Vows of Blood and Deception (The Hirathean Path #2)

Chapter 1

One moment it feels like everything you’ve ever wanted is within reach.

The future you hoped for. The love you never believed was possible.

The life you fought for, there at the edge of your fingertips.

And then you reach out, certain it’s finally yours.

You grasp hold, only to open your clenched hand and find there is nothing left in your palm but dust and ash.

I can’t go back into the ball – the ball held in my honour as the gifted.

I survived the Retterheld. More – I fucking won it.

Me. Rose Kultavaris. Lady Rose Kultavaris.

I’ve been given a divine gift from the Great Goddess Etta herself, and I have never felt more ruined. My magic is restored, my title, my wealth … but what of my happiness?

Kay is furious with me. Kyor has walked away from me. Llin is dead. I am cripplingly alone.

I dreamed of this moment so many times. In the deprivation of the slums, I fantasised about this very heartbeat pulsing with magic. Yet now that it is here, I realise the depth of my foolishness. Wealth and magic may keep your stomach full and your skin warm, but they do nothing for your heart.

And mine is broken. Shattered beyond repair.

Kyor chose his crown over me – over us. The love I believed we shared was nothing more than an illusion. A twisted game from a twisted prince.

Snow drifts around me as I stumble away from the palace, only half-aware of the direction I am heading in – towards the courtiers’ arc.

It’s where my family home once stood. It must be there still, and if so, then it should be mine now.

Everything taken from me was to be returned.

That was what I asked the Goddess for, and as she made good on my magic, I have no reason to doubt she will fulfil my wish.

Shuddering against the icy winds that bite at my skin, I stride through the High Hold, keeping my head low as occasional stragglers make their way to the ball. Once I am there, once I am home, I will let myself feel the magnitude of the betrayals that have torn my heart to shreds.

‘Lady Rose,’ an uncertain voice calls after me. ‘Lady Rose, may I speak with you for a moment?’

I pause but don’t turn around. Gods, I’m done for tonight. So done. I cannot bear to hear more false words of congratulations at my astounding feat, all while the wealthy wolves of Wrohelm share surreptitious looks, trying to work out why I am the one Etta chose.

But the young woman speaks again. ‘Lady Rose, you are going home, are you not? I’m here to accompany you, m’lady.’

The deference in her tone and the way she says ‘m’lady’ tells me this isn’t a member of the court, so I turn.

The woman is of a similar age to me but dressed in the plain black-and-white smock of the palace housemaids, with the addition of a large rucksack on her back.

My breath quickens. Someone in the same uniform spoke to me at length earlier this evening, and the drawing she showed me was only the start of the heartache I’ve endured during what should have been my celebration. And I refuse to endure more. ‘If you’re here for Thea—’ I begin.

‘Thea? No,’ the maid interrupts, shaking her head. ‘I … I know nobody of that name, m’lady. No, no, I’m here because the priestesses sent me. I carry your possessions from the Retterheld as well.’ She gestures to the bag on her back. ‘I am yours.’

‘Mine?’ I question, only for her to dip into a curtsey.

‘Your housemaid.’

‘You mean you’re to work for me?’ I say, finally making sense of what she is telling me.

‘If it is agreeable to you?’ Her teeth worry her lower lip as though she is concerned I will send her back to tell the priestesses she failed to do as they requested of her.

And part of me is tempted to. My life is ashes on the wind, a few smouldering embers in the grey that may well catch and burn anything they drift too close to.

I do not need anyone to bear witness to that.

But this young woman doesn’t know that. She has merely been tasked with a job.

Possibly even chosen by the Goddess herself.

‘What is your name?’ I ask her.

‘Summer, m’lady.’ She curtseys again as she speaks.

I will need someone to help me with the house, even if I am to live there alone. The thought causes a deep throb to burn behind my ribs, and tears I refuse to shed in public threaten to show again.

‘Call me Rose,’ I reply, the decision as quick as the turn of my heel. ‘Come, we will go there now.’

We continue through the courtiers’ arc in silence. Every step is a trial in its own right, one in which I am forced to smother this searing emptiness that fills me. This isn’t what the return to my family home was supposed to be like. Me, alone with a maid about whom I know nothing but her name.

