I could formulate a way to politely ask just how feeding worked, and if I was truly expected to submit to Bane, Visca interrupted.

“So, you can write in Nord and Veladari. I suppose growing up around those silver-toothed hags gave you quite the education. What else have you got? Having an interpreter would be a boon to us, I’ll tell you that.”

I wrote out each language in the sand, taking care to ensure I formed each alphabet as accurately as possible. Visca nodded approvingly, but when I came to the end of the list, I hesitated.

Then I added a symbol, no more than a single word in itself, in the delicate yet sharp runic alphabet of the vampires: blood.

One of the twelve known runes of the vampires’ High Tongue, what little of it remained. From a single scorched piece of paper, known as the Silversun Fragment, the Librarians had managed to translate those twelve runes.

Visca stared at the symbol for a long moment, and I erased the list and added in Nord: There are only a few known words of the High Tongue in our Library. I learned what I could.

She nodded slowly. “Very interesting. Oh, thank the ancestors, my wife has come to save us from the endless tedium of mandatory parties.”

I looked up to find Wyn striding across the ballroom towards us, smiling and relaxed for the first time I’d met her.

“I’d like to collapse with relief in the privacy of our own bedroom now that our hopes and dreams are complete, so I’m going to announce that it’s time for the bedding and drive them all out,” the bloodwitch said, and my blood ran cold.

The bedding. Oh, Lady of Light, let them not listen at the door to make sure, because…

I watched Bane over her shoulder, my heart thumping unevenly. Because he was kind, and gentle, but that didn’t mean my body wasn’t aware that he was every inch a predator. Something designed to tear me to pieces and drink my blood.

My lungs felt squeezed, breath coming in shallow sips.

Visca wiped her hands on her trousers, shedding sugar, and I looked down to find that she had erased my last words. But my curiosity vanished as Wyn took my arm, leading me, blood and dirt and all, across the room to my new husband.

“Let’s see them off,” she said loudly, motioning to the guards stationed around the perimeter of the room. “Give our Lord and Lady your well-wishes for the night.”

One of the human men, already well on his way to drunk, judging from his reddening cheeks, held up his glass. “Paint her red, brother.”

The sentiment was echoed by the soldiers Bane had fought with, the women a little more sedate. I didn’t miss the pity in the looks they gave me as Bane offered me his arm.

I took it, feeling numb.

The pinprick of Wyn’s needle, the bite of her knife, was nothing compared to what was coming.

Bane led me from the room, and I heard Wyn hissing at the guards behind me, instructing them to see the humans to their carriages and well out of her way so she could get some sleep sometime this century.

Walking at his side, I tried to focus on the warmth of him, seeping through the thin white silk I wore. On the gentleness of his hands, touching mine as lightly as a butterfly’s wing.

On the way his shoulders were stiffened, as though walking to his own execution, or his ears, pinned back flat against his head.

Struggling to breathe slowly, I followed his lead to a tower door, this one banded just as thickly with iron as my own, and Wyn pushed it open.

“Well,” she started to say, looking us over. She trailed off, bit her lip. “Well. Good night, then.”

I stepped into the first floor of Bane’s chambers, taking in the massive bed, thick with pillows and fine linens, ensconced by lush scarlet brocade curtains. The floor beneath my slippers was cold.

It was the wolf pelts hanging from the walls that took my breath away. What had I been expecting, exactly? Not the lair of a beast, nor piles of skulls—but to see the skins of wargs, hundreds of them… black, gray, white, brown, russet…

An entire defeated army.

My lungs felt frozen, that iciness slipping down into my stomach.

Just because I had not seen him act like a beast in the few days I’d known him did not mean there was no brutal side to him.

The door shut behind me, the sound of a jailor locking me in.

There was a long silence. All I could hear was the quiet sound of Bane’s breathing, and my own racing heart.

He stepped past me, shuffling so we would not touch, walking on shoeless, clawed feet towards the bed. I noticed that his ankles bent backwards, like the legs of a creature, ending in feet far more paw-like than humanoid, tipped with sharply-curled claws.

He sat on the bed, silently, looking at me.

When the silence grew too loud, I stepped forward. Made my cold, frozen feet take one step, then another, until I was within arm’s reach of him.

My new husband. My beast.

“Do you know why we wear white?” he asked quietly. I shook my head; I knew that Veladari wore red to dissuade vampires. It was nothing but an old tradition now.

He reached out, running a single finger over the silk bodice on my stomach, a space no wider than a sheet of paper between our skin. I held my breath, alarmed at that touch. “So that when the bride is bitten, it is the first blood that marks the dress. The redder the silk, the more passion in the couple. That is where your tradition comes from, actually. Not because the color is unlucky to us—but because a fully red dress means the bride is likely dead.”

I felt the blood rush from my face, my cheeks growing white. I had to grip one of the bedposts to steady myself against the rush of dizziness.

“I would never do that to you.” His hand rose, until a finger laid on the silk over my heart. “But I will admit I had desired to see your first blood on this. This spidersilk… it holds the blood, as red and fresh as the moment it was spilled.”

I took several deep breaths, trying to maintain clarity and calm.

When he said he wouldn’t drink me dry, I believed him. I had to hold onto that.

He was mine now, my body vowed to him and him alone.

All of the Rift depended on this marriage. The stability of our country was reliant on me.

I steeled myself, heart fluttering behind my ribs, examining Bane from head to toe. Horrifying, monstrous, and yet he waited patiently, an unreadable emotion in his eyes.

Maybe he was as nervous as I was.

I took a step closer, my knees brushing his, and reached out to touch his shoulders. He didn’t move; those eyes went half-lidded, and he turned his face aside.

Fear? Disgust? But he had touched me delicately, and professed a desire to see my blood… to taste it.

I swallowed the taste of my fear, and climbed into his lap before I could second-guess myself.

Bane started, gazing at me with wide eyes, hands hovering as I settled myself on him, the silk of my dress pooling around my legs.