On Broken Bonds (Shield of the Gods #1)

Chapter 1

Nyx

The trail begins at the grain storage, a thin but unmistakable line of barley seeds spilling across the flagstones in a golden thread. Like whoever was stealing from me had a hole in their pocket, or was simply too bold, or too stupid, to care that they were leaving a path back to themselves.

Honestly, I’m not sure which possibility makes me angrier.

I crouch down, pressing two fingers into the dirt just beyond the storage house door. The seeds are recent. And there are a lot of them, which means this is not a hungry field mouse helping herself to a few mouthfuls. This is someone walking out of my stores with a full sack.

“Finally,” I breathe, a small, grim smile pulling at the corner of my mouth.

The barley stores have been coming up short for three weeks now.

It wasn’t enough to be certain at first. There were a few scoopfuls here, a measurement that didn’t quite add up there.

I’d wondered if I was simply miscounting, if exhaustion had begun to affect my arithmetic in a meaningful way.

It wouldn’t surprise me. The gods know I’m not sleeping the way I should.

But then I started marking the bags. Started keeping careful record. And last night, when I checked the tallies by candlelight, the numbers were undeniable.

Someone was stealing from me.

From us.

I stand up, following the trail of seeds across the yard with careful, deliberate steps, the same way Ivor taught me to track rabbits when I was small, before everything went sideways.

Before my parents died. Before the crops started failing.

Before managing the entirety of our holdings became my responsibility as barely a teenager, an age at which most young women of my station would be worrying about which gown to wear to whose dinner party.

Not me. I’m crouching in dirt, tracking grain thieves. I’m twenty-three years of age now, but life hasn’t gotten any easier.

The seeds lead me past the vegetable garden, which is struggling this year even more than it struggled last year, the soil thin and pale as old parchment.

Past the well, where a bucket sits forgotten, its rope fraying.

Past the low stone wall that marks the edge of the kitchen yard, and into the long field beyond it.

Our lands stretch out before me in the early morning light.

It’s beautiful, in the way that broken things can still be beautiful.

The hills roll gently in the distance. The sky is the particular shade of gold that comes just before the sun properly arrives, and everything is soft and hazy and quiet.

I try to see it the way my father did when he would stand at his study window looking out. When I asked what he was doing he would say simply, “Watching over it.” As though our land were a living thing that needed tending by sight alone.

“I wish you were here,” I say quietly, to no one. To both of them. “I really could use the advice.”

But they aren’t, and wishing does nothing except make my chest ache. What I need is practical action. I need to find this grain thief, recover what I can, and figure out how to make the stores last through the winter.

Which is already going to be a feat, given the state of this harvest.

Given the state of every harvest, since Valtor decided to curse us.

I’ve never said that out loud. It’s not something you just say.

Oh yes, the great Overseer of all realms has had it out for my family for years, since my mother refused to warm his bed.

Happy anniversary to us. But I think it, with a bitterness so deep-rooted now that I sometimes forget what it felt like before I carried it.

I think about what our lands looked like when I was very young, when the fields were green and full, when the storage houses overflowed, when dozens of servants worked our massive lands.

When we never once worried about whether there would be enough.

My sister, Lyra, doesn’t remember those years clearly. She was too small. But I do.

I follow the trail of seeds into the lower field, and my jaw tightens when I see how sparse the crop is here.

Some of the stalks have barely reached knee-height.

We planted in good faith, tilled the soil as best we could, prayed to every god who might conceivably listen.

And this is what we have. Row after row of struggling, half-starved barley.

Barely enough.

If I can’t find a solution, and if this winter is as bad as I think it’s going to be, then I, Lyra, Hilda, Ivor, and everyone who still depends on our holdings will be in serious trouble.

Starvation is not an abstract worry any longer.

It is a very real, approaching thing, and I feel the weight of it in my shoulders every morning when I wake.

I’m twenty-three years old. My mother used to tell me that twenty-three was the very beginning of adulthood, that no one really knew anything before thirty. I would very much like to know nothing right now.

