Page 17 of Oathborn
“What did you say?” Javen slammed the gate of the stove shut, then twisted the damper to snuff out the flames. The muscle twitching in his jaw revealed barely hidden rage.
Tobias stammered. “If it’s not proper to call them that, then I suppose Ican—”
“You couldn’t even say that word in the hospital when I had asked.”
“Really?” He’d told Javen everything he remembered, hadn’t he? But no. He’d not thought of the attacker’s eyes, nor inhuman speed, since that day. Tobias coughed, trying to rid himself of the remnants of the smoke. “Why are you interrogating me?”
“For the truth.” Javen idly spun his silver wedding band around his finger. Tobias figured Javen’s wife, whoever she was, must possess more patience than the rest of the nation’s women put together.
“And the smoke?” Tobias asked. “What’s that?”
“Cadevesh,” Javen said, simply.
“That’s—” Poison. Illegal. Dangerous. “Fae-cursed.” The night-blooming plant only grew in the far north. To even eat a leaf, the stories said, would curse a man to suffer a thousand nightmares. So why did Javen have enough to throw a bundle into a fire? And what about Tobias’s health? He’d breathed in a bunch of smoke. What long-term repercussions was he going to face? “Am I going to die?”
“Presumably, someday.” Javen replied drily. “Though not from the cadevesh. That was only enough to break through the magic, so you could tell me exactly what you saw, rather than the glamour youthoughtyou’d seen.”
“A glamour?” He’d only heard the word in stories. Javen had said it so matter-of-factly, as if it was real.
“Do they teach children nothing in school?” Javen replied. “It’s a fae tool, used to disguise something from one’s eyes.”
“Fae can really do that?”
“That is the least of what they can do.” Javen stood, adjusting his coat. No one kept their uniforms as pristine as the captain, whose only infraction was a non-standard sword. Instead of an officer’s clunky brass saber, he wore an elegant sword with a distinctly ornate silver hilt. “We’ll be taking night watch at the precinct.”
“We… wait. Am I helping you on a mission?”
“That remains to be seen.” Javen tossed a leather-bound book onto the table. It fell with a heavy thud, like the echo of a dare. “I expect this to bememorized. I was told you had an aptitude for foreign languages and I will have to presume it is greater than your intelligence otherwise suggests.”
Tobias was pretty sure there was an insult in the middle of that sentence, he’d just not been able to parse out a reply before Javen left. Curious, Tobias opened the book. Every page was full of strange curving symbols, and a precise script provided their definitions in Rhydonian next to them. Tobias marveled, his brain already whirring away.
The third symbol on the list was a crescent, with a drop above. The definition read, simply,Oathborn.
Tobias’s mouth went dry. If his guess was right, he had been handed a Fae-to-Rhydonian dictionary.
Chapter five
Tivre
Smog and smoke thickened the air of the Rhydonian capital city, a choking mixture of industry and ambition. Still, Tivre loved how different it was from the crisp, frigid breezes of the isles. Just like he loved the chaos of the crowded streets, full of vehicles and people and even horse-drawn carriages vying for the right of way.
The city was marvelous, delightful, a wonder. It offset the stress of the journey here, which had involved cliff climbing, horseback riding, and sneaking aboard a cargo train. Not to mention the effort of maintaining the glamour protecting both of them from curious mortal eyes, especially as they drew further south and their magic weakened.
The glamour masked their most obvious fae traits; the pointed ears, sharp canines, and eyes that glowed too brightly to pass as human, as well as the overallnatureof what they were. Human artists and bards, back in the days when they’d lived among the fae, had always struggled for a way to describe a fae’s innate differences, the pulsing magic that flowed through them and around them, the so-called uncanniness of their features, the faint discord of their words when spoken with power behind them. On the other hand, fae artisans had simply decided humans weren’t worth depicting in any form of art, which was perhaps a better call.
If it weren’t for the existence of wildlings, which were the result of usually ill-fated romantic entanglements between fae and human, one might believethe two were impossibly different. Yet wildlings did exist, like the very one Tivre had been sent to find.
Humans with fae blood were rare now, after over a century of war. Rarer yet was an Oathborn wildling. Aside from this girl, who he had seen in his visions, Tivre knew of only three other Oathborn wildlings to have ever been mentioned in fae records.
Each of those three had shaped history, in their own tragic, flawed ways.
This girl, whoever she might be, was fated to do the same.
Yet, Tivre swore he would not allow such a thing to occur. He would find the other woman who had haunted his visions for so long, the one whose name he knew and yet feared to speak aloud until their first meeting. Find her, make his offer, and hopefully, return with her instead to the isles.
“Cal Tivre?” Quila asked, including his formal title more out of annoyance than respect. She had folded her arms over her stolen Rhydonian dress, and was glaring at him in that way so many people, human and fae, often did. “You stopped walking two minutes ago.”
“Ah. So I did.” Tivre adjusted his hat, which had also been stolen, checking to make sure the glamour held. For it could not conceal everything. His hair, for one, always slipped back to its true moonlight-white shade by the end of the day. As for the rest—Quila’s striking height, angular features, and glass-like nails—Tivre couldn’t justify spending more magic to hide it all.
