She put her hand over mine, where it rested on top of her shoulder, and gave me a light squeeze before she let go to write, I’ll expect you at sundown, then. Don’t take too long.
“Of course not,” I told her, and brought her hand to my mouth, brushing a careful kiss over the fragile skin before releasing her and walking away.
I had to walk away. That Elaine thought she could harm Cirri and continue to live in the position as her personal maid, close to her day and night… it made me want to find the girl, to drink of her in a way that offered far more pain than pleasure.
But Cirri had lied for her.
So I went to Wyn.
The Tower of Autumn was one of the least-visited towers in Ravenscry, not because it lacked the beauty of the others, but because Wyn often threatened—and was no stranger to carrying out—bodily harm on anyone who disrupted her sanguimantic experiments and projects.
There was a scent that hung in the air around her tower, a mix of tangy iron and herbal sweetness that grew stronger as I drew close to the door. I knocked three times, waited as the muffled sounds of cursing and shattering glass emanated through the door, and knocked again.
It swung open, revealing a rather ruffled-looking Wyn. Approximately two hairs were out of place in her usual chignon, and there was the tiniest drop of wolfsbane oil on her sleeve—she was going to be in a mood.
“Bane, you do realize you’ve just disrupted an extremely delicate extraction process?” she asked. “I’m going to have to requisition more wolfsbane, and the herbalists are telling me there’s a blight on this year’s crop.”
“I apologize, but I have a new… ah, experiment for you. It should consume most of your waking thoughts until the new shipment of wolfsbane arrives.”
Wyn peered at me over her spectacles. “Oh, yes. The extraction is ruined, so now you’re doing me a favor by taking up more of my precious time? Do you think I don’t want to eat, sleep, or actually see my wife on occasion?”
I sucked in a breath. “My apologies are entirely in earnest. I can get your herbs quicker if you’d rather not hear my idea…”
Her filigreed claw sheaths tapped on the door, once, twice… then Wyn sighed and heaved it open fully. “Come in and tell me what you’re on about, then. It can’t be for poppy? I wouldn’t classify you as being in a state of wedded bliss, exactly, but you’ve seemed happier these past few days…”
“Much happier than I was.” I sidled in through the door, extremely aware of my elbows and the profusion of glass instruments as soon as I entered.
Wyn had, at one point, stolen every desk and end table in the castle for her laboratory until the steward had complained. The base of the Tower of Autumn was lined with tables, each piled high in a precarious way with her various sundries for the practice of sanguimancy. Shattered glass, dripping with a pungent violet syrup, had sprayed across one of them.
It was also the most warded place in the entire keep; the walls were quite literally papered with various blood-runes and spells for protection, sturdiness, and fortitude.
I nodded to a fairly fresh sigil, still gleaming crimson, that denoted stability. “Doesn’t look like that helped you much.”
Wyn glared at me. “Very amusing. What is this idea of yours, then?” She swept the broken glass into a bucket, muttering under her breath.
I had known the idea of a new project would be like a worm on a hook for her, but my idea was… unconventional. Possibly dangerous. Definitely dissident.
“Do you still have the golem recovered from Liuridar?”
Wyn’s eyes went even narrower, her gaze sharp enough to cut.
As a whole, vampires had named few of the ruins in the Below. To us, the entirety of it was a hellscape: sunless, deadly, a prison of earth and darkness. What was the point in naming a small piece of the nightmare, when the thousands of endless tunnels and caverns were all alike?
But the city lurking miles below the ground in the south of the Rift… it had deserved a name: Liuridar, forsaken land.
It was crumbling ruins when our kind found it, but a city it had once been, full of things ready and willing to eat our flesh and twist us into unholy forms.
Most of the things had been eradicated by the time Wyn was in the full flower of her years, but a lucky few had escaped the initial sweep. The young bloodwitch, curious about the thought of melding Fae magic with vampiric sanguimancy, had led an expedition into Liuridar’s depths, intent on collecting what remained, alive or dead.
She’d emerged after thirty harrowing days with a strange menagerie of prisoners and eleven dead vampire knights, but in the days since that quest for knowledge, her sanguimancy practice had improved leaps and bounds, melding ancient arts with modern ones.
“I do,” she said slowly, leaning on her semi-cleaned table. “What could you possibly want with the thing? It still wakes up and watches us at night sometimes. Surely it’s the last thing Cirrien would want around.”
Ancestors, I couldn’t imagine how they lived with that.
“No… I don’t want that golem, exactly.” Slowly, I told her my idea, expanding on it as I warmed to the subject. Protection for Cirri, a friend for her, not someone who would pinch and peck and think they could get away with it…
Wyn tapped her nails as she thought, giving away her interest. I could already tell that the subject of wolfsbane was entirely forgotten.
“It would be risky, but I think… with some adjustments to the sigils…” Wyn stared at the wall over my head, clearly seeing nothing but her own thoughts. “With the bloodrose? That would be a very curious addition, but there’s nothing saying we can’t… if anything, it would truly push the boundaries of my art, and ancestors know I’ve had little enough of that with all the focus on these damn dogs…”
“So, it sounds like an interesting plan?”
She blinked, focusing on me again. “What? Why are you still in here? Go away. I have work to do. On second thought, come here—I need a drop of your blood.”
I allowed Wyn to prick my fingertip with an iron needle and harvest my blood, and as the bloodwitch was capping the vial, she looked up at me with a frown.
“You’re looking peaky, Bane,” she noted. “Haven’t you been feeding?”
I paused, debating what to say, long enough for Wyn to put two and two together. “I’ve fed. We’ll figure this out. But if you could have Visca pull one of the convicts…”
My advisor’s frown deepened. “You should be feeding from your wife,” she said censoriously.
“I will not push her away when we’ve come this far.” I let a hint of a growl creep into my tone. Wyn made all things her business, but my thirst… that was between Cirri and me.
She knew there would be no inroads, so she left it be—but I could tell from the faint frown-lines at the corners of her mouth that she was highly displeased. “Tell Cirrien to come see me as soon as you can. I’ll need her blood for this as well. Ancestors know it might turn out horribly, but don’t concern yourself—Visca will put it down before it eats anyone.”
“I’m suddenly unsure of this idea,” I muttered as she shooed me towards the door.
“My dear, this is what I live for. And the golem doesn’t do anything, anyway—it just stares at us with those enormous eyes. Unnerving, to be sure, but entirely harmless.”
“Only because you have it trapped in endless wards,” I reminded her, and Wyn shrugged easily.
I allowed myself to be pushed into the hallway, as she always did when a new sanguimantic craft had taken over her mind.
“There’s one more thing, but I can take it to the steward if you’re busy…”
She paused, halfway through closing the door. “Yes?”
“Cirri’s maid—what’s her name? Elsie?”
“Ellena,” Wyn corrected me.
