My wife made expansive gestures of apology, offering a napkin and doing a rather flawless impression of embarrassment and dismay. The Lady of the Rivers waved her away, gasping and wiping wine from her face, but the dress was a loss.

Kajarin stood up, wiping her eyes so that kohl stained them in a raccoon’s mask. “Please—please excuse me,” she stammered, and she rushed from the room.

A painful silence fell, no one wanting to meet anyone else’s gaze. Cirri sat down slowly, smoothing her dress over her lap before taking my hand under the table. She was shaking with rage.

Wroth drank the last of the blood, dropping his goblet.

“And now you see,” he said, his voice utterly flat and dead.

OceanofPDF.com

Chapter 25 Cirri

As always, I was a little taken aback at how wrong my expectations had been when it came to the vampires.

I had fully expected to fear Wroth, to shiver with curdled terror at the sight of him—but how could I be afraid of someone who was so obviously broken?

His leonine features, as monstrous in their own way as Bane’s bat-like visage, with his curling horns, digitigrade feet, and lashing tail—they were hideous and strange, but the deep pain and bitterness in his eyes… those emotions turned him from something to be feared, into someone in need.

And Kajarin… I’d thought I would find common ground of some sort, both of us being women forced into marriages we never could have foreseen, marriages to monsters. I’d had it in my mind that perhaps Kajarin was terrified of Wroth, that maybe with a little time she could come to see that a fiend wasn’t so bad.

I hadn’t expected a woman dressed like the harlots in the Argent slums, albeit one wearing a lifetime’s ransom of gems. Nor one who would ignore her own husband so readily in favor of trying to bed mine, though I hadn’t missed the curl of disgust in her lip as she looked at Bane.

Clearly there was nothing we had in common outside of our roles in life, and Kajarin was not the unsearched-for friend I’d hoped to find.

But there was nothing I could do, outside of sending her off in the most embarrassing manner I could think of at a moment’s notice.

Bane curled his hand around mine, and I squeezed one of his fingers lightly despite my anger.

“Well,” Auré said bracingly. She hadn’t taken so much as a sip from her glass, tracing her pinky around the rim over and over until I thought I might scream. “How are things here, Bane? Letters only tell us so much, and frankly, you could stand to write more.”

My husband cleared his throat, still clearly shocked by the realization of what Kajarin had been trying to do. “Everything is fine. We’ve reopened the mines, so we can begin shoring up the defenses. Some progress has finally been made with the Rift-kin, so we’ll have less wastage…”

“Yes, yes.” Auré waved a graceful hand. “We’ve heard this. What I meant was, how are things here?” And she gave me a significant look, as though I were not sitting right here to see it.

The seething anger rippled upwards again, and I had to forcibly suppress it. My appetite, diminished by Kajarin, was all but gone now. I laid the fork aside carefully, giving Auré the sweetest smile I could manage; if Wyn thought she’d be installing this vampire in my place, they could both go to hell.

I knew that I would have to manage myself around vampires. On one hand, I didn’t want to overtly display heightened emotions, which Visca had told me would trigger hunting instincts; on the other hand, I needed to behave properly so as not to embarrass either myself or the hold I represented.

But to be treated like a lapdog that couldn’t understand that it was being talked about… I gritted my teeth together, keeping the smile in place.

Bane glanced at me, his brow furrowed with confusion, then smiled widely. “Wonderful. Things are wonderful.”

Wroth and Auré shared a skeptical glance so quick, so sly, that I almost missed it.

“I’m glad to hear that.” The vampire woman spoke carefully, as though to a simple child. Did she not believe him?

Bane looked between the two of them, the furrow returning. “Why—”

“It’s been a long time,” Auré said softly, and she reached across the table to touch Bane’s free hand. “A long, long time since we’ve seen you. Ten years since we’ve all been together. I truly am happy to see you well, Bane, and if anything is wrong… I hope that you still trust us enough to help you.”

She removed her hand in time, because the fork was in easy reach, and I’d contemplated with no small amount of gravity the force it would take to pierce vampire flesh.

Probably more than I possessed. I was no warrior or fighter like the Silver Sisters, but I imagined that sheer irritation would carry me through.

“Nothing is wrong,” Bane replied, the faintest hint of a growl to his tone. “Exactly what are you insinuating, Auré?”

Her violet eyes widened. “Only that we’re here for you, as well as Andrus and Voryan. It’s a lonely place, to be a fiend holding a seat against the Forians and… other hostiles.”

Bane tipped his head, studying the lovely vampire. “I will be the judge of the hostiles here. You are acting as the Lord’s advisor in Owlhorn, correct? Then you may advise Wroth, and leave me to Wyn.”

Wyn poked at her roast hen, staying well out of this.

Auré leaned back in her chair, studying him through narrowed eyes. “You’ve grown more comfortable in your position, Lord Bane. There was a time you would have hung on my every word, afraid to make a misstep.”

Despite my anger at Auré, there was an undercurrent here I couldn’t read, a history I didn’t know. And in that history, perhaps there was a buried seed of a shared past…

I hated my own jealousy, but I was powerless to rip out the green serpent writhing through my guts. I had known of Bane in name only; to an indentured servant of the Sisters, he was both enemy and ally, a nearly mythical figure that protected us, yet came from the ranks of our sworn foes.

There had been no past, no commonality between us, unlike him and Auré. For all I knew, he had wanted her at one time, and instead he’d had me thrown into his life for the sole purpose of meeting a political requirement.

“There was a time when I was young and had no idea what I was doing,” Bane said, squeezing my hand under the table. “That time is no longer. Have you come merely to rub my face in the past?”

Auré shook her head, leaning towards him, eyes pleading. “Please don’t take this the wrong way, Bane. Have we not been friends for decades? I’m here to provide whatever aid I can—that’s all.”

My husband looked at her mistrustfully. “As I said, I have no need of any outside help. The Rift is hard at work on what we must do, and Wyn and Visca are, as always, admirable at handling the defenses. Cirri is making herself at home. Ravenscry does not need aid.”

She reached for him again, and I put a stop to that even as Bane leaned back, removing his hand from the table.

Why not ask him outright? I asked her, disentangling my hand from Bane’s to sign. Ask him what you’re really thinking. Am I like Kajarin? Do I while away the hours of my day debating how best to destroy his soul?

Auré’s smile showed more fang than was strictly necessary. “Do you?” she asked softly.

Look at him and tell me. What do you see? 

The vampire woman’s eyes flicked between us, then she signed back, her hands so much more graceful than mine: Wroth looked happy for the first year—and see him now. 

The lion-like fiend wasn’t scowling, wasn’t smiling, had no expression at all—he stared at the wall behind me and Bane, but his eyes were far away.