She crawled up into my bed, kicking aside covers and making herself comfortable. In the midst of all the blankets, her eyes began to droop almost immediately. I began unlacing my coat, debating how far to undress… I would keep on my shirt and trousers, at the least, though I preferred to sleep nude.

Ancestors knew she’d be upset if she woke to a naked fiend in the bed, even with my promises to honor her wishes.

I was two glorious seconds from laying down next to her when a soft knock sounded on my door. There was the muted rasp of a paper being slipped under the wood; I picked up the parchment to find my steward’s tidy, crabbed writing, and smiled at the message.

In the morning, I would give her what she dreamed of.

When I finally laid down, there was a solid foot of empty air between us, but the sweet scent of Cirri’s hair filled the space.

I stayed on my back, hands laced across my stomach, feeling a little corpse-like in my position but happy to have her presence in here. My wife wriggled a little, turning onto her side to face me, and within minutes her eyes were closed and her breath came in soft, even puffs.

In her sleep, she stretched out one hand and flattened it on my arm, as though bracing herself on a heaving ship, but I didn’t dare move. Not while she was comfortable.

With her scent and her heartbeat filling my senses, there was a touch of torment in having her here… but it was a torment I wanted to live through every night for the rest of my life.

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Chapter 17 Cirri

Warmth curled around me. For once I didn’t wake up shivering under a thin wool blanket, or sprawled over my desk with a cramp in my neck.

Instead I was being swallowed whole by a plush mattress, nested into a cozy ball, and there was an arm sprawled over my waist, a mountain of heat at my back.

I blinked, remembering last night… how glum I’d felt sitting alone in that enormous room with no one to speak to, and no one caring enough about me to even sit in comfortable silence. I’d felt entirely invisible and ignored.

Was that going to be the epitaph? My memorial? “Here lies Cirrien lai Darran, who made no mark on the world, save for how intensely people avoided her”?

And then Bane had saved me from my own dark thoughts, which were spiraling into depths I’d never imagined before.

I was not the kind of woman who sat and felt sorry for myself. If I had time for self-pity, I had time for a book, or at least to sweep the floor or tidy. But in the empty expanse of that room, eating alone instead of at least having the communal society of the other Sisters’ indentured servants around me, I’d realized that I’d never experienced true loneliness before.

I’d always been a fish in a pond full of other fish, one among many, even if I wasn’t part of the jokes and laughter.

Having Bane come to me… I’d been so happy to see him. To ask him about his day, where he was during all those long hours that I’d spent sitting in the Bloodgarden. I enjoyed listening to the sound of his deep, rumbling voice, the way his monstrous features grew more animated as he got into the story.

When he’d showed me the paintings in the tower above, I understood just how deeply he was trusting me not to turn away from him entirely. Most of the paintings were horrors many Veladari had lived through for decades; safely ensconced in the Cathedral in Argent, behind thick walls, I’d never been exposed to such violence in my life. It was distant, almost dream-like, to look upon them and try to imagine them as reality.

But it was the portrait of Bane himself that struck me the most. The beautiful vampire, rendered almost life-like by Edda’s brush, seemed a man both brazen and brave, but there were hints of the Bane I knew in him now: the sweep of the brows, the gleam in his amber eyes, the full, sculpted upper lip.

And in the Bane of life, I saw hints of the Bane in the portrait. He was no longer beautiful, but some of that arch cockiness remained in the exaggerated, misshapen lines of his chiropteran features, particularly when he was self-deprecatingly mocking himself.

And his eyes… they were the same, if a little more sad now. The whites were now black, the gold burning a little brighter, but they held the same shine.

Oddly, I found myself thinking that if I were to have a painting of Bane to keep in my tower, I wouldn’t choose the one in the garret above.

I would want the one that showed him as he was now, the face that was monstrous, yet filled me with joy when I saw it.

And now that very head rested on the pillow behind me, his breathing soft and rumbling, the arm draped over my side relaxed and loose. Curled with my back to his chest, I studied his smooth skin, the ashen gray tones against the bright white of the underdress I wore.

He hadn’t tried to touch me, nor feed… the one thing I abjectly feared. Even now, relaxed and comfortable, the thought of those teeth sinking into my neck made my skin prickle.

I reached my hand towards his, carefully touching his claws. They had grown back since our wedding night; I’d noticed that when his body grew bulkier, harder, the ridges of his cheekbones, shoulders, and spine expanding into a sort of armor, that his claws grew as well.

They were as black as if he’d dipped them in an inkwell. I rested my hand on top of his; with our wrists aligned, my fingertips just reached his knuckles.

My mind immediately drifted to that night, to the sudden spirit of getting-it-over-with that I’d been caught up, and the surprising tendril of desire I’d felt.

It was the threat of being fed upon that had made me run. The rest of him… he was an enormous beast, radiating a base sexual energy that made me prickle in a different sort of way. If not for those fangs…

He was beastly, but there was enough left in him that was human to be intrigued.

The hand I was examining turned and curled around mine, our fingers interlacing, but barely. His was too large for easy hand-holding.

“How long have you been awake?” he asked, voice thick and gruff with sleep. “Were you going to let me sleep all day?”

But he made no move to get up, remaining lazily curled around me. I found that I had no real motivation myself to emerge from the warmth, the comfort and solidity of his arms.

I snuggled in deeper, using my free hand to spell. I’m happy to go back to sleep, as long as you don’t move.

His face was buried in my hair, pillowed on it and holding me in place; but with the rest of his body at my back, it was easier to keep my mind off his mouth. Unfortunately, my mind wandered to other things—the hard muscles of his body, the heat radiating from him.

With that size and strength, I would be no match for him at all. Although, when it came to size… his groin was nestled against my rear, and through the thin linen of my dress I felt his mammoth cock, already rigid and growing harder by the second. My breath caught for the slightest moment, before I forced myself to keep it even. Warmth pooled low in my belly, my heart beating a little faster.

I had some experience in that regard… with human men, of normal sizes and shapes. Losing my virginity had been briefly painful, and then rather tepid, but then, I’d lost it to one of the Cathedral hostlers, when we were both nineteen and utterly inexperienced. The next one had been a bowyer’s apprentice, a shy man who made up for the lack of wild passion with technical experience.

So I understood men and what sex entailed. What I had no experience with was the pulsing member behind me, which felt too big to reasonably fit inside a human being, and even without touching it, I could feel something strange about the shape.