Especially when I saw that my journal was open on the nightstand. Bane’s broad, rough hand, written in Low-Country Nord, filled half the page.

I dream of a girl

With blood like wine

Sweet as nectar

A brilliant mind

As sharp as thorns

She will always be mine

I could imagine the look on his face as he came up with this—half concentration, half embarrassment. But it made me smile so wide my cheeks hurt, clutching the journal close to my chest in a tight hug.

He’d written it in his native tongue for a reason. It was a secret between us; as far as I knew, only Visca could read it, and she wouldn’t pry through my things.

I kissed the page, closed the journal, and jerked at the sight in the corner of my eye, nearly falling out of bed.

Thorn stood by the door, a shadow within the shadows.

You scared me, I said, calming my racing heart. He signed in apology, but he didn’t move an inch, guarding the door with his life.

Rose emerged from the washroom, a dress draped over her arm and today’s hairpins—gold and amethyst—stuck through the petals of her skull. Come, she said cheerfully, and I listened. There was no fighting the golem.

I explored the Tower of Winter’s washroom as Rose put me in order. My wardrobe had appeared overnight, packed with dresses and slippers. So… Bane had finally decided that the Tower of Spring was redundant, when I never stepped foot in there anymore except to wash and dress.

I bathed cheerfully, feeling that I’d put my stamp on my territory; these were Cirri dresses in Bane’s tower, and it no longer felt like I was simply visiting him at night, to be banished back to my own tower in the morning. Perhaps I would leave some hairpins on the nightstand to fully claim my territory.

When Rose was finished with me, no one had knocked on the door. There was no Wyn waiting outside to drag me off for decoration or comportment lessons for Bloodrain, no Visca to give me hair-raising tales of how to behave around groups of vampires; perhaps they’d decided I’d learned all that was necessary.

Nor was Miro around for another portrait session. I waffled in the corridor for a moment, and finally slipped off to the library on silent feet, checking around corners as I went.

It felt like it’d been eons since I’d been allowed to work on the translations, though it was really days in reality. My books were right where I’d left them; I pulled down the small ritual book from the pile, opening it to the page bookmarked with a ribbon, and found the dictionary I’d been compiling in the back of my journal.

I had left off on a rune that had my curiosity aflame, because it made no sense in the context of the others.

In addition to the twelve runes the scholars of the Library had already translated, I’d added nearly eighteen more to the lexicon; at this point I could see from context that Bane had been correct: this was legitimately a ritual book, and the very first chapter contained a ritual that appeared quite similar to the ceremony we’d performed at our vows, except… off.

There was ‘given’, and ‘thorn’, the latter of which was known to me thanks to the Silver Cathedral’s single page. With the help of the parallel text on another page, I’d added ‘tears’ and ‘petals’ into the lexicon.

Combined with the gilded illumination of roses and thorns around the border of the text, I had decided that this was, if not the exact wedding ceremony we’d performed, then something very close—unless all vampiric rituals involved their Mother’s sacred images.

Except for the rune at the top.

It was an ugly shape, possessing all of the sharp edges and points of the High Tongue, but none of their flowing grace. There was, in fact, something vaguely lupine in the shape of it, a suggestion of sharp fangs and crazed eyes.

But maybe I was just seeing things, based on my suspicions. This rune had no place in the wedding vows, but I’d also found it in a parallel corpus depicting the wargs.

If the other text was aligned perfectly—and it was, in every other respect—then this rune meant ‘Wargyr’.

I compared the texts, including the charred, fraying scrap of paper that described a battle of wargs and vampires, including those ‘cursed by Wargyr’, and came up with a perfect match for that rune yet again.

But why would it be over a ritual that appeared to outline the wedding ceremony?

I decided to add it to a new page for now, pending new discoveries. Maybe I was completely mistaken, and it would just happen to turn out that the other words aligned perfectly by mere chance.

Sure, Cirri, I told myself, inking the repulsive rune into my journal and adding a question mark after the supposed translation. You have an entire, intact parallel text and added nearly twenty new runes to the lexicon, but it was just chance.

It took a strange effort to form the rune in ink; my hand cramped as I wrote it. I hissed through my teeth as I shook my fingers out, eyeing the rather crooked rune balefully. Never had I struggled to form a symbol before, which made me even more sure that my translation was accurate. If Wargyr possessed the power to turn man into monster, no doubt his name held some of that same power.

I moved on to the next rune, double-checking my translation across the few sources I had.

When I was sure that I could reasonably add the word ‘circle’ to my notes—‘a circle of thorns’, the first line appeared to read, a clear reference to the thorns binding our hands, followed by ‘blood’ and ‘given’—I turned back to the first page of the lexicon and steadied my pen.

There was a soft thump in the back of the library, the muffled sound carrying in the silence. My shoulders tensed, and Thorn and I both looked up at the same moment. The golem, taking his usual post on my right next to the table, had his spiky hands fisted at his sides.

I saw no one, not even guards; Koryek and his men had been reassigned to the wall once Thorn was gifted to me. No shadows moved in the dark corners I could see.

There was another thump, the sound of a book hitting the floor, and then a flurry of soft giggles and a man’s whisper. One of the curtains over the far windows shifted.

I closed my eyes and exhaled, counting to five for patience.

Feel free to roust them, I signed to Rose, wanting Thorn to remain by my side. If they’re going to canoodle, they can do it somewhere other than the library.

That high-pitched giggle was a little too familiar to me now after that particularly trying dinner.

My petal-bodied golem took off with her usual graceful strides, flowing into the stacks, and moments later I heard a sharp intake of breath, a hand being clapped to a mouth, and fading footsteps. Then a feminine voice: “By the Lady, what ungodly thing are you? No, get your hands off me—!”

I smiled to myself.

Rose returned, a bit of bounciness to her gait. Silence once more predominated the library, and I returned to my work, inking ‘circle’ into place.

A sky blue blur whipped in front of me, and I made a giant ink splotch over my rune as something flopped heavily into the velvet couch on the other side of the table.

Kajarin raised a brow, kicking one foot up onto the couch and casting her gaze across my table. Her dress, more Serissan silk, the color of the peacocks Visca found so useless, frothed around her in actual billows. How did she walk in those things?

“My. Aren’t you the most studious little mouse.” She ran her pinky around the corner of her lip, where her rouge had smeared.

Which castle guard or servant was walking around right now with that crimson smeared all over his face? I hoped Wroth would not see it.