A Vow of Steel and Flame (A Vow of Steel and Flame #1)

Chapter 1

Chapter One

Smoke stings the back of my throat. The meager coals I’ve banked through the night barely cut the chill, their light flickering weakly against the cave walls.

Water drips from somewhere in the dark—steady, patient, reminding me that dawn is near.

I stretch, the ache in my limbs my only companion.

The pelts I brought soften the stone, but it’s still a far cry from a bed.

I chose this.

Leaving the comforts of village life, the cold and hunger still feel the safer of choices.

When daylight finally creeps through the narrow mouth of the cave, I step outside.

Dew clings to the moss beneath my boots, and a pale sun washes the forest in silver.

I draw my cloak tight across my shoulders and breathe in the scent of damp earth and pine.

Peace—honest and quiet—settles in my chest.

Even in my youth, this is where I felt most myself.

I’d run through these hills wild and free, unbothered by rules or watchful eyes.

Some might have called it spirited—but no, it was something deeper.

The pull of the earth beneath my feet, the whisper of wind through the trees, the quiet hum of life in every leaf and stone.

My fondness for gathering herbs and wandering too long beyond the fields branded me an oddity.

The forest made sense to me in ways people never did.

I’d sat beside the other children through lessons, tended house and chores like any good daughter, but the moment I could, I ran here.

My father busied himself endlessly, fleeing the grief of losing my mother too soon.

They said I had her eyes—a blue-green like the sky before a storm.

Perhaps that’s why he could never look directly at me.

These woods, in all their vastness, were far less lonely than a house filled by two.

The hidden cave, the winding stream, the fields that burst with berries—each place has called to me long before I ever fled.

I’ve stowed a few things here over the years: a spare cloak and tanned hide for cold days, a tinderbox tucked high from the damp, a pouch of dried fruit and nuts for the days my wandering stretched longer than planned.

It seems I’d been preparing to leave long before I ever admitted it.

By midday the trees filter sunlight into shifting gold.

My hair catches some of it, dulled by soot and soil.

I brush away fallen leaves at the base of an old oak and gather a handful of mushrooms, dusting them clean against my worn leathers.

The snares I set hang empty, but there’s still jerky in my satchel—enough to see me through.

Kneeling by the stream, I cup the flow in my hands.

It cools my throat and thoughts alike. My reflection ripples back at me from the cascading water—a face both familiar and changed.

My cheeks are hollow; I’m thinner than I ever was in the village.

Foraging is far less reliable than even the harshest markets had been.

Yet I no longer carry the pallor I once wore.

My skin is sun-kissed, and in this place I feel a harmony I never knew before.

The uneasy stares and careless whispers of others have given way to the wind on my face, the rustle of branches overhead.

I fall easily into a steady rhythm—the warmth of day yielding to cool, almost gentle evenings. But as the seasons begin to shift, I steel my resolve. Winter will be harsh, but still less cruel than the life I left behind.

It’s been months since I turned my back on that world.

It was hard enough always feeling as though I didn’t belong.

When vague unease sharpened into hostility, I knew it was only a matter of time before things came to a head.

At the first vicious rumors of my being a witch, I began planning my departure.

When the threats turned outward and could no longer be denied—I left.

I close my eyes and will the visions away, steadying myself in the forest’s quiet. Birds call above me, wind caresses my face. Peace.

SNAP.

The sound shatters my solitude. A mere twig broken underfoot and my hand flies to the blade at my side as my eyes snap open.

A man stands before me, moving with cautious calm.

He lifts a hand, palm open—a peace offering.

“I mean no harm,” he says gently. “I only hoped for a drink.” He nods toward the stream where I’ve been lost in thought.

Despite his towering, lean frame, he doesn’t seem a threat.

There’s a softness in his eyes. No—not softness—pain.

Tightness in my chest and muscles still at the ready, I give a curt nod and slide the knife back into its sheath. He approaches, keeping a respectful distance. I begin to feel my guard lower, just so.

Wisdom, sorrow, and strength seem carved into him.

He would stand taller than any man in the village if he straightened his spine.

As he bends to drink, sable hair streaked with silver falls across his face.

He glances sideways, catching me studying him.

Wiping droplets from his chin, he leans back, granting me space to take his measure.

Something in him pulls at my mind, though I can’t place it. My breath catches. His half-smile, the tilt of his head—it’s as though he already knows.

“You’re… you’re—”

“I believe your kind call us Immortal.” His quiet laugh carries more weariness than pride. “The word never fit. We can die. We bleed. Yes, we heal faster than most, but immortality?” He shakes his head. “Not as you think it.”

Legends flood my mind—old tales of magic torn from the world by the gods, leaving only strength and long years behind. I’d known them as little more than whispers told by firelight, half-feared, half-dismissed. To the village, such beings weren’t wonder but menace.

Questions clamor at my tongue, but I swallow them.

