A Vow So Bold and Deadly (The Cursebreaker Series Book 3)

Everything here is damp and freezing and miserable. Or maybe that’s just me.

The knife wound on my thigh is swollen and hot with a bit of yellow crust around the edges, and I can’t tell if I’m shivering because I’m cold or if I have a fever. Probably both, especially since I’m sitting on a stone floor, leaning against a stone wall. The pain in my thigh has long since blocked out whatever happened to my ankle when I was in Silvermoon, and now everything hurts. My wrists and ankles have been chained for two days now, the skin rubbed raw, and I can’t remember the last time I ate anything. I’m only wearing calfskin pants, a blouson, and a laced vest.

My cloak and armor are long gone, but they’ve left me with my dagger. I’ve begged and pleaded for it, declaring that it was meant for Grey, babbling that it would help him. The soldiers rolled their eyes and left it strapped to my thigh—but I’m clearly not much of a threat. The soldiers haven’t been cruel, but they haven’t been accommodating either. I’m not entirely sure what I expected—I bolted away from the Crooked Boar as if I could just ride into their camp and they’d take me straight to Grey and Lia Mara.

So now it’s been three days since I reached their camp, if I’ve been able to keep track correctly—which is rather doubtful. Seven days since I left Rhen with Lilith. For the first few days, I’d think about the moment she appeared in my chambers and tears would fill my eyes, but desperation would drive through the pain and exhaustion. I’d ride hard and fast, galloping across the terrain of Emberfall as if I could outrun my tears, as if I could just get to the border, get help, and we’d rescue Rhen from Lilith.

But a few days ago, the tears stopped coming, and now I just feel … resigned. Hopeless. I thought it would be so easy. I need to find Grey, I kept saying. Like the Syhl Shallow soldiers would gasp and say, “Well of course, my lady.” Like I’m a real princess. Like we’re not about to face them in a war.

There was a period of time where I thought the Syhl Shallow soldiers would just kill me. A period of time where I wished they would kill me, because when they first chained me up, my imagination ran wild and I thought for sure I’d be raped and left for dead. But it seems like a lot of their officers are women, and while no one is gentle, no one was forcing me up against a wall and ripping my clothes off, either.

I would kill someone for some water. Then again, it feels like a Herculean task to lift my head, so maybe that’s not a good idea.

Maybe I’ll be left here long enough that I’ll die anyway.

I’m sorry, Rhen.

I was wrong. New tears can form.

Booted feet stomp somewhere on the other side of the heavy wooden door, but I ignore it. I’ve stopped hoping for food. I’ve stopped hoping for anything.

But the lock rattles, and the door swings open. I’m staring up at a new soldier in green-and-black-trimmed armor. His expression is so severe, his eyes so fierce, that I almost cringe—until I blink and realize I’m looking at Grey.

For a moment, it almost takes my breath away. I’ve been so desperate to find him, and now he’s here. He’s here.

It seems so impossible that for a terrifying moment, I think I’m hallucinating. He looks the same and different all at once, like he suddenly takes up more space in the world.

“Are you real?” I whisper.

Another green-and-black-clad soldier drops to his knees by my side. I almost flinch away, but then he says, “Harp,” in a familiar voice, and I discover I’m looking at my brother.

“Jake,” I rasp. “Jake.” My voice sounds like I haven’t used it in a year. Tears spill from my eyes.

He puts a hand against my forehead, my cheeks. “She’s burning up. Get these chains off her. Hey!” He turns his head, and I notice other soldiers have followed them into my cell, but they all blur into a mass of green and black. “Bil trunda,” Jake snaps.

I stare at him for a long moment, because I can’t tell if he’s speaking another language or if my brain has finally given up. Jake’s dark curly hair has grown long enough to fall into his eyes, and any softness in his face has been carved away.

His eyes search mine, and he draws back a bit. “They said you were injured.” His voice is gentler now. “Where are you hurt?” Another soldier approaches with keys, and Jake all but snatches them from his hand. The shackles fall away from my wrists, and he barely has time to unchain my ankles before I use all my strength to launch myself forward. The movement makes my leg ache and protest the movement, but I don’t care. My arms close around his neck, and I don’t ever want to let go.

“Jake,” I whimper.

He catches me. Holds me. “It’ll be all right,” he says softly, and I’m reminded of all the times we’d hide in his room, when Dad’s crimes caught up with us. Jake would whisper empty reassurances to me then, too. “It’ll be all right, Harper.”

