1. Oath
Oath
Mariana
The punch was a bright sunburst juddering through my cheekbone. I licked my teeth and spat a glob of bright red blood onto the mossy cobblestones.
Then I lifted my chin. “Tell me how you really feel.”
Mist shrouded the ruins of Kelebraim-on-Gray in a silvery haze, obscuring the crumbling spires and the surrounding pines. Converging with the steam rising off the nearby geothermal pools, the fog swirled and eddied. The air was humid, but the rain was icy, needling my sensitive skin.
Heris pointed at his neck. It was weathered and wrinkled, still ringed with the faded black tattoo of his retired Oath. “This was supposed to be gone. Your kowtowing to that bitch alchemist was a waste.”
I balled my fists, feeling the rigid muscles of my forearms strain against the grip of the two knights who held me captive. “The potion wasn’t for you, and you know it,” I said. “It was for the—”
Heris flicked his wrist, and one of my captors gave me a swift punch to the stomach.
I doubled over, coughing, a dribble of pink saliva dropping onto the toe of my boot.
I hissed through the pain, gritting my teeth until my molars squeaked.
I was no stranger to suffering—especially by Heris’s command—but wounding me wouldn’t help his cause.
Or mine.
“I did as you asked,” I gritted out. Not a plea, but a reminder.
Heris bent forward, peering at me with his one remaining eye; in the dim gray light of morning, his empty socket looked like a bottomless pit. “I did not ask for you to gallivant with gold brutes and academics. I ordered you to supply us with a cure.”
In addition to serving Heris’s whims and carrying out the tenets of my duty—which were to hunt and kill monsters and keep the secret of their existence—I’d spent years lending my talents to Professor Phina Farkept’s research.
I hardly considered gathering samples from deadly geothermal pools and retrieving monster blood—on my own—for alchemical experiments as gallivanting, but semantics were the least of my concerns.
“And I supplied that cure,” I said pointedly. “You’re just angry that it wasn’t for you.”
I saw the next punch coming and braced my stomach.
Talking back never deescalated Heris’s tirades, but I couldn’t help myself.
Thankfully, the contact wasn’t as jarring as the hits before.
Brom, who stood on my right and had been doling out my punishment, was becoming a little halfhearted in his violence.
The four of us were alone in the former town square, which was no more than a large circle of broken, mossy cobblestones and the toppled remnants of a fountain.
Faint sounds of rebels rousing from slumber drifted from the broken windows of the bordering buildings.
We’d been out here long enough that my hair was soaked from the mist and plastered to my face, my tunic clinging to my skin, heavy and damp.
“Are we done here?” I complained. “Your lackeys seem to be tiring of this.”
The man on my left, Castor, threw a punch to my gut that had me spluttering.
The sickest part of this was that all of us—Heris, myself, and my fellow knights—wanted the same thing: freedom from our Oaths.
Not just retirement—as Heris had already achieved—but the complete removal of the magical leash.
Because even after a sentence as a Knight of the Order of the Valiant ended—if the sentence was indeed one that would end—an Oath still bound the individual to keep its secrets.
And none of us considered being tied to the Lord of Fenrir forever as a true form of liberty.
I understood Heris’s frustration. When former Valiant Knight Idris Togren emerged from the Well of Fate without his Oath tattoo—entirely free—we had all hoped that we, too, could dissolve our Oaths in the magical pool.
And we had all been devastated to discover that our Oaths remained, that there was something else at play.
Something that even Idris himself could not explain.
After that, Heris had sent me back to the alchemists, who’d had me race all over the territory in service of their research to find a cure for the abominations: former knights called Morta.
An unlikely apprentice had solved that riddle two months ago, and—thankfully for us—had kept the news from our corrupt Lord.
But apparently my assistance in the discovery was not enough for Heris.
Nor were the numerous bottles of cure that I’d brought back for his cause.
I shouldn’t’ve been surprised; my efforts were never enough for him. That’s how he kept his hooks in me.
“Have you even tried administering the potion?” I wheezed.
The pain in my abdomen was radiating outward like a hot coal, my touch magic making it glow each time I inhaled.
There was a real possibility that Castor had cracked one of my ribs, but I forced a bloody, taunting smile. “Or have you failed in your endeavors?”
Castor snarled, clearly insulted by my (quite accurate) insinuation that the majority of Heris’s faction of the Valiant were incapable of felling a Morta without a considerable team effort. Let alone managing to get a potion into the abomination’s bloodstream.
Heris wiped a hand over his thin lips. “The plan remains in motion.”
The plan: cure the cursed former knights running loose in the Western Wood, rally them, then use our combined forces to usurp and ideally murder the Lord of Fenrir.
“Then why am I being punished?” I asked. “I brought ten bottles of cure back from my source. It’s not my fault you can’t—”
Brom reared back his fist, winding up for a punch that would no doubt shatter the rib Castor had already cracked.
I closed my eyes this time, mentally berating myself for my inability to shut the fuck up—even when I knew I was right.
I’d served Heris for the better part of twenty-four years, ever since I was knighted as a child and he took me under his wing.
I knew better than to call out his faulty logic, to push back against his sour moods.
It was better to comply. To agree. To take it.
The problem was, Heris had chipped away at me over the years, carving me into something that was all jagged edges.
I dragged in a shallow breath, tensing for the coming blow.
Curse the Fates for giving me touch magic.
While most touch magicians could increase their sensitivity to sensations at will—giving us a reputation as lustful heathens—my magic didn’t work that way.
It was never soothed, never dulled, never something I could snuff out.
I felt everything at maximum intensity all the time.
Every punch.
Every split lip.
Every hot-oil splatter of monster blood.
Every pebble under my bedroll.
Every pinprick of rain.
Every drag of my wet tunic across my skin.
