I glanced at my husband, the shining tips of his teeth, and imagined them piercing my flesh.

The pain of the needle, repeated a hundred times.

With a shudder, I turned back to the window and closed my eyes.

OceanofPDF.com

Chapter 4 Bane

The carriage did not stop until the sunlight gave way to long shadows. The town of Thornvale, on the outskirts of the Rift, had been arranged as our shelter for the night.

It had high stone walls that had never fallen, even during the height of the Forian War. A palisade of sharpened ash stakes had been erected outside said walls, each deadly point smeared with a thick paste of wolfsbane.

It was the perfect place to keep my new bride alive until we reached the safety of Ravenscry.

The carriage rolled to a halt in front of the gates, and my ear swiveled, picking up the wallguard’s faint voice. “Hail, Ravenscry. The moon will be bright tonight.”

The stilted comment was a predetermined conversation, arranged by Olwyn before our journey to Argent.

“But not bright enough for the wolves,” Eryan called back, letting the wallguard know that we were uncompromised, with the future Lady in hand.

Cirrien straightened out of the small slump she’d been in for the last eight hours, her brow creasing as she peered out the window at the walls of Thornvale. She tucked a loose lock of crimson hair behind her ear, eyes flickering between the wall and the front of the carriage, whose driver she could not see.

“It’s a password.” Those green eyes flicked to me when I spoke, the first time she’d looked at me since her unreadable question had gone unanswered. “His answer means that we have you in our possession, and the guardians will be prepared to defend the inn you’ll be staying in.”

She nodded slowly, the crease in her brow fading. The bright light of intelligence shone in her gaze, another welcome relief. There was too much room for interpretation in the ‘young and healthy’ demand of the Accords for my liking.

“And if he had said ‘we don’t wish to travel under the moon’, that would have meant we were compromised entirely. They would have poured wolfsbane and oil on the carriage, and set it alight. Anything to emerge alive would be brought down with silver spears.”

Her eyes widened, and she tilted her head. Her hands were twisted so tightly in her lap that her knuckles had gone white.

I did not wish to frighten her, but she should be aware of her new reality. The threat of wargs was much greater in the Rift than in Argent, the walls of which had never been breached.

“The wargs find ways to slip through the cracks. The war is over on paper—but they’re still hunting.” Without intending it, my voice had slipped into a low growl. I cleared my throat, enunciating to make my thick speech understood. “If they had killed us and taken the carriage hostage, they would be able to hide behind the authority of the crest of the Rift—all the way to the castle doors. It only takes two wargs to slaughter a keep, and at least three would fit in here.”

She hesitated, then lifted her hands, slender fingers moving gracefully through the air.

I watched the dance of her hands, my brow furrowing. From my time on the frontlines, I knew certain specific words the Brotherhood had shaped with their hands, but they were words intended for use in battle: enemies ahead. Hostages. Charge. Retreat.

And possibly the most important, made with a single imperious gesture: get the fuck down or take an arrow to the eye.

Cirrien formed none of those words. Unlike the spare, economical motions of the Brotherhood’s warriors, hers were smooth and eloquent, almost poetic.

And I had no idea what she’d said.

She stared at me, willing me to answer or understand, and within moments of accepting that I could not, she looked away once more.

“I apologize,” I muttered, and was rewarded with another glance, a softening in her features. She shook her head and tapped her chest.

Outside the carriage, the guard ordered the gates raised. The clanking of iron chains filled the quiet night, and I watched Cirrien watching the gates rise, a strange feeling twisting within me.

Why had they not sent her with some way to communicate? It seemed beyond cruel not only to consign her to become my wife, but to leave her incommunicado as well.

I couldn’t keep the scowl from my face, though I knew it would make me far more ghastly than usual to her.

Wyn shook her head with warning, her lips pressed together.

The carriage jolted into Thornvale, the horses’ iron-shod hooves sending bright sparks flying from the road. It seemed to take mere moments to arrive at the White Lily Inn, where Wyn had arranged for half the rooms to be rented to our travel party.

Eryan, Wyn, and the maid would stay in the upper-level rooms. Cirrien and I would remain on the bottom floor. If the wargs breached the walls of Thornvale, they would expect for the Lady to be on the uppermost floors, as most vampire royalty lived—and Eryan and Wyn would hold them off long enough to bring Cirrien to safety.

Cirrien’s shoulders were tense as we waited. When Eryan knocked at the door—a three, two, four pattern with breaks between—I unbarred it under Cirri’s watchful, narrow gaze.

She did not bother to sign anything to me.

I was the first to emerge, glad to stretch to my full height after two days spent cramped in the carriage, followed by Wyn, who had the small trunk containing the Blood Accords and her witching kit tucked protectively under one arm. My advisor swept into the inn to make preparations.

I pushed the door open, holding a hand out to Cirrien.

“The pattern was to let us know it was safe,” I said, keeping my tone as gentle as I would ever manage. “There’s no warg-sign here.”

She slid over the seat, pushing aside the voluminous crimson skirts with a twist of her mouth, and managed to keep her hesitation to a single second before she put her hand in mine.

I wondered if I imagined that she shuddered.

The size of her hand was a marvel as I helped her from the carriage. It was… ludicrous. With her palm fully pressed to mine, her fingertips barely extended to the first joints of my fingers.

How could I be married to this girl, when I might so easily crush her? In a single moment without control, it would be as easy as blinking to end her life.

Cirrien stepped onto the streets of Thornvale, looking around with open curiosity at the stone houses crammed together, the briars for which the town had been named climbing over them in tumbles of thick green leaves.

She pulled her hand from mine, clutching her skirts to keep them from the muddy stones underfoot. I clenched my hand at my side, unable to feel offended at her need for distance, but the warmth of her palm still burned against my skin like a coal.

Five guards had been posted outside the inn, and Cirrien glanced at them as I led her to the door, her lips pressed flat.

The Eldest Sister should have explained this to her before our marriage. That as the Lady of the Rift, she was now not only one of the eight most powerful people in Veladar—but that a target as red as blood had been painted right between her shoulders.

Our precautions were not due to an overabundance of hysteria.

Andrus—the Lord of the Vale, the first of the fiends to take a human wife and uphold his end of the Accords—had lost his initial arranged bride on her journey to Stagpoint Castle.

The carriage was found pulverized, the girl herself strung from a tree by her own guts, her body hollowed out.

No natural wolf packs roamed the Vale these days. They had been annihilated in one furious night, giving the wargs nowhere to hide in his territory.