But that wasn’t all right. And this won’t be either.

“Her leg,” says Grey. “Jake, she is bleeding.” He turns his head and speaks to one of the other soldiers. “Bring some water.”

My brother eases me back against the wall, and I look up at Grey. My brain keeps insisting this isn’t real, that I haven’t succeeded, that this is a fever dream.

“Scary Grey,” I whisper, and my voice breaks.

Proving worthy of his nickname, he wastes no time on emotion. He drops to a knee beside me and draws a dagger.

I suck in a breath and grab Jake’s arm.

Grey’s eyes meet mine, and those haven’t changed. He’s coolly intent, focused. “Do you no longer trust me?”

Maybe I shouldn’t. We’re on opposite sides of a war. But I stare back at him, and even through the fever and the exhaustion, I think of everything we endured together, from the moments when he first kidnapped me till the time he offered Lilith his sword on outstretched hands in a bid to save my life. I remember when he fell through the door of my apartment, broken and bleeding, desperate for my help. I remember the passion in his voice when he stood in the shadowed hallway, when he was the Commander of Rhen’s Royal Guard, and I’d first agreed to be the Princess of Disi. When Grey challenged my trust. When he made me understand what I’d agreed to.

My duty is to bleed so he does not, Grey said then. And now my duty is to bleed so you do not.

Now I’m the one bleeding, and he’s waiting with a dagger in his hand.

I swallow. “I trust you.”

He cuts the soiled bandage free and pulls it away from my leg in one smooth movement. It must have crusted to the wound, because stars flare in my vision and I gasp. I’m choking. My back arches. I’m going to throw up. Pus and blood creep from the injury, which has turned black along the edges, with weird bruising running the length of my thigh.

My brother hisses in alarm. “Holy crap, Harp, how long has it been like that?”

“I couldn’t wait,” I say, and my eyes won’t focus. “I think—I think it’s infected.”

“You think? Grey—”

“I can fix it.” And before I have time to ask how, or what that fully means, he pulls off a glove and presses his fingers right to the wound.

I scream. I lied, I lied, I lied, I don’t trust him at all, this is worse than any pain has ever been, ever. It’s too much, too intense, like he’s grabbed a fist full of my flesh and pulled it right out of my leg. This has to be a nightmare. This is torture. I’m going to pass out again.

But then—it’s not. The pain eases away. For the first time in days, my head is suddenly … clear. I’m still weak and exhausted and starving, but the bruising and pus around the knife wound are gone, leaving only a narrow scar where the edges of the wound had turned black. I’m soaked in sweat and panting, but my body stops shivering from infection, and instead starts shivering because it’s cold.

Whoa.

Jake pulls off his cloak and wraps it around me, and I’m grateful for the ready warmth, but I can’t stop staring at Grey. I’ve heard some of the rumors of what happened between him and the people in Blind Hollow, how he saved them with magic, but until this moment, I hadn’t quite understood what that meant.

Lilith tore through Dustan and the other guards with this same kind of power.

I shudder. I suddenly understand Rhen’s terror. I can’t tell if it’s the memory of what happened or the thought of that kind of potential being at Grey’s fingertips, but either way, I’m speechless. I don’t know if I should be grateful or terrified.

Both. Definitely both.

Scary Grey for sure.

Maybe he can see it in my frozen expression, because he stands, pulling his glove back on. His eyes give away nothing.

A woman steps forward, through the soldiers, and they step back with deference. I recognize her vibrant red hair before I recognize her face. Queen Lia Mara is in dark blue belted robes, and she wears a heavy woolen cloak against the cold.

“Princess Harper,” she says. I feel like I should stand, so I grab hold of Jake’s arm and let him help me to my feet. Whatever Grey did didn’t heal everything, and my one ankle nearly gives way, so I clutch to my brother to stay upright. She was able to look regal and unaffected when she was Rhen’s prisoner, but I don’t know if I can do the same after days of not eating, with my pants hanging in torn scraps around my knee.

I also don’t know what I’m supposed to call her, and I’ve been in chains for days, possibly by her order. I’ve heard plenty of stories about the viciousness of Karis Luran—but I also know this girl once came to Rhen with hopes for peace.

Her expression isn’t angry, but it’s definitely not warm and inviting. “My scouts said that you told them Prince Rhen is injured,” she says.