The trail of seeds winds on, and I follow it, down through the lower field and along the edge of the old orchard, the trees bare of anything useful this year. The path angles downward, and I realize with a small jolt of surprise that it’s leading toward the watering hole.

Of course. It makes a certain sense. The watering hole sits at the lowest point of our land, sheltered on three sides by a stand of old willows and a thick bank of reeds.

Private. If someone wanted to leave with stolen spoils without being seen, the watering hole would be the natural place to pass through.

I pick up my pace, moving quietly, and step down off the path and into the softer ground at the edge of the reeds.

And stop.

The trail of seeds just… ends. The ground here is soft and damp. Prints, human and other animals, are everywhere, but the seeds simply stop at the edge of the water as though whoever dropped them simply waded in and disappeared.

I lean forward, squinting, looking for where the trail might pick up on the other side of the bank.

Then I hear voices.

Male voices, coming from beyond the reeds to my left. Heading this way. Coming down the hill from the direction of the east field, which means I have approximately four seconds to make a decision.

I make a terrible one.

I step directly into the reeds.

The water is immediately and aggressively cold.

It closes around my ankles, soaking through my slippers in an instant.

The ground beneath my feet is a treacherous landscape of slick rocks, which I discover the hard way as my left foot slides sideways and I grab a fistful of reed stems to save myself, heart lurching wildly.

Right. Fine. I am hiding in a freezing pond, in a nice gown, on rocks apparently designed to murder me. This is fine. I will catch the grain thief and it will all be worth it.

I arrange myself as best I can among the reeds, which are tall enough to conceal me if I keep still, which I absolutely intend to do. The ground squelches unpleasantly beneath my feet with every tiny adjustment. Something slimy touches my ankle and I firmly choose not to think about what it is.

The voices grow closer. I peer through the reeds.

Three of my farmhands come down the hill, easy as you please, their work done for the morning by the look of them.

Edric is dark-haired, broad across the shoulders, and has a slow smile I have occasionally caught myself noticing from a professional distance.

Bram is taller, fair-haired, with the kind of jaw that belongs on a decorative statue rather than a wheat field.

And Alistair, whose eyes are so green they seem almost unnatural, and who has the endearing habit of talking with his hands.

I have always had a perfectly polite, perfectly appropriate, perfectly correct relationship with these three men since we all grew up in the general vicinity of each other, while their parents were working our farm.

They work the fields. I manage the holdings.

We exchange courteous words about the weather and the crops and nothing else whatsoever, because I am the lady of this house and they are… They’re taking off their shirts.

I freeze.

All three of them Are removing their shirts in the easy, unselfconscious way of men who have absolutely no idea there is a woman standing twelve feet away in the reeds.

They are simply… undressing. Because of course they are.

We’re at the watering hole. They’ve come to wash off after the morning’s work.

The shirts go. Then, they reach for their pants.

I clap a hand over my eyes, then realize that covering my eyes means I might slip, and slipping means falling, and falling means being discovered. Carefully, I lower my hand.

I look at the reeds in the water. I think about the accounts ledger. I think about literally anything else. I am a responsible and dignified young woman with a great many pressing concerns.

Still, my gaze drifts back. Because, how can it not? I’ve never had an opportunity to… I’ve never seen a man, at least not like this.

All three of them are now entirely, completely, without a single stitch of clothing between them, wading into the watering hole. Their bodies are tanned and muscular and impossible to ignore.

My cheeks are on fire. My entire face has become a furnace. As I glance away again, I try to think of what a smart woman would do in this situation. Some small, traitorous part of my brain points out that this is perhaps the most educational thing that has happened to me in years.

I look.

Edric is compact. Everything about Edric is, as it turns out, built to scale. He has broad shoulders, a broad chest, and broad everything. Just broad. All the way down. It’s short and stout and rather like a very determined thumb. Is that how it’s supposed to look?

My brain files this information away without my permission.