You are a sword, I told myself in anticipation of Brom’s strike. Steel does not feel.
But the punch never came.
I opened my eyes to see Heris’s back to me, facing the trees beyond the square.
A figure was emerging from the gloom, a black silhouetted shape.
Castor and Brom still gripped my arms, holding me in place, but even they were distracted.
I glanced down at Brom’s boot, wondering if it was worth stomping on his toes to wrench myself free.
But I, too, was curious about the newcomer. After all, the Valiant’s rebel hideout—located in the ruins of an ancient city deep in the monster-infested Western Wood, surrounded by treacherous geothermal pools that each possessed a different and terrible magical effect—didn’t often receive visitors.
But this was no stranger. He wore the customary black breastplate of a Valiant Knight, with leather pauldrons strapped to his big shoulders like the interlocking scales of a snake.
His red beard was braided and studded with tiny silver cuffs; when he exited the shadows of the surrounding pines, his beard glimmered, giving his identity away.
“Ivan,” Heris greeted, blocking my view.
“Mariana here?” Ivan called.
“Unfortunately,” I muttered.
Ivan leaned to one side, peering past Heris to see me. “Oh, I thought you were a prisoner.”
Am I not? I thought. Though I knew I could take Castor and Brom if I had to, freeing myself of their firm grips wouldn’t make me any less captive. My whole existence was a cage.
“We were in a meeting,” Heris said.
Ivan’s attention skipped over my bloodied mouth and rumpled clothing with the efficiency that only a sight magician could display. “Apologies for…”—his eyes rested on my face for one more beat, then flicked back to Heris—“interrupting.” He held a scroll aloft. “I come bearing a summons.”
“For her?” Heris asked.
“The Maiden Morta Killer, herself,” Ivan confirmed.
I had a bit of a reputation among the Valiant that had led to the unfortunate nickname. Heris hated it even more than I did: it was a reminder that though I was a subordinate, I possessed a degree of power. Skill beyond that of my master.
No one in Heris’s faction used that nickname, but Ivan was not a member of our gang; he roamed, serving everyone in our Order at will, mostly to deliver messages.
Heris glanced back at me with a snarl, then jerked his chin at Brom and Castor. They released me at once, and I stumbled, realizing belatedly that they’d been holding me up. Fucking shameful.
Rolling my shoulders, I ignored the bonfire of pain in my middle and strode over to Ivan to retrieve the small roll of paper.
The rich orange ribbon was deliciously silky under my fingertips, so out of place in the rugged and ruined wild; I slid it off the scroll and tucked it into my pocket as I scanned the paper.
The summons was short and to the point. I was to report to the capital to assist the Order of the Mighty in an unnamed task.
Heris swiped the paper from my grasp, his frown deepening as he read. “Fuck,” he finally swore, rubbing his stubbly jaw. “Fuck, you can’t.”
“Not sure I have a choice,” I said, taking the scroll back to read it all over again. “It was written by the Major of the Mighty and signed by the Lord himself.”
“Ignoring a summons is considered desertion of one’s Oath,” Ivan said, pointing out what we already knew. Then, more sheepishly, he added, “To ensure your compliance, I was tasked to accompany you.”
I sighed—then cringed at my aching ribs. Heris was seething beside me, but even he had no say in a summons from the Lord.
“What could they possibly want with her?” Brom asked.
“Thanks, Brom,” I quipped.
“I wasn’t told much,” Ivan said, “but I heard a rumor they want to investigate the situation in Yar.”
“Nothing left to investigate,” I replied flatly.
The small cottage town of Yar-on-Gray had been overrun by Morta earlier this year in a massacre that the Valiant hadn’t been able to contain.
“They see it as a failure of our Order,” Heris spat. “They’ll use it to make a case for our disbandment.”
Castor whistled low. Brom shifted where he stood, loose pebbles grinding under his boots.
Ivan took in the towers of crumbling stone that we’d made our home.
The only thing worse than being a Valiant Knight was for our Order to be dissolved, effectively sending us all back to the dungeon—or execution.
Nobody volunteered to take this Oath; it was a sentence, and if the Lord of Fenrir no longer believed we were useful, he’d have no trouble doling out a darker Fate for all of us criminals-turned-knights.
But I knew the Major of the Order of the Mighty; even if Lord Haron ordered this investigation, if my summons came from Major Farkept, there had to be other factors at play.
“We don’t know what it means yet,” I said, meeting Heris’s eye. “But I can find out. Find leverage. Perhaps”—I swiped my tongue along my split lip, tasting the blood on the swollen flesh—“I can find us an advantage.”
“Your optimism is foolish, Mariana,” Heris scolded, but then he smiled, revealing a set of crooked yellow teeth. “Leverage isn’t found, it’s made.”
I crumpled the summons in my fist. Heris might’ve been a prick—another leash I couldn’t gnaw through—but we were working toward the same goal. It was important for me to remember that.
“Then I’ll make leverage,” I promised.
Heris rested a hand on my shoulder, almost dotingly. He was much taller than me, rangy and aging, but his grip was strong. “Mariana, my secret weapon.” His sweet tone made me shiver. “When we win this, I’ll set you free.”
I had no choice but to believe him. Heris might’ve been a villain, but he took care of his weapons.
Honed them. Sharpened them. Kept them shiny.
Blades could cut both ways, but I’d learned long ago that my usefulness to him could cut a path to safety, too—especially alone among the territory’s most ruthless criminals.
“Need time to gather your things?” Ivan asked me.
“Already packed,” I told him, sliding out of Heris’s grasp. “I’ll get my horse. I don’t care to linger.”
You are a sword, I repeated to myself once again, heading in the direction of the stables without so much as another glance at my fellow knights. Steel does not feel.