For now, François’s men weren’t focused on monitoring France’s western borders. They were stealthily positioning themselves along the easternmost forests of Lilac’s kingdom, readying for more attacks. Right where Maximilian’s people would have to move through. But even if they did make it through France and Brocéliande, they’d have to go through Garin to take her away.
Surely not… Surely there was another way.
His breathing grew labored, his head suddenly light at the thought of Lilac boarding a carriage to be driven through France’s enemy territory to Vienna. Garin’s gums throbbed, every nerve in his body fired at the thought ofhisthrall—the woman who, in another life, would behisbride—becoming a prisoner of war because a cowardly emperor, herbetrothed, couldn’t be bothered to risk retrieving her himself.
Just months ago, Lilac was merely the woman whom Laurent had held on a pedestal, whom his well-meaning sire had warned everyone to watch. Besides considering every now and then how lovely it would be to stroll into the castle and hold her at the end of a blade until Henri agreed to end his cruelty to Daemons, Garin hadn’t paid Lilac a single passing thought. To him, she was the hidden girl who could speak to Daemons, nothing more. Before she’d entered his tavern, he hadn’twantedto think about the Trécessons or their castle.
When he’d learned her identity at Sinclair’s camp, he’d craved her fear. He’d wanted to make her submit, pay for her parents’ crimes ten times over. Then, she’d jumped into the Morgen-infested Argent River. Wildly unexpected. And thoroughly intriguing. It had stirred in him the instinct to covet his prey. It was then, he first realized, that the Trécesson princess was not some spoiled heiress who deserved to suffer.
She was his reckoning in the flesh.
It had all been bloody downhill from there. Her parents and their ilk had made not the slightest effort to understand those such as Garin, let alone the world they lived in. Yet, there Lilac had been, badgering him with questions about that very thing. About the creatures in it. About him.
His hunger for Lilac’s blood, his craving for her company, became allthe more difficult to ignore after Kestrel had set them on a path of fate together at Cinderfell. Garin well understood his duty and the nature of what he’d become. His early yearnings for her were natural, but he hadn’t expected the overwhelming urge to ensure her wellbeing. To befriend her and make her laugh. He hadn’t expected the need to protect her with his life.
He hadn’t expected any ofthis.
Whatever the reason, nothing mattered now, save the unbreakable, diamond-hard certainty in his heart that no one could love her, treat her, protect her like he could. By the time she’d foolishly enthralled herself to him, their bond had only made ignoring what he’d begun to feel for Lilac an utterly futile task. She was bound to him now, in ways she did not understand. He even struggled to comprehend it.
In Garin’s days as a fledgling, Laurent had briefed him on the throes of romance and vampirism—told him, as it had proven to be true, how cumbersome and even deadly it could turn in the hands of a creature who wielded such an unnatural lust for the living.
For ownership and grasping, gnawing possession.
He’d known for decades the vampiric matrimony was something he’d refuse to entertain, much less ever pursue. He’d known without the shadow of a doubt he’d never do it to Lilac after skimming the pages of that blasted vampire manuscript at the castle—and what little he’d bothered to read ofThe Histories of the Lasting Nightbefore chucking it into the Argent after the accident, when Lilac laid bleeding from the inside out. It had shook him to his core.
He then knew he’d made a mistake. He had a name for the Sanguine matrimonial rite: the Blood Vow. Something he could research, pour over. Allow to consume him like flame to straw.
He would never subject anyone he cared for to it, much less the woman he loved. Much less the last andonlywoman he’d love.
But he also knew, deep down, the heart-rending truth.
Lilac is the only woman I’d ever offer that to.
Garin crumpled the note until it was pulverized in his fists, opened his hand, and let the pieces scatter to the wind. He hoisted the man back onto his shoulder and pivoted south.
33
GARIN
The sky was awash in blood by the time he entered the Paimpont farmlands from the north. He emerged from the trees, storming to his destination, blinded by rage. A warm breeze struck him the moment his view was clear of leaves and branches. It carried with it a most peculiar bouquet of scents: The refined, perfumed rosewood and walnut woodcraft from the castle. Polished hawthorn.
Lilac’s little friend, Rupert.
Garin was delirious from his hunger, and the pained throbbing of his limbs only thickened the fog settling in his mind. He had considered—several times—stopping to bleed the unconscious man into his mouth. It would have been a convenient snack.Revitalizing. And it wasn’t as though the man would’ve noticed; he wasn’t waking anytime soon. If ever. Why waste the blood? What was left of it, anyway. But Garin had pushed on.
For some deeply vexing reason, his desire to get the man some sort of help won out over his thirst. The man would bleed out without the proper care—which Garin had reluctantly concluded didnotinvolve further exsanguination for the purposes of slaking vampiric thirst—and if he’d belonged to Lilac’s handmaiden, it was just as well, if rather bothersome, that seeing to this soldier’s recovery should fall to him. There was nothing for it but to carry that responsibility out now. At the very least, he could finally get theman off his damned shoulders. Maybe then he could see about getting back to the castle. He was eager to return.
Frowning, he looked down on his parents’ sloping land. Through the red-orange haze of dusk, he wasn’t quite surewhathe was viewing. Garin’s feet carried him down the hill, through barren wheat fields. Many, many summers ago, they had been lush berry patches tended by an old neighbor, Mrs. Botrel. She’d pick from them to make fruit baskets and had gifted several to his mother through the years. But for a few more enduring features nearby—an oddly shaped rock formation, the gentle, familiar hill it sat upon—the fields were just as he’d left it.
The rear windows of his home were aglow. Normally, the bales of hay and loose stacks yet to be bundled would have obscured the light coming from inside. Not tonight; they’d been moved to the right of the house, sitting to his left. It looked like dirt had been loosened. Garin frowned. The scene resembled preparations for a harvest. Behind the house, though?
Rearranging the farm was common enough practice. But if that was what they were doing, they were doing it months too early.
And… celebrating it?
Laughter and jeers carried through the open window, accompanied by the clinking of glasses.
Two large rugs of some sort swung on a beam in the wind, just beyond the garden. Garin slowed and rubbed his eyes, squinting. Large sacks? Something to dry? Or ferment, maybe? Animals? Pelt?
