A Vow So Bold and Deadly

by Brigid Kemmerer

  “Don’t yield to her,” I whisper. “Don’t even yield to the memory of her.”

  He draws back a little, just enough so I can meet his eyes.

  “Don’t yield to me either,” I say, and I have to swallow past the sudden emotion in my throat. “Yield to yourself. Yield to forgiveness. Yield to happiness. Yield to this moment. It’s not hers. It’s yours. It’s mine. It’s ours.”

  “Ah, Harper.” He closes his eyes, and for a moment, I think he’s going to turn away from me. But then I’m lifted from the chair, swung into his arms for the second time today. He kisses me so deeply that I don’t realize he’s laid me on the bed until I feel his weight against me, and his hands are tugging at the skirts of my dressing gown.

  This time, when his hand skates up my thigh, he doesn’t stop. I almost cry out when his fingers touch me, but he catches my gasp with a kiss. He’s so slow and determined that I can’t think past it. My entire world centers on the feel of my body and the touch of his hand, at the heat pooling in my belly. I instinctively reach for him, my hand seeking skin, pulling at the suddenly irritating fabric of his shirt. My fingers find his waist, the smooth muscle of his abdomen, the tied belt of his trousers.

  My hand drifts lower, and he hisses, then grabs my wrist.

  “It has been a very long time,” he says.

  It startles a giggle out of me. Then he moves his other hand, and my back arches involuntarily. I see stars and clutch at the bedsheets. “Not too long,” I say, when I can breathe.

  He grins, and possibly for the first time in my life, I see Rhen blush, just a bit. He leans down to kiss me. “Let’s see how much I remember.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  RHEN

  Harper is curled against me, her breathing slow and even, but sleep eludes me as usual. The darkness presses against the windows and swells into the room like a silent visitor. The fire in the hearth has dropped to glowing embers, providing little light, but I don’t mind. In the dark, it’s easy to pretend there are no worries waiting for me outside her chamber doors. I’m warm and content, and Harper is at my side.

  I want to touch her, to reassure myself that she is real, that she is here, that fate must not hate me as much as I thought.

  Yield to yourself. Yield to forgiveness. Yield to happiness.

  Happiness—is that what this is? The word doesn’t feel strong enough. I forget, so often, that the most powerful moments in my life rarely end up being about my kingdom, or about a war, or about even my subjects. I forget that the world can narrow down to two people, to a moment of vulnerability and trust. To a moment of love that seems to outshine all the rest.

  I told Harper that it’s been a very long time, but being with her was like the first time. The only time it’s ever meant so much. I want to wrap myself around her and never let go. I want to bury a sword in the chest of anyone who’d dare to hurt her.

  As if my thoughts wake her, Harper shifts and blinks up at me. “You’re not sleeping.”

  I roll up on one elbow and trace a finger along her cheek, then take a moment to revel in the fact that I can. We spent so many weeks treading carefully around each other that it feels like I have finally earned the privilege to touch her. “You sound surprised.”

  She blushes and nestles under the blankets until only her eyes and her curls are visible. “I thought you’d be tired.”

  I touch my nose to hers and whisper, “I am.”

  She doesn’t smile. Her hand slips from under the blankets to press against my cheek. I turn my head to place a kiss on her palm.

  She’s still studying me. “Are you … are you still going to try for peace?”

  She says it hesitantly, as if she expects me to walk back my vow. Last night, she spoke of her father, of all the ways he disappointed her mother, and I wonder if she worries the same about me. It tugs at my happiness, but I know trust is not something you win once, but is instead something you must earn over and over again. I nod and watch relief bloom in her eyes.

  “I will send word to the regiment at the border to hold their position. I will have a delegation send word to Syhl Shallow that I would like … I would like to hear his terms.” It’s harder to say the words than I expect. So much has happened between me and Grey, and I cannot ignore the fact that he now bears magic. That he now stands with a country that caused so much harm to Emberfall. Negotiating some kind of treaty with him feels akin to negotiating one with Lilith, and my chest tightens.

