Page 3 of Oathborn
Through cracked lips, Maqui muttered a curse. Her thoughts bubbled up, fury at the Queen, at every meaningless Oath she’d sworn.
“Maqui!” Tivre yelled. “Your Oath.”
Yes. Her Oath. That magic, binding her, kept her trapped to the Queen’s horrid will. It could be broken, but at what cost? Torment, unyielding pain, anguish. But could anything be worse than dying without ever knowing a moment of freedom? Would her whole life be lived in a cage?
She found her courage, and her voice. “Damn the Queen. Damn her orders.”
Her Oath shattered. A fever ignited within, and her limbs trembled. Pain, unlike anything she’d ever known overtook her body. Still, she’d done it. It no longer held her in thrall. Even as every vein now filled with fire, her heart did not beat in time with the Oath.
Desperately, her fingers tightened on the metal tags. “Tivre. Save the soldier once I’m gone.”
“It’s a fatal wound?” Tivre’s voice trembled.
“Yes.” She’d seen enough others die to be sure of that fact.
“Then the Accords will end. As swiftly as they began.” Bitterness clung to his words. “We bound the Accords to two magical clauses.No Oathborn fae shall kill a human, unless they trespass onto fae lands. Unless it is in self-defense, no human shall kill a fae.”
Here she lay, an Oathborn fae, dying to a human bullet, the first to fall in peacetime, and the last.
Unless… her eyes went to Tivre’s tear-streaked face. Poor child. She would ask a great task of him. “Do what you must. To protect the Accords.”
“I can’t,” Tivre whispered.
“You have to.” Her eyes flicked over to the soldier. Private Bridger. What a strange first name. “And save him.”
Tivre nodded. “I’ll get the silverbane once…”
Once I am dead.
If it were his magic that killed her, then the Accord’s covenant would remain. Maqui closed her eyes. How wretched war was, that even peace required death to keep it.
“Tell my son I love him.” Desperate to show Tivre she did not hold this against him, she reached out, fumbling to find his hand with hers. “And Tivre, promise me you will always protect this peace.”
Chapter one
Tivre
Ten years later
On the fae isles, dawn either came too early, or not at all. Much like many other elements of a fae’s life, nothing existed in moderation. Summer sunlight lasted far longer than twelve hours, but wintertime brought frigid, endless nights.
Tivre preferred the winter, with its darkness, its laziness, and, best of all, its lack of early mornings. He’d slept the better part of the past few months. Slept, or did things that involved falling asleep shortly after. Now, spring was slowly taking hold of the isles and now, utterly offensive sunlight poured through his window. It filtered over his bookshelves, blankets, and the scattered stacks of parchment, making returning to sleep impossible.
Not that sleep ever came easily to Tivre, not without some combination of exhaustion and pleasure. Last night, despite his best attempts to distract himself with a lovely new acquaintance, his dreams replayed the day Maqui had died. She’d fallen a decade ago, as humans counted the years, and yet, his grief still remained. Like a bruise on an arm, it had a way of jarring Tivre’s entire mood at the most inopportune times.
Tivre despised grief. It was messy and confusing and nonlinear, popping back up at the most inconvenient times, long after he’d thought he mastered it.
Now awake, he padded across his room, feet sinking into the lush carpet, and reached the phonograph resting atop a stack of books. The Rhydonian invention looked like a large, brass lily-flower connected to a base that held a motorized turntable. One gleaming black disc sat upon it. With a snap, Tivre summoned magic, shaping the green lights into sigils to do his bidding, and cast the spell towards the device.
Finding ways of using magic to make human-created technology work was Tivre’s second-most favorite hobby.
His first, if you asked any of his ex-lovers, was disappointing those closest to him.
The glittering sparks landed atop the shellacked disc, causing it to spin, just as electricity would have done in Rhydonia. As the needle landed, music hummed to life. Wonderful, unique music, far different than the usual ethereal sounds of fae design.
Humans were delightfully novel. A shame that they and the fae seemed hell-bent on destroying each other.
Tivre hummed along to the song as he studied a scrap of parchment left on the floor. He found himself more than a little concerned at what it contained. Fragments of sentences, hastily sketched outlines of Rhydonian buildings, and a singular, foreboding warning.
