“Most of the humans live back here. We aren’t granted quarters in the towers. You’d think, since we’re sacrificing our lives to defend the Rift, that we’d at least warrant rooms in the Tower of Summer, but Bane keeps that reserved for the nobility. Obviously the Tower of Winter is off-limits—it belongs to him—and the Tower of Spring is yours, my lady.”

What’s in the Tower of Autumn, then? I asked, but he was already off on another tangent.

“I should’ve had the Tower of Summer. My mother was nobility, and highly respected as an artist, but…” He smiled ruefully. “I had a Forian father, as you can see. The half-breeds never rise so high as the vampires.”

This time I kept my hands still. I understood bitterness, the gnawing feeling that one had been born destined for more and denied that right without reason; but as I’d learned from my long years in the Cathedral, it was pointless to gripe about what wasn’t, and far easier in some ways to strive for a new path.

Miro struck me as quite young in some ways, despite appearing of an age with myself. Or maybe my judgment was too harsh.

I, too, was new to vampire rule and custom. Perhaps Bane did place his own kind above the Rift-kin who had lived here for centuries before him; after all, despite his kindness, I knew my husband very little.

The heat of the kitchens struck me before we saw them; they were large, clean rooms in the back of the keep, kettles hung over the roaring fireplaces, with a long wood table, glowing with years of polish, set in the middle. Several of the human staff were already eating at a rapid pace. I recognized one of the maids from my wedding preparation, Yuli, whispering and giggling with another girl as they ate.

The head cook was human as well, a hard-faced woman whose gaze went over our shoulders, and I turned to find that Koryek and my other vampire guard had followed us in.

We were quite the cavalcade, but I hadn’t anticipated the unwelcome in the cook’s eyes.

“You may wait in the hall,” she informed Koryek. “This place is for our kind.”

Koryek straightened, drawing a little closer to me. “We are under direct orders, ma’am.” He had a deep voice, with a faint Nord accent, faintly apologetic. “The Lady is not to leave our sight while outside the Tower of Spring.”

“And we have a cast-iron agreement with Lord Bane,” she retorted. “This place is for humans, so we can eat comfortably.”

It was yet another lesson, coming at me sideways; I hadn’t expected the humans to consider certain parts of the keep their own, but I supposed it made sense, in a way. Because… I had never lived among vampires, so I had not yet seen one feed.

Perhaps these Rift-kin had all witnessed such a thing, and would rather not be reminded of it during their own meals.

Please, don’t argue on my account, I said. I will eat elsewhere. 

I wouldn’t insist that my guards leave. Bane had given them to me for a good reason, and I wasn’t fool enough to tempt a fate of wolves, no matter how appealing a respite from being watched might sound.

The cook’s eyes softened as she glanced at me. “You’d likely be more comfortable dining in the Great Hall, my Lady. This place is for the staff, not the nobility.”

Light defend me, as though I were unfamiliar with the heat of a kitchen! I smiled at her and shook my head, taking a plate from cabinets where servants would help themselves, and Ellena followed my lead, along with Miro.

There was bread baked with a honey crust, fresh ham, and sliced melons. I filled my plate and waited for the others before heading out, not for the Great Hall, but for a place of peace and quiet.

“The Great Hall is this way, Lady Cirrien,” Miro said, his brow furrowed, but I kept walking. He could go eat alone if he wished. I wanted fresh air.

I found the strange, cramped hall Wyn had rushed me through the previous evening, and Koryek rushed ahead to get the door for me, opening it and checking that no wargs were lying in wait before allowing me through. It was a little ridiculous—as though a warg would be hanging around in plain sight—but I smiled at him nonetheless as I made my way to the outer courtyard.

And walked right into a hive of activity.

Human soldiers were drilling right there in the middle of it all, most of them younger men. Visca walked the rows as they moved through the practice motions with blunted swords, jabbing at an elbow dipping too low, a weak stance; she looked up as we emerged, tipping me a wink before smacking the back of a man’s head. “Straighten that arm, Godfrey!” she bellowed, fangs flashing.

It was too late to turn back now without looking like I was trying to hide.

“Are you sure you want to eat out here, around all this?” Miro wrinkled his nose, watching the soldiers drip sweat.

Yes. I signed curtly with one hand, balancing my plate on the other. If he and Ellena chose to go eat together, I’d breathe a sigh of relief.

I left the soldiers, keeping to the walls of the inner keep so I wouldn’t be in the way. There were raised garden beds in the back, with the mountains towering high above the wall that surrounded us; humans tended them. The stables were another hive of activity I avoided, and I kept going until I found a smith’s yard.

It was not the smithing nor the smith himself, nor the anxious-looking apprentices that caught my attention, but the vampire holding up the entire back half of an empty wagon as easily as breathing while the smith hammered at the underside of a wheel.

Bane was shirtless, sweat sheening the hard valleys of muscle beneath ash-gray skin, the sharp, striated ridges of his natural fiend form standing out in spikes over his spine and shoulders, even flaring up from his clavicle.

That was what I had felt beneath his shirt; even if he were stripped naked and dropped into the middle of a forest, he would still be armored against the teeth of wargs.

A mane of black hair fell over his shoulders, thick and wild; one of his massive arms rippled, and the entire wagon tipped further upwards, the smith crawling around under it without the slightest worry it would be dropped.

“Hm. Well of course he’s strong, being a fiend and all,” Miro whispered, breaking my focus, and I realized I’d been staring open-mouthed.

Which was fine. Because he was my husband, and I could stare at him all day if I wanted to. It was well within my rights… and, to be honest, I was curious about the body that was only human insofar as he possessed a torso with all the requisite parts attached.

But a furious blush raced over my cheeks. Miro’s whisper was not as quiet as he’d intended—or he’d wanted Bane to hear—because the fiend looked up, amber eyes a brilliant gold in the sunlight, looking displeased until his gaze found me.

The look in them, almost predatory, softened at once; he looked the way he had when I’d thrown the silver bells and rowan from the carriage, a tinge of hope.

Pushing aside thoughts of last night, I smiled at him. Or tried to, anyway. I couldn’t shake the guilt.

But I could try to repair the damage I had done.

So I sat on a conveniently overturned barrel, kicked my velvet skirts out of my way, and balanced my plate on my knee, perfectly content to watch him lift wagons while I ate.

Although I didn’t necessarily find him handsome—at least not in the way Miro or Koryek were—there was something strangely mesmerizing about Bane’s sheer strength, the alien lines of his large body.

“Um… my Lady… this isn’t a very appropriate place for you to break your fast.” Ellena sniffed, glancing at the smith’s yard with obvious disdain.

You can leave me here. Go inside, be with people, I said, already annoyed with the sniffing about what was appropriate and what wasn’t. It was petulant and childish of me, but we both knew that Ellena was simply a foil, and not actually expected to wait on me at every turn.