His eyes—green, dulled by fatigue—speak of burdens heavier than any answer.

Gray streaks thread his long hair, catching sunlight in a way that feels almost unearthly.

The lines on his face read not of age but of a life lived in all its ache and grace.

To pry would be cruelty. I know too well the sting of uninvited stares.

So I soften.

He didn’t have to offer me anything—yet with my jaw surely slack at my realization of this otherness a moment ago, he met me with a genteel kindness. I could berate myself for my brash reaction, but instead choose to offer something simple in return.

“My name is Mira,” I say, extending a hand, my caution eased by the sorrow I read there.

“Eryndor,” he replies, his grip steady, his smile inviting me to mirror it with my own.

What begins in wary silence eases into a rhythm of quiet company.

I untie the small bundle in my lap and offer him the berries I’d gathered earlier.

He accepts a few, then points out a patch of fever leaf growing nearby, his tone more teacher than stranger.

We continue like that—trading small truths and longer silences, a conversation carried as much in gesture as in words.

The sharp edges of caution dull until his presence feels less like intrusion and more like recognition.

Minutes stretch into what might be hours. Sunlight shifts through the canopy in slow arcs, shadows lengthening and softening again.

There’s no tension between us. Two kindred spirits wandering the same wood. The stream murmurs between us—a rare place of communion in a land forgotten to all, save us.

He studies me at last: my tattered cloak, worn boots, the telltale marks of a rough life lived. “What on earth are you doing out here, child?” he asks, voice a blend of curiosity and concern.

I straighten, not in defiance but in quiet pride. “I never belonged there—in the village. When I lost my father…” I pause, more in reflection than grief. “It wasn’t worth staying any longer. It wasn’t safe. Here—” I lift my face to the wind and filtered light “—here, I feel at home.”

I tell him of the forest, my refuge, the ways I’ve learned to survive its moods. In turn, Eryndor confides that he too once sought sanctuary when the place he called home no longer welcomed him.

“Were you cast aside too?” I ask carefully, wondering what could exile a man who had lived for centuries.

“In a way, yes,” he says, then adds, almost tenderly, “but perhaps not for reasons you might think. I left… for love.”

“Love?” The word feels foreign on my tongue. “Why would that force you from the life you’d always known?”

“To call it forbidden might be too strong,” he muses, “but there was no place for her in my world, nor I in hers.”

“A rival court?” I venture, straining to picture what his world might be like.

“Not quite.” His mouth curves faintly. “We sit now in a place between realms—hers, mine, and yours.”

“Mortal?”

He nods. “It’s not unheard of. But those of us who choose to spend a mortal lifetime with the one we love do so knowing we’ll never belong anywhere but with each other. Knowing that loss is inevitable.”

Bittersweet sorrow drifts across his expression. It’s a look I recognize—akin to the one my father wore on the rare occasions when ale loosened his grief enough to speak of my mother. But where my father’s sorrow had been a wound, this man, this immortal, wore his like a shroud.

“I would not trade a moment of it,” he murmurs, more to memory than to me.

As the light shifts again, he regards me with new intent. “We called these woods home once—our peace in a world that had none. Anywhere with her would have been sanctuary.”

Something stirs in me at the warmth threaded through his words. I barely notice my fingertips drifting through the stream, the water moving as though drawn by my touch.

“Decades we lived quietly here. Decades longer I mourned. Our cottage walls grew too cold without her. I can no longer bear to be in the place where we built a life that has been too silent for too long.” His voice fades, then returns, softer.

“It would be a shame for it to go to waste—the cottage, I mean. I left it as it was, should another ever need it. You seem a worthy steward, for however long you might have need.”

My breath catches. A cottage—hidden, untouched, mine to tend.

“I couldn’t possibly—”

“It’s time I move on. I do not know what my path holds, but it’s on the road ahead, not in the past.” He looks out to the horizon, and I feel a kinship between us. Each leaving the place we once called home, each seeking refuge in the quiet of these woods.

He clears his throat, looking back at me.

“I will not return, and you would not be disturbed,” he assures me.

“Few know of its existence.” When I stop protesting, he gestures downstream.

“Follow the water until the crooked falls, then turn east. Stay the course until the air smells of night jasmine. Then you’ll know you’re near. Just beyond it, you’ll find the place.”

Kindness—pure, unbidden—floods through me, sharp enough to sting. “I don’t know how I could ever repay you.”

He smiles faintly. “I ask nothing in return, only that you pass such grace forward if ever the chance arises.”

We linger for a breath longer before parting. He repeats the directions, ensuring I remember. As I shoulder my pack, he lifts a hand in farewell, and I do the same.

I watch until his figure disappears among the trees, his steps fading into the hush of dusk. The forest feels changed—still wild, yet no longer empty. Somewhere ahead, a glade waits.

For the first time, the word home doesn’t taste like longing.