Read Chapter 20: The Truth of the Vow

The candle guttered as Elara’s hands trembled over the letter. The wax seal—her father’s own signet, a wolf rampant—had cracked cleanly, as if it had been waiting for this moment. She had read it twice already, and still the words refused to settle.

*My dearest daughter, if you are reading this, then the world has grown darker than I hoped. You must know the truth, for it is the only weapon I can give you from the grave.*

She heard Alaric’s breath catch behind her. He had been silent since she’d pulled the letter from its hiding place in the lining of her travelling cloak, the one her father’s steward had pressed into her hands the day she left Valdris.

“Read it aloud,” he said, his voice rough. “I would hear it from your lips.”

Elara turned, the parchment crackling between her fingers. Alaric stood in the doorway of her chamber, still in the travel-stained clothes he’d worn when he returned from the western gate. Corin’s capture had carved new lines into his face, but his eyes were fixed on the letter with an intensity that bordered on hunger.

“It’s about a vow,” she said. “My father and your mother.”

Alaric’s jaw tightened. “My mother died when I was seven. She never spoke of Valdris except with contempt.”

“Perhaps that was the point.” Elara looked back at the parchment. “‘When the cold wind blows from the north and the southern roses wither, the children of two thrones must be bound as one. I have made a pact with the Queen of Aurenne, sealed in blood and silence. It is the only way to break the curse that has plagued both our houses for three generations.’”

She paused, her throat dry. “He calls it ‘the weight of old sins.’ The curse that made your grandfather march on our border. The curse that took my mother’s life and your father’s before his time. It was never meant to be a war between our peoples. It was something else. Something darker, passed down through blood.”

Alaric stepped forward, his shadow falling across the candle. “And the cure?”

Elara met his eyes. “A marriage. Between the heir of Aurenne and the daughter of Valdris. He and your mother swore an oath that their children would wed. That the curse would be broken by a union forged in love, not treaty.”

A strange sound escaped Alaric—half laugh, half choke. He reached for the letter, and Elara let him take it. His hands were steady as he read, but when he reached the final passage, he went pale. The color drained from his face like water from a cracked vessel.

“‘The boy who gave her the white flower,’” he murmured. “‘He will know. She will remember. The locket will not lie.’”

Elara’s hand went to her throat. The locket—the small silver pendant she’d worn since childhood, the one her father had given her on her sixth birthday. She had never questioned its origin, had always assumed it was a gift from a distant relative. But now, as her fingers traced the delicate engraving of a white rose, the memory surfaced like a stone rising from deep water.

A garden. Sunlight through leaves. A boy with dark hair and serious eyes, holding out a flower.

“You,” she breathed.

Alaric looked up from the letter, his face a mask of disbelief. “I was sent to Valdris when I was—I don’t know, eight? Nine? My father wanted me to see the enemy’s land before I learned to hate it properly.” He laughed, bitter and raw. “I wandered into a garden. There was a girl. She was crying because she’d lost her mother’s ring in the fountain. I—” He stopped. “I dove in and found it for her.”

“You gave me a white flower,” Elara said, the words falling from her lips unbidden. “You said it would make me smile again. And you wore a silver locket, the twin of mine. You said it would tell me when we were meant to be together.”

Alaric’s hand went to his chest, where beneath his tunic hung a chain. He pulled it free—a silver locket, identical to hers. He opened it, and in the dim candlelight, she saw the miniature portrait inside: a woman with kind eyes and a crown of dark hair.

“My mother gave it to me before I left for Valdris,” he said. “She told me I would know the girl when I met her. That the locket would grow warm when I was near her.” His expression twisted. “I thought it was nonsense. A dying woman’s fancy.”

Elara stepped closer, her own locket in her palm. The metal was warm against her skin. Warm, she realized, with a chill running down her spine, because it had been warm since the day she arrived at his court.

“It was never fancy,” she said. “It was a vow.”

They stood inches apart, the letter forgotten between them. Alaric’s eyes searched hers, and for the first time since she’d met him—since she’d planned to hate him, to marry him for politics and nothing more—she saw something raw and unguarded. Not the king. Not the enemy. Just the boy who had given her a flower in a sunlit garden.

“We were destined for this,” he whispered. “All this blood. All this distance. It was all leading here.”

Elara opened her mouth to answer, but before she could speak, a scream tore through the night. It came from outside, from the courtyard below her window—high and desperate, the cry of a woman in terror.

Alaric was already moving, but Elara caught his arm. “Corin,” she said. “They’re sending a message.”

The scream came again, closer now, and through the window she saw torches bobbing in the darkness beyond the gate. A rider was approaching, a Valdris banner raised high, but it was the bundle tied to his saddle that made her blood run cold.

A shape. A body. Small, still, dressed in Corin’s blue tunic.

Alaric’s face went white, then red. He tore from her grip and was gone, his boots hammering down the stone corridor. Elara stood frozen, the letter crumpled in her fist, the warmth of the locket now a burning brand against her chest.

She had found the boy with the white flower.

And now she might lose the boy who wore his face.