  “It’ll be okay,” Harper whispers. “It’ll be okay. I promise.”

  She cannot promise. She does not know.

  “Anything is better than all-out war,” she says, and my eyes lock on hers.

  “Anything?” says a female voice in the corner of my room, a glittering shadow near the hearth. Ice slips down my spine at Lilith’s voice. “Anything at all? Are you sure, Princess?”

  “Get out.” My eyes snap to the side table, where I tossed the dagger Chesleigh brought me. It’s behind Harper, just out of arm’s reach.

  The enchantress slides out of the shadows. Normally, she’s laced up in elegance and finery, the perfect courtly attire of a lady, but tonight she’s in a violet dressing gown tied with a stretch of black satin, the fabric shifting across her body as she slips out of the darkness.

  “Such a turn of events,” she says, her voice a dangerous hiss of sound.

  “He told you to get out,” says Harper.

  Lilith doesn’t stop approaching the bed. “He does not command me, girl.” Her voice is edged, angry, which is unusual. Normally she’s playful. Truly terrible, but playful while she’s wreaking havoc.

  “What do you want?”

  “It sounds as though you are attempting to change the terms,” she says. She reaches the bed, and instead of stopping, she climbs onto the blankets, crawling toward us, her movements slow and languorous. Harper clutches the sheets to her chest and shoves herself backward until her shoulders hit the headboard.

  Lilith smiles, but she doesn’t go after Harper.

  She goes after me. Her hand strokes up the length of my leg under the blanket, and I try to scramble back.

  But she freezes. Harper appears beside her, the dagger clutched in her hand. “Care to lose an eye?”

  My heart stutters in my chest. I don’t know if Harper knows what that dagger could do. I don’t know if it works at all. As always, I have so many hopes and so many plans and so many wishes, but the results always depend on fate.

  And fate seems to hate me so very much.

  “This reminds me of another time,” says Lilith, and that dark look hasn’t left her eyes. “When the sheets were rumpled and warm and the room was full of privileged satisfaction.”

  She slashes her nails across my body. They slice through the sheets. They slice through everything. Fire tears across my abdomen.

  “Rhen!” shouts Harper. She lurches forward with the dagger, but my vision is full of spots and flares and I can’t tell if she makes contact.

  “When the room was full of blood,” says Lilith.

  She does it again. I can taste my own blood, and I don’t know if I’ve bitten my tongue or if there’s just so much of it. I can’t feel anything but the pain, and her weight is on my body now.

  Harper screams.

  Lilith screams.

  “Run,” I shout to Harper. “Run.”

  Lilith’s face appears above mine, and blood is in a long crimson streak on her face. “You were mine,” she hisses. Her nails claw down the front of my chest. I swear her nails scrape my ribs, and I cry out. “You thought your broken girl could stand against me with that?”

  Harper is shouting, but my brain can’t make sense of the words. I don’t know if she’s hurt, if she’s fighting, if she’s running, if she’s dying.

  Lilith’s nails drag across my face. I feel my eyelid pull and tear, and suddenly that eye is blind with a wash of blood—or worse.

  More shouts fill the room. My guards, led by Dustan and Zo.
<
br />   “Harper,” I gasp. “Harper, run.”

  “Stop!” Lilith screeches. “Stop thinking of her!” The windows shatter, exploding with glass that rattles across the floor. An icy wind sweeps through the room. I swing a fist to strike at her, but she catches my arm, and I feel the bones grind together. The pain is blinding. I try to breathe through it. I try to live through it.

  She grips my jaw, and her eyes fill my vision. “You’re going to watch her die,” she says, her breath hot against my lips.

  “I’m going to watch you die,” I grit out.

  She smiles—but then she’s ripped away from me. I blink through blood and see Dustan bury a sword in her abdomen. She gasps, clutching at the blade. For an instant, he looks viciously victorious, but I know better.

  “Run,” I choke out. I can’t watch her harm my people. “Get out. That is—an order.”

  Lilith takes hold of the blade bare-handed, dragging it free, the look on her face almost euphoric. Her silk dressing gown has spilled open, revealing a stretch of naked body, the sword bringing blood and other viscera with it. There’s another wound, higher, pouring blood from her shoulder.

