Page 137 of Beds and Blades

“Morvanna doesn’t want you dead. She wants you inside the dark bond. We’re not going to kill you. We’re going to bind you to it.”

Her expression didn’t change.

“We want what you carry. Your knowledge. Morvanna understands now that women from your world are useful. We intend to add your knowledge to our own.”

She pointed at Skip.

“And you won’t lose him,” she added.

“Scipio will be there as well. Through him, we will know everything—every plan, every weakness, every detail of the outpost line’s defenses.”

She raised her wrist.

She drew the nail on her right index finger across her wrist with ease, as though performing a familiar task. Dark blood welled immediately from the line.

They were going to force me to drink.

Skip made a sound behind the gag.

His terror surged at a level I had never felt from him before. It was overwhelming. The helpless panic of watching the worst possible thing unfold while unable to stop it.

The two vampires holding me adjusted their grip. They forced my head back. Varia’s wrist moved toward my mouth.

“Varia,” I said.

Her movement stopped.

“I know you are in there,” I said. “I know the bond does not take everything. I know there is still something that is you—the part that has been there since the beginning. The part that handed me a flask on a wall in the snow.”

The smile had not changed. The red eyes had not changed.

“The tenant sleeps,” she said.

“You told me,” I said, “that you had never been claimed again because you watched what happened when the bond broke. That you did not want to feel that again. That you had been managing it for years.”

The words came fast, driven by urgency.

“You told me I was the first person in years you’d wanted to tell anything to. Not just here. In any garrison. In your entire life.”

Something happened in the red eyes. Something very small and very fast.

“You told me about your claimed man,” I said.

“You told me what it felt like through the bond when the warmth shifted.”

I stopped. Grief rose so fast it took my breath with it. My eyes burned, and then I was crying before I could stop myself. The tears ran hot over my face. I could not wipe them away. I could not make myself care.

“Please, Varia! You were my ride or die,” I said.

The room was very quiet. The wrist had stopped moving.

I held her red gaze with everything I had, like someone who had identified the only thing that mattered and refused to look away.

The red changed.

Blue.

And from that blue: a tear.