“I know,” was all I said. I believed him.

I was also unwilling to let him walk free—to become an example for the Rift-kin, that they might try to strike at Cirri and walk away unpunished.

Derog swallowed. I heard the dry click in his throat, the thickness of unshed tears in it. “Will you make it quick?”

“I won’t draw out your suffering.”

He sighed, staring at the moon again. “Then take my blood. Why waste it? At least it goes to a good use now.”

For a moment, I hated myself. That my thirst roared to life at his offer, parching my throat. That I felt relieved it would soon be slaked.

Slaked by the blood of a man I’d called a friend.

“Look at the moon,” I told him. “You’ll go to sleep, and the ancestors will be there to greet you.”

He looked up, exposing his throat. I tilted my head, my gums aching with the anticipation of fresh, hot blood, and bit into the pulsing vein, the one that would bleed him dry within moments.

Derog sucked in a sharp breath, but I held him steady as I drank. The rush of blood over my tongue, down my throat—ancestors, the relief. For the first time in days, the monster in the back of my head went still.

All thoughts of friendship faded, replaced by the gluttonous desire for more, the ravenous craving for every last drop in his veins.

But I remained steady, and as Derog wavered and slumped, I lowered him to the ground, still drinking. Still feasting.

He watched the moon as he slid towards unconsciousness, and I continued to drink. Taking deep pulls, until he was dry… the thirst faded, becoming satisfaction, a feeling of fullness I experienced only rarely.

I raised my head, looking into Derog’s sightless eyes, already clouding over with death. I tried to arrange him so it did look like he was just sleeping. For all my rage, he had been a good man. I would not leave him in ignominious disarray.

“I’m only sorry it was you, old friend.” I pressed my fingertips to his eyelids, closing them. The ancestors held him in their arms now—he would see as they saw, with no more use for earthly sight.

Perhaps in death he would see me as I was, not as a friend or a brother forged in the fields of combat, but as the selfish, unrepentant monster I’d always been.

I lapped the blood from my fangs, straightened myself, and returned to the field of bonfires. Gilam lurked on the outskirts, waiting and twisting his hands with nerves, and I nodded to him. “You may bury him now.”

“Is he…?” Gilam paused, his gaze weary.

“Whole? Yes. I wouldn’t have savaged him unless he’d succeeded.” I spoke bitterly, still angry that it was Derog who had done something so idiotic.

“Good. Good.” Gilam ran a hand over his scruffy face. “My Lord… Bane… it won’t be so easy.”

No, it wouldn’t be. The Rift-kin clung to their traditions like a child to its sweets, comforted by them even as they were harmed.

“It’s long past time to change ways,” I told him. “You’re a wise man. You know as well as I do that the danger is not in ghost stories. And now look where that’s gotten us—I’ve executed a man who served the Rift well, because he was so poisoned with unfounded terror that he tried to murder a defenseless human woman.”

Gilam inhaled, opening his mouth to speak—and shut it. He rubbed his eyes, glancing towards where Derog’s body lay.

“Well, we can try. We have to now, don’t we?” He shook his head, the lines around his eyes deepening.

I couldn’t muster much sympathy. Their own delusions had brought them to this.

“Yes. You do. Or the true threat will come through your ruined walls and devour you all.”

I left him with that, finding the table empty of Cirri and only the pieces of her broken slate left behind. I picked up one of the fragments, turning the thin, dark stone in my hands, and finally tucked it into the pocket of my shirt.

I would keep this small piece, a reminder to myself that she had survived—and that I couldn’t blindly trust the people I ruled over. Danger could come from friendly hands, so long as I allowed them to continue to wallow in their foolishness like children.

I found them in the town square, where Eryan already had the carriage waiting and several grooms waited with the horses. Visca looked unusually grim, and had wrapped Cirri in a shawl. My wife stood outside the carriage, clutching the wool around herself, but when she saw me, her shoulders didn’t relax as they usually did.

A frisson of disquiet ran through me.

“I apologize for leaving you,” I said, opening the carriage. “I apologize… for this whole night. Things would’ve been better if we’d just broken the wheels and stayed home.”

The smile that exposed my fangs felt fake, a mockery of what we’d shared on the way here. Cirri didn’t smile back, her eyes red-rimmed and focused on a point below my chin.

When I pulled the carriage door open, she tucked herself inside—squeezing so that she didn’t quite come into contact with me. The frisson had become a serpent, twisting around in my stomach.

I looked down at myself, and saw what she saw.

Derog’s execution had been quiet, but not tidy. Draining a human of all their blood never was.

I had been so caught up in my own regret that I hadn’t noticed the droplets of blood on my sleeves, the warmth of red soaking into my shirt-front.

What had I been thinking, to return to my wife with the evidence of death all over me? A death she had spoken against.

But Cirri had only been the Lady for a day. She didn’t yet realize that to allow them to bite the hand without punishment would only court further violence and disrespect.

I hesitated, looking at those stains, and then up at my wife. Her hands were silent, curled into her lap; one clutched a primrose with bruised petals.

“I will leave you alone,” I said quietly. “Bar the door.”

I shut it and waited for the sound of the iron latch. The soft snick had a weight it didn’t have before, like the slamming of a prison door with no key.

Visca sucked her teeth, still sour. “Should’ve known this would be a mess. I forgot—all that nonsense here about red hair.”

Few Rift-kin—if any— had Cirri’s fiery locks, Veladari or not. It had likely been bred out long before the vampires had arrived, a color once held dear by the Fae. Either bred out, or the Fae had taken all those Rift-kin unlucky enough to be ‘born of the flame’, as they said.

But we had forgotten, all of us. None of my people had put much stock in their lore or myths when we knew perfectly well for ourselves that they were baseless.

“Don’t beat yourself up.” Visca was only sour because she had come within a hair’s breadth of failing in her duty to protect Cirri. “Something might come of it, at least. And she’s unharmed. That’s the most important part.”

“Right.” Visca cast one last infuriated look back at the stone houses of Fog Hollow, and mounted her horse. “I’m rather torn on this. Suddenly it seems like a good idea to keep her locked in her tower. Didn’t think these people had it in them.”

She nudged the horse into a walk as Eryan got the carriage moving. I stared at Fog Hollow as well before prowling after them.

So I would finally get my way on things that had been gnawing at me. They would have strong stone walls. They would eat their food instead of wasting it. They would join us in the night-hunts.

And as necessary as all these things were, somehow they paled in comparison to the way Cirri had looked at me. As though none of our moments had mattered. As though I were a monster, a creature from her nightmares, something that only lived to drink blood—bathed in her light, I’d forgotten I wasn’t just a man.

I was grateful to leave the firelight and step into the shadows. The way she had stared at me… it felt like the sun had gone down for the last time.

Like it would never rise again.