  Dustan stares at her in horror.

  He needs to run. He needs to run. He needs to run.

  “Run,” I gasp. “Dustan—”

  Lilith tears out his throat with her bare hands.

  His body drops, lifeless.

  She turns for the guards who were standing at his back, their swords ready. In her fist, she’s clutching the skin and muscle that she tore away from his neck, blood dripping down her wrist.

  They blanch. Their swords clatter to the ground. They run.

  I’ve seen it all before, when she first issued the curse.

  It’s no better the second time.

  My eyes finally find Harper. She’s got a bloodied dagger in her hand, but Zo is in front of her. I barely register that Zo has found my bow and quiver in the corner before an arrow is flying.

  One strikes the enchantress through the neck. Then another through her shoulder. Another through the leg. Lilith staggers to her knees.

  Another through her back. The enchantress is hissing, jerking at the weapons. She pulls one free of her neck and blood spills down her shoulder, but the wound closes just like the others in her abdomen.

  That one slice in her shoulder remains unhealed, and blood continues to pulse from the wound. I stare at it, but my eyes don’t want to focus and all I can think about is Harper.

  Zo grabs the last arrow from the quiver. Her eyes are wide and afraid, but she takes aim.

  “Rhen.” Harper tries to limp past Zo to get to me.

  “Go!” I cry. I try to get off the bed, but my knees won’t hold me. “Zo—get her out. Get her out.”

  “No!” Harper screams.

  Lilith stops jerking at the arrows. She’s braced a hand against the floor, and she’s wheezing now. This won’t stop her, though, I know.

  It’ll just make it worse.

  She grabs Dustan’s lifeless wrist, pulling one of his throwing blades free. I realize what she intends to do, and I leap for her.

  I’m too slow to stop the throw, and all I do is affect her aim. The blade doesn’t drive into Harper’s chest or neck—it buries itself in her upper thigh. She falls.

  Lilith scrabbles for another.

  “Zo!” I call. “Get her out. Get them all out.”

  Zo fires her last arrow, and it takes Lilith in the shoulder, throwing her forward. It puts us eye to eye again. But behind her, I see Zo drag Harper into the hallway. Zo is shouting orders at the guards who must be running to assist.

  My body is in agony. I can’t stand. I can’t move. But suddenly it’s silent. I’m alone with the enchantress.

  For the longest time, I listen to Lilith’s wheezing breath. I listen to my own.

  The world begins to go spotty. Blood is pooling on the marble floor around me. Maybe she’s finally done it. Maybe she’s killed me.

  But Harper got away. She got out.

  Eventually, I hear a sickening pop, and I realize Lilith is pulling the arrows free, one by one.

  Pop. Pop. Pop.

  I blink at her. Only one eye works. I reach a hand to touch my cheek and find a mass of broken skin and blood. I try not to whimper, and fail. I wish for death to find me.

  Lilith leans down and kisses me. There’s blood on her lips. “I like you better like this,” she whispers.

  She got away. I lock my thoughts on that. Only that. Lilith can do what she wants to me. Harper got away. She’s safe. Zo will keep her safe.

  “Finish it,” I breathe.

  “Oh, no, Your Highness.” She kisses me again, and my body involuntarily shudders. “You know I need you.” She traces a tongue across my lips. “Now wait here while I go rip out her heart, the way you ripped out mine.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  HARPER

  There are dead guards littering the castle hallways. Some are pinned to the walls with their swords, while others have terrible slash wounds. Blood coats everything. I remember the first week of the curse, when I discovered a room that represented what Lilith had done to Rhen and Grey. It was horrific.

  This is like that, times a hundred.

  Lilith must have been doing this for hours. Slowly and methodically killing his guards and servants, so we’d have no idea. I was begging him for peace while she was guaranteeing it would never be possible.

  Freya and the children would have been in the room right beside us. Sweet, gentle Freya.

