Love is My Sin: Oathcursed, Book 2

by Julia Knight

  The enormity of it hit, finally, what she’d sworn to. She took a step back from him and crossed her arms stubbornly. “No. He’s wrong, I’m sure of it.”

  “He’s a god—of course he’s not wrong!”

  “Hunter did none of those things, why won’t you believe that? He’s innocent, and if I can prove it to Oku then he’ll have to stay this, this madness. He’ll have to.”

  “Then you had best be quick,” Valguard said behind her. “We’ve reached our judgement. Guilty. The execution will take place tomorrow at dawn. I want everyone to discover what he did before we hang him in front of his own people, with their hatred ringing in his ears.”

  Ilfayne gripped her by the arm again, and spoke with his dangerous voice, silk over steel. “Even if he hadn’t commanded it, I’d let Hunter hang anyway, for what he’s done to Regin’s name. When people think of him now, they’ll think of his traitor heir.”

  “But he didn’t—”

  “That’s enough! We have no choice.”

  But she did. There was always a choice, even if one of them was breaking your oath to your god and what that would bring.

  ***

  Hilde glared out of the window of the opulent quarters they had been given. The mood down in the city was ugly. Fear, anger, resentment, it boiled through the streets and erupted in scuffles and outright brawls. The Disciples weren’t helping—instead they were just using the excuse to batter who they felt like.

  Ilfayne was helping even less. “If you try this, Oku’ll have you for breaking your oath. I forbid it. I won’t let you do something so, so stupid!”

  She turned her glare on him, her arms folded and her lungs hot with anger. “Stupid? Can Oku see in my heart and know what I’m going to do? If he can, then he knows my hatred of him is still hot, not long and cold like yours. I won’t stand by and do nothing.”

  He stepped close to her but she frowned him away. His voice fell to a whisper. “You aren’t thinking like an immortal. How long do Gan men live? They aren’t the longest-lived race, even among men. If you rescue Hunter he might live another twenty, twenty-five years. That’s just a heartbeat. A brief, bright moment, no matter how brilliant. All men die. You can’t change that.”

  He raised his hand towards her face, trying to make peace between them. But there would be no peace while he insisted on helping Valguard in this blasphemy.

  “I can change the how and why. I’m not thinking like an immortal? You aren’t thinking like a person!”

  His hand dropped away, his face desolate, and she wished she could take the words back. Wished she couldn’t feel the piercing wound she’d given him.

  “You think I’m a coward?”

  She pinched her lips together and turned back to the window. She didn’t answer, because maybe she did think he was a coward for this but she could never tell him that.

  His bangles clashed discordantly, wine splashed into a glass and he gulped it straight down. “Maybe you’re right, maybe I am. But I’m not afraid for me. I’m afraid for you. Because he’ll take you, Hilde, forever, given the merest hint of an excuse. And this is not just a hint. If you go against Oku here, if you stand with Hunter, then you’ve broken your oath in a very public way. He’ll have no pity. It’s not that I don’t believe you, it’s just I can’t afford not to believe Oku. We can’t.”

  He laid his hand on her arm but she hunched away from it and stared down at the city with blurred, aching eyes. A fire raged down by the docks, another closer to the citadel. The populace was heading rapidly towards riot. So was she.

  “Hilde, I have to keep you safe. I promised Hunter that I would, but you have to let me.”

  “I’m not asking you to do anything.” She tried to keep her voice under control and her words came out icy and clipped. “No, I know why you won’t and it isn’t cowardice. You hate him for the grief you swore for, the life he took from you. I hate him for what he did to you, what more he would have done if I hadn’t… I swore to Oku because I love you, but I hate him even more now than I did then. When have I ever asked anything of you, since that one time, and you couldn’t give it then.”

  “I can’t give it now either. I swore Hilde, we both did. I’ve no more last chances. One slip and it’s the end of us both.”

  “I’d rather the Dark, rather the nothing we’ll get, anything but do this blindly. I can’t let Hunter die for lies!”