I dreamed that Kay would be by my side, as well as my friends. That there would be drinks, dancing, and laughter filling the air. I imagined a feeling like everything had suddenly fallen into place.

Victory was never about erasing the losses I had endured.

I knew before I entered the Retterheld that even the Goddess couldn’t bring my murdered baby brother, Florian, back to me.

Couldn’t bring my parents back. But it was meant to feel different from this.

It was meant to feel like life could finally begin.

That’s not how I feel at all.

It’s only when my feet stop, my body rigid and unmoving, that I look up and find myself outside the stone facade of my childhood home.

The windows are dark with dust and age. The moss on the roof is denser too.

But so much of it is the same. The wrought-iron gate.

The carved filigree patterns etched on the door.

And even though the plants that filled the window ledges are wilted and yellow, the pots are still there. My mother’s pots. This is my home.

There is no light inside it, no sense that anyone has occupied it since my family was forcefully evicted all those years ago.

I stare at the lock on the door. I have no key. And yet, no sooner than the thought forms than I catch sight of something glittering atop one of the planters. A key, which I could have sworn wasn’t there even a heartbeat ago.

‘Thank you, Etta,’ I murmur as I pick up the heavy brass item and slip it into the lock. For what little it is worth, the Goddess has certainly held up her side of the bargain.

My breath stutters as I stand on the threshold of my home, key in place. This is what I wanted. To return here. So why am I quavering? Because without my family it will never be a home, merely a house.

A house filled with memories that may yet destroy me.

Steeling myself against whatever waits for me inside, I draw in a long breath, turn the key, and step over the threshold.

The hallway is dim and cold, surfaces layered with dust and grime, and yet somehow it is exactly as I remember it.

The green tapestries on the walls. The golden chandeliers.

The curved windows letting in light from the High Hold and beyond.

It is four stories of luxury and even includes an orangery with more plants than anywhere else in Wrohelm, excluding the Goddess’s Garden, of course.

All that is missing is my family.

Closing my eyes, I inhale so deeply it is as though I am trying to pull the memories from the woodwork, to force laughter and songs and aromas of cooking and brews from the very bricks of the building.

But as a single tear trickles down my cheek, I face the fact that even the Goddess cannot grant me that.

Summer is respectfully silent as I reacquaint myself with my old home, running my fingers along the wooden wall panels.

When I feel a chink in the wood, the memory hits as hard as the clanging of metal all those years ago.

I was sparring with my father. We were only meant to use wooden swords in the house, but Mother was working – healing – and so we took the risk.

Father always had a sixth sense of when she would return home, giving us time to hide the evidence of our shenanigans.

On this occasion, though, the damage was too great to repair, and Mother chastised us both sternly. No swords in the house.

A sad laugh threatens to form in my throat, but before it can, Summer breaks the silence.

‘M’lady, should I prepare you something to eat?’ she suggests, wiping her hands on her pinafore as if she is readying herself to work. ‘Unless you ate at the ball?’

I did not. It’s been over a day since I last ate, though I haven’t noticed any hunger. It’s not a surprise. I know better than most how heartbreak and devastation can destroy a person’s appetite.

However, now that food has been mentioned, hunger pangs bloom as a dull ache beneath my ribs.

‘Some food would be good, thank you,’ I say gratefully. ‘Come. I’ll show you to the kitchen.’

At some point I’ll have to give her a tour of the entire house, but even showing Summer the kitchen, the heart of the home where my mother would brew and cook, where we would eat our meals – or in Florian’s case, mush it into his highchair – feels somehow wrong without Kay present.

As I continue down the hallway, another memory surfaces: Kay riding upon my back, using me not as a horse, but as a dire wolf; the sound of my father’s familiar belly laughs rolling through the air as he bounced a giggling Florian in his arms, while Kay struggled to remain on my increasingly bucking frame.

In the end, Kay had marched off sulking because I wasn’t being a nice wolfy, too focused on making our brother laugh.

Perhaps that was true. I can’t even remember now. But I wish I could.

‘It’s a little worn and dusty…’ Summer mutters as she looks around, assessing her new place of employment. ‘But nowhere near as dirty as it should be.’

She’s not wrong. Though it may not be filthy, everything is on the wrong side of old.