I knocked the table hard, holding the journal up for Kajarin to read when she opened her eyes.

“Is that what you’re upset about?” she asked. “Of course I wouldn’t have done it. By the Light, Bane is even uglier than Wroth. I pity you.”

I swallowed back a spew of hate, and just wrote: Then why try it at all? What were you hoping to accomplish?

Her eyes glittered between her slitted lids. “To destroy him, bit by bit. If a human can’t hold the title, if I’m to be his little figurehead, impotent and pointless but to keep a thing like him in power, then I want him to wake up every day as sick as I feel from having to look at him.”

She had to be mad. She was the Lady of the Rivers, and while a fiend might hold the title of Lord, she was far from impotent. A single one of those hairpins could finance the rebuilding of a decimated village, with gold to spare.

I felt no pity for her anger, looking at her slumped drunkenly on the couch. I would feel pity for any girl like me, scooped from their life and given in marriage, but her venom made it impossible.

Damn the guest-right to politeness, then.

I think you’re pathetic, I wrote. You have the power and the gold to make a real change, to rebuild to something greater than we were before. Whatever your feelings for Wroth, it seems to me that devoting all your energy to making him miserable isn’t living the best you can—it’s just a waste of life. 

Kajarin smiled crookedly, her eyes scanning the words. “I’ll rebuild the Rivers when it’s owned by humans,” she said icily. “By real people, not brutes and their leechspawn. Look at you, all high and mighty… you still haven’t seen.”

She got up, a little unsteady on her feet, tugging her skirts down and adjusting her bodice so her breasts were nearly popping out. Once again I wondered who she’d brought into the library stacks… and if Bloodrain would culminate with an execution.

But, more importantly, her hatred became clear to me: she was a human loyalist. There was a possibility the lai Orros family had been the rulers of Owlhorn, if not the next in line for that throne, and for her and her people, the vampires would always be interlopers—never mind that they had signed away the title themselves.

There were a few small factions of loyalists in Argent, slowly being pushed out as vampires became integrated with humans. I’d seen them spit at the vampires before, and once, they’d been responsible for the burning of one of the blood shops, where humans could willingly be bitten.

They were from all walks of life, and defined solely by one trait: their shared hatred for vampire-kind. Not even the Sisterhood held a candle to their absolute desire to wipe them from the earth.

“I’ll look forward to the day you see them as they truly are—no better than animals.” She gazed down at me imperiously. “Lady forbid you get in his way. Trust me, Cirrien—no matter how much you think he loves you, when it comes down to it, he sees you only as meat. Our kind, we humans, we’re nothing but meat to them.”

Before I could write, she flounced off, her heels clacking on the floor all the way down the hall. Thorn watched her go, then returned his attention to the library, staring into the dark corners. Light only knew what he was looking at; I was grateful for the peace and silence.

How strange, that a loyalist would end up married to a fiend. Now there was a match made in hell.

I looked down at my journal, flipping to the lexicon, but my concentration was completely broken.

What had I been expecting? I knew perfectly well that none of the other Accords marriages had gone smoothly. Wyn and Visca had been perfectly ready to tie me up to get me to the altar, if necessary… I had a vague memory of Visca telling me of Owlhorn, treasonous humans trying to stop the wedding…

So Kajarin came from a family who would have been happy to accept the vampires’ sweat, blood, and tears fighting to defend them from the Forians, and were just as happy to try to renege on their promises. The apple hadn’t fallen far from that tree.

But it wasn’t my problem. I wasn’t like her, and moreover, I didn’t believe a word she said. If Bane thought I was just a meal, just a hole, as she so charmingly put it, he wouldn’t be making the effort to learn my language. He wouldn’t have gone out of his way to give me a project I’d be useful at, unlike virtually everything else.

He wouldn’t write me poems.

And if he was even more hideous in his full transformation… I didn’t care. Because I knew that no matter what he looked like, he was still my Bane, and that was that.

I stared at the ritual book, my eyes blurring, and finally snapped it shut, carefully tucking it into my bag along with my journal, and went to find Wyn. I couldn’t take the silence in the library anymore, still ringing with Kajarin’s vitriol, her surety that I meant nothing to Bane but meat.

She was wrong.

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Chapter 28 Bane

You’ve come along well, Brother Glyn signed. The basics should be understandable by now.

Much better, I returned, though I didn’t have the effortless flow of Cirri and Glyn.

The Silent Brother had drilled me on verbs today; now that the sun was sinking in the sky, our lessons over, all I wanted to do was go find Cirri.

Of course he knew from our time together that by now I was itching to leave.

See you after Bloodrain, he signed, deliberately enunciating the name of the holiday so that I would know the sign for it.

Enjoy drinking your gold away, I told him, and he grinned. The Brother had used conversational instruction to tell me of his plans to sample the local brews of every tavern within easy riding distance for the celebration.

I stretched as I rose, and left the tower—and the godawful stink of sex, thanks to Kajarin—only to find a face I hadn’t expected in the hall.

“My lord.” Miro gave me one of his courtly bows, the one that hinted at scorn and sarcasm, but his eyes were sparkling. “I’ve got something you should see.”

“What’s that?” I examined the lad, who dressed like the court dandies of Argent in a velvet coat, with lace trim at the cuffs and gilded buttons. Well, he was an artist, not a renowned warrior.

“Please, Lord Bane, don’t make me spoil the surprise.” Miro grinned, teeth white against his tanned skin, and led the way.

The servants’ quarters were in the back of the keep, near the heat of the kitchen fires. Miro opened his door to a small room that was not plain in the slightest; an old Forian rug was spread across the floor, the bedding fine linen. The lamp was blown Serissan glass, rather than the usual beeswax tapers the rest of the keep used.

I had just enough time to wonder if he’d been working on other commissions and lining his pockets with gold when I saw it.

At first, I thought there was a window, and Cirri beyond it, but it was merely paint on canvas. The scent of pigments, paint medium, and expensive incense filled the air rather than her own rose-and-musk perfume.

I froze as she seemed to look back at me, that wry little twist to her smile, secrets held in eyes the color of primeval forests. Instead of painting her with her hair styled formally, he’d painted it as it usually was, spilling in long waves over her shoulders, albeit with a rose tucked behind her ear. There was even the slightest freckling across the bridge of her nose, true to life.

It was so perfect, a flawless representation. “You have your mother’s talent,” I finally said, astonished by his skill. If one had told me that Edda had returned from the afterlife to paint this last portrait, I would have believed it wholeheartedly.