  Ilfayne grabbed at her arm and spun her round, his eyes hot and angry now. “Hilde, I love you, I’m just afraid for you if you do this. He’ll take you from me. I can’t let you. I won’t let you, not even for Hunter, not even if it breaks your heart to do nothing. It’s utter madness. Herjan’s bloody arse, girl, see sense!”

  She wrenched her arm from his grip. “You can’t stop me.” She’d had enough of him treating her as though she was still a child, making her decisions for her. She was right; she felt it in her bones. If he wouldn’t trust her, believe her, she’d do it on her own. “You don’t own me.”

  “No, I don’t. Oku owns you. He owns us both.”

  “Who do you care for more, me or Oku?”

  “Hilde, please. You, always you, you know that. I broke the oath once before, for you, and almost died for it. I’d do it again, in a heartbeat. But not for anyone else, not for someone who’ll be dead in a few years anyway.” He stepped towards her and cupped her face in his hand. He tried to control his temper, but his fingers quivered with it. “I need you to help me. Help me do what has to be done. What we’re commanded to do.”

  “I can’t. I can’t just let him die.”

  “You can. You have to. And you damn well will.”

  She opened her mouth to speak and he kissed her, kept on kissing her with hard, angry kisses till she couldn’t breathe. The same way all their arguments ended. Somewhere in the middle all their anger would dissolve and passion would take over.

  He let her in again, opened himself to her, and all she could feel was his heart in hers, hot with anger for both of them. He wanted to do this to Hunter no more than she did, but he would do it anyway. He hated himself for it more than she ever could.

  Her anger melted away into tired sorrow and ferocious want. His heart flowed through her, his need became hers, a hot pulsing ache she couldn’t ignore. She pulled him closer, wrapped her hands in his hair and kissed him back, hard and urgent. Then his fingers were unbuckling her armour, sliding her shirt from her shoulders as he kissed her down on to the bed. She grabbed at his waistcoat, yanked it off him and there was a cascade of tinkling when it hit the floor. His shirt landed on top of it and all the time he was kissing her. He stopped only long enough to murmur a few words, so that he could feel her as she felt him, then his mouth was hot and insistent against hers again as he tried to show her not his love but his sorrow, his anger, his fierce need.

  His hand slid over her skin and ran down to tug at her leggings. Other, spectral fingers that he’d conjured ran across her back, tickled up her neck, sank into her hair, and pulled her closer until they were tight against each other. His skin was hot on hers, his desperate heart burned in hers, made all her skin tingle. His need, his heat ran through her belly, peaked where he laid his hand. It was all she’d ever needed, his kiss, his touch, his heart.

  His hard, spare body was above her, with its ever warm skin and familiar scars under her fingers. Scars that told what he would do for the world, for his god, but couldn’t do for a friend.

  “Please Hilde. Please, you have to help me,” he murmured into her neck.

  “I can’t.” But she couldn’t resist him, she never could, and she kissed away his next words. But when he slid into her urgently, deliciously, so that she cried out, when his need for her, the sorrowful aching anger in his heart, pierced hers, then she cried. Not for Hunter, but for him, who had been driven so long to do what he must rather than what he would, who now knew no other way. Who had no spare room in his heart for anyone but her.

  He held her like a drowning man grabbed a b
ranch, drove into her with an increasing intensity that dug her nails into the flesh under her hands, made every muscle clench and her mouth shape formless cries as she pulled him into her. Then he shuddered to a halt inside her with a harsh cry of his own, a husk of a man who wrapped desperate arms round her as though that could keep her there forever.

  He propped himself above her, his harsh breaths almost growls in his throat, before he slid over and on to his back, his arm still holding her close. She lay her head on his shoulder and wet his neck with her tears. Listened to the pound of his heart and ran her hand over his chest, across the scar that almost cut him in two. Felt the naked fear in him and the anger that had, for once, not lessened with their lovemaking but grown stronger.

  How could he have spent all that time with Regin, with her, and not learned anything? Her heart ached for him, that he didn’t dare to live any more than he did, through her. That he was so afraid of losing her that he would grasp her to him with clutching words, keep her from doing anything that might, possibly, harm her. Crush all the life out of her too, if she let him. That he was angry with himself for doing it, and at her for making him feel like this, for making him care. Even so, she loved him, understood him and what drove him. But she couldn’t sit back and do nothing.