  The thought of her dying at Lilith’s hands almost makes my knees buckle. Zo half drags me past all of it. I can’t decide if I should be helping her or fighting her. The throwing blade caught me in the thigh, but it was a glancing blow and it fell free. I know you’re not supposed to pull a blade out of a stab wound, but I have no idea if it’s okay for one to fall out on its own. Blood already soaked through my sleeping shift, and between the knife and the sprained ankle on top of my CP, I feel like a marionette with a broken string.

  The night air is cold and smacks me in the face when we get outside, but Zo doesn’t stop. I’m barefoot and panting in the stable aisle by the time she eases me onto a bench beside the stalls. It’s the middle of the night and the stables are deserted. Her own breath is fractured and broken, making panicked clouds in the cold night air. Her hands are shaking as she starts unbuckling her breastplate.

  “Stop,” I say. My hands are flailing, wringing, uncertain where to settle. “Stop—what are you doing—”

  “Here.” She jerks the breastplate over her head. It sounds like she’s wheezing.

  “Zo—we have to go back. I have this dagger. We just need—we just need—she’ll—she’ll—”

  She shoves the breastplate into my hands. “Put it on. I’ll saddle a horse.”

  “Zo—”

  “Put it on!” she shouts.

  She’s never yelled at me. I don’t think I’ve ever heard her raise her voice. I’m so startled that my fingers start fumbling with the buckles automatically. The horses must feel our panic, because they’re all circling their stalls restlessly. One of them kicks the stable wall.

  “We have to go back.” I’m babbling. Keening with each breath. Every time I blink I see Lilith’s fingers ripping the front right out of Dustan’s throat. I see Rhen’s abdomen turned to ribbons of flesh. Like it was nothing. I wasn’t strong enough. I wasn’t fast enough. “She’s going to—she’s going to—”

  “We have to run.” She pulls a bridle out of the closet beside Ironwill’s stall, followed by a cloak that she tosses at me. “Put that on.”

  I’m shaking so badly I can barely get it around my shoulders. “Zo—”

  “We are not going back.”

  “We—we can’t leave him—”

  “She killed every guard in the castle,” Zo says. It takes her four tries to get the bridle buckled onto the horse’s head. “Can you ride?”

  A boot scrapes against the cobblestones at t
he opposite end of the aisle, and Zo whirls, drawing her blade.

  A stable boy swears and stumbles back. “I heard the horses—”

  “Run,” she says to him. “Get off the grounds.”

  “But—but—”

  “Run!” she snaps. He nods quickly and darts through the door.

  A cold wind whips through the aisle, making the stall doors rattle, and I shiver. “Zo. We need a plan. We need—”

  She rounds on me. Her eyes blaze into mine. “What are we going to do, Harper? She tore out the commander’s throat. With her bare hands.”

  She’s right. I know she’s right.

  We need to get help.

  I don’t know who can help with this. She slaughtered all the guards. My breath hitches again.

  Zo doesn’t wait for an answer. She moves to the next stall and jerks the closet door open. Another blast of wind swirls through the aisle, reminding me of my first night in Emberfall, when the weather in the woods changed from autumn warmth into a heavy snowfall. The horses resume their pacing. A few give a nervous whicker. That one down the aisle kicks the wall again.

  Every hair on my arms stands up.

  I don’t know what I can feel, but it’s not good.

  Zo appears in the doorway of the stall, and I know she can feel it, too.

  “Zo,” I whisper. “Zo, we need to go.”

  She leaves the second horse and returns to Ironwill, boosting me onto his back before I’m ready. Her foot slips into the stirrup, and she climbs up behind me. Without hesitation, she clucks to the horse, and we fly out of the stables.

  The wind hits us hard and fast and nearly unseats me. Clouds have filled the sky, blocking the moon, plunging the grounds into darkness. I’ve got the reins, and Zo’s got her arms around my waist.

  “You should’ve kept the armor,” I say breathlessly.

  An earsplitting screech splits the night, the loudest, most terrifying sound I’ve ever heard. Ironwill’s ears flatten and his back bunches underneath us, and he bolts like a … well, like a spooked horse.