  He shook her off and sat up, his movements stiff and jerky, flinched away from her when she tried to lay a hand on his arm. He grabbed his shirt, shoved his arms into the sleeves and yanked on his breeches and boots. With waistcoat in hand he strode towards the door.

  Hilde couldn’t let him go, not still angry like this. She sat up and reached for her own clothes. “Where are you going?”

  He flicked her a glance, his eyes cold and distant. “Where do you think?” He pulled the key from the lock. “And you’re staying here.”

  Still only half-dressed, she took three steps that brought her alongside him. “I bloody well am not!”

  “I’m not letting you do anything as sodding brainless as break your word. I’m not going to watch you kill yourself for that idiot. Stupid girl.”

  Her hand snaked out and caught him across the cheek, hard enough to rock his head back. “I’m not a girl any more, or hadn’t you noticed?”

  He lifted his hand to his cheek with a pained grimace. Rage boiled through him, and he spat it out with his words. “Well then, stop acting like one, you selfish brat! Someone’s got to act like the grownup here, and it looks like it’s me. Things need to be done, not pleasant things, but they must be done. Did you ever think it would be any other way? You’ve never backed away before, but if you can’t summon the courage to do them, than at least have the sense to do nothing.” He shut his eyes and all his anger blew away like smoke on the wind. “If you won’t help, if you insist on being so bloody blind, then at least don’t go against him. There’s only one outcome for that, and I couldn’t bear… I’ll keep you safe if that’s all I can do.”

  “What are you, lover or jailor? That’s your answer to everything—lock me up, don’t let me do anything. If I’m acting like a child it’s because you insist on treating me like one.”

  “No, I treat you like one because you are one.” He opened the door and she made to move past him, out into the corridor, but he was too quick. He slammed the door in her face. The key rattled in the lock and he murmured something on the other side of the door. Making sure with magic.

  She slid down the door, her tears unstoppable until there were none left in her. Nothing left in her but anger and a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach.

  Escape

  Nerinna sat shivering in Aran’s chambers. Gods, this country was so cold. The servants had stoked the fire as much as the hearth would take, and still she couldn’t get warm. Aran fluttered around her, fussing that she had everything she needed, but it was perfunctory, mechanical. There was a faraway look in his eyes and once or twice he blinked back tears. She pretended she hadn’t noticed, and he pretended he didn’t see her do the same.

  Both of them tensed when Valguard entered, but Nerinna was already sure she knew what he would say.

  Valguard bowed stiffly to Aran. “Highness, Lord Hunter has been found guilty on all three counts, this verdict vouched personally by Oku with Ilfayne and that thing of his as witness. If it pleases you, I’ve arranged for the hanging at dawn.”

  Nerinna thought Aran might break down then but he managed to hold on to himself. Stronger than he looks. He took a moment to compose himself, his voice, before he spoke. “It does not please me. How could you think anything about this day could please me? You’re telling me that the man I look to as a father is in league with Mithotyn and is going to hang! I simply can’t believe it. Not Hunter.”

  Valguard smiled tightly and the spite behind it made Nerinna shiver. “Looked to as your father? There’s every possibility he is your father. Why else would he be so attentive to you and your sister, if not that you’re the product of his broken word to the man Ganheim thinks fathered you? Unless it’s the guilt over Hunter’s murder of your mother?”

  Aran’s lips trembled and he sat, or more like fell down right where he was. His tears ran unchecked now. “That’s not true. I won’t have that be true! My father…Arall killed my mother. He confessed!”

  Nerinna shrank back in her chair as Valguard advanced on Aran. A coldness surrounded him, a barely hidden maliciousness, as though he’d wanted to say these words for years but could not. “Confessed? Maybe, but the Court doesn’t accept confessions from madmen. There’s evidence it was Hunter, and plenty of it. I’ve never known why. Jealousy maybe, or she was going to tell Arall the truth about your parentage. Whichever, it was him. I know it, I can prove it.”

  “But he and my mother—they never—he swore, to my father, to Arall. He wouldn’t break his word, I know it.”

  “Oh, but he did. I wasn’t the only one to see it, see what went on between him and Amariah. He’s a faithless oathbreaker and his soul has been damned since then. My only regret is I didn’t get to hang him for that crime, for your mother’s senseless murder. I would have liked to have justice for that, even if she was an adulterous whore.”

  Nerinna found she’d bitten a knuckle hard enough to make it bleed. This surely couldn’t be true. Surely. If Valguard had this evidence then no amount of badgering by Ilfayne would have seen Hunter become regent. And could she have been so wrong about Hunter? It seemed unbelievable that a man such as him could have done such a thing. She would have sworn he didn’t have it in him. A ripping pain tore through her chest, as though her heart had come free of its moorings.

  Aran sat white-faced and shaking on the floor. He looked up defiantly at Valguard. “I refuse to believe that this could be true. I am Arall’s son, and he killed my mother. He was a violent madman those last few weeks, I remember that. I remember the bruises he gave my mother. And I remember that Hunter would have done anything for either of them.”

  “Anything but keep his hands off his king’s wife.”

  “Actually, Valguard that’s not true, as you know full well.” A new voice made them all jump, and Valguard whirled round to glare at the intruder. Ilfayne stood in the doorway with a vicious sneer on his face. “Arall was Aran’s father. You have your conviction. Lying about things after the fact just to try and make Aran believe it, or for spite, should be beneath you. Stick to what Hunter has done.”

  What in the gods’ names had happened to him? Two buttons were missing from his shirt, the rest were buttoned up wrong and a livid handprint burned on one cheek.

  “But Hunter is guilty of these charges, and there are many more men who we need to see to. Men who’ve fallen under Mithotyn’s spell as Hunter did. I’m going to need a few of your Disciples to help me though, as I appear to have lost my companion.”

  Aran shot to his feet. “Mithotyn? Impossible! Hunter would never do anything that would please him. I don’t believe anything that you say about him, Valguard. Not one thing. He’s innocent of these charges. I’d stake my life on it!”


  Ilfayne’s face twisted bitterly. He reached out a hand and sent a scorching gout of flame up one wall. Nerinna screamed, sure he was about to burn all their eyes from their heads. The white stone wall blackened with soot and part of a tapestry curled before the flames flickered and died. “Herjan’s bloody arse! I’ve had enough of this today without you too. What is it about him that everyone keeps bleating that he’s innocent when the gods themselves proclaim his guilt? I mean, I’ll grant he’s a fair man, and good with a sword, but he’s just a man. Rather rash and impulsive, as I recall. And now he’s not a man, he’s just a pawn. Mithotyn’s pawn.”

  “You knew him, before. Did you ever know him to lie? To break an oath?”

  Nerinna sat amazed at the change in Aran as he glared at the wizard. A brave lad, very brave, to try and face him down so. She found herself grateful to him, suddenly fond of him for standing up to these two and declaring what he thought was right.

  Ilfayne sighed sharply, then shook his head as though surprised by strange thoughts that lurked in there. He seemed disoriented for a moment, woozy. Sweat broke out on his forehead and he wiped it away with his sleeve. “Lie, no. Break his word, well, not exactly. Or I wouldn’t have called it breaking. Oku doubtless has different views on the subject.”

  “And yet you still believe him guilty? That he would do everything that he’s accused of? Do they seem like the actions of the man you knew?” Aran’s face was red with the effort of not crying.

  “No. No, the Hunter I knew would have never done them, but there’s the point, isn’t it? Mithotyn’s got to him, is directing Hunter’s actions for his own ends. I’m sorry lad, the Hunter we know is in all likelihood no longer there. He’s Mithotyn’s puppet now, and from the looks of things has been for some while. Leave this to us. I warn you, take no more hand in it. Oku always has been a bastard. Not an ounce of mercy in him. And he’ll not find any for you, if you get in his way.”