“Yes.” But as soon as I say the word, my tongue stalls. I was so determined to get to Grey, to beg for his help, but now I’m here and I’m worried that I’m handing them an advantage. What did Rhen say?

This is war, Harper. Grey will use anything at his disposal.

Surely Lia Mara would do the exact same thing. I wanted to talk to Grey. I thought he would understand. I thought he would help.

Maybe. Hopefully.

Looking into Lia Mara’s cool green eyes and Grey’s severe ones, I don’t feel very hopeful at all.

But then Lia Mara says, “This is not our doing,” and her tone is grave. “My soldiers have been ordered to honor the sixty days we granted.”

“Oh!” Wait. Does she think I came all this way to blame them? “No! I know it’s not Syhl Shallow.”

She frowns. “Then who attacked the prince?”

I look at Grey. “The enchantress.” I take a breath. “It’s Lilith. She’s back.”

From a distance, the Crystal Palace looks nothing like Ironrose Castle. While the latter always reminds me of something you’d see in a brochure for some kind of European fairy-tale adventure, the Crystal Palace sits well above the city, partially built into the side of the mountain. Massive sparkling windows reflect the sky, and huge snow-covered fields stretch away from the palace to end near a forest with glistening ice-coated trees. For a country that once tried to burn Emberfall to the ground, I didn’t expect it to look so beautiful.

I expected Grey to react with shock when I mentioned Lilith, but he didn’t. Some of the soldiers exchanged glances and murmured to each other, but Lia Mara asked for silence, and they gave it. She then said we would return to the palace to discuss the matter privately. I thought that meant me and them, but Jake loaded me into a carriage to take me away from the scout station where I was being held. So now I’m alone with my brother, rattling across rocky streets while I huddle and shiver and stare out the window at the palace that keeps growing closer.

I wish I could put a finger on what’s changed about him. It’s not confidence, because Jake was never lacking in that, but he’s gained something. Or maybe he’s lost something.

Jake speaks into the silence. “Grey would have fixed your ankle, too.”

I shiver, and this time it has nothing to do with the cold. Maybe it was miraculous how Grey made the infection go away and the wound heal over, but I keep thinking of Lilith’s fingers tearing out the muscle and tendons of Dustan’s neck with the same kind of torturous power. I came here because he supposedly has magic, but knowing about it and experiencing it are two very different things. “Once was enough.”

Jake frowns. “What does that mean?”

I say nothing. I don’t even know what to say.

“So Rhen is terrified of magic and now you are too?” he says.

“I’m not terrified.” But I am. It’s obvious I am. I saw what Lilith could do. I felt her rip Zo right off the back of my horse.

“I told you to come with me, Harp. I told you.”

It takes me a moment to realize he means months ago, when Grey first fled Emberfall with Lia Mara.

I frown. “I’m so glad I showed up half-dead and you’re deciding to start with ‘I told you so.’ ”

He looks out the window, too. “From the looks of you, it’s a miracle you’re not all the way dead.”

I’m not sure what to say to that either. “It was really hard to get here, Jake.”

“I’m not talking about the journey, Harper.” His eyes snap back to me. “I’m talking about whatever happened with Lilith. With Rhen. How many times do you need to sacrifice yourself for that guy for you to realize that you’re the only one losing everything. Every single time.”

I think of Rhen, his eyes so warm and intent on mine. I will try for peace. I am not yielding to Grey, Harper. I am yielding to you. For you.

My eyes fill. I’m not the only one losing everything. Rhen is too. “It wasn’t like that, Jake. He’s not like that.”

Jake swears and looks away. “You sound like Mom.”

That hits me like a bullet. My arms fold across my midsection, but my emotions can’t be contained. Tears spill down my cheeks.

My brother sighs. He eases off the seat to drop to his knees in front of me, and he reaches for my hands. “I’m sorry,” he says softly. “I just—I wish you could see yourself. When I walked into that cell and saw you lying there—”

I pull a hand out of his to swipe at my eyes. “Rhen didn’t do this to me.”

“Yeah, well, he couldn’t stop it.”

“He could be dead, Jake. She might have killed him.” But as I say it, I don’t think it’s true. She could have killed him a hundred times over. A million times over.

Once he’s dead, her game is done.

“Well,” says Jake. “You’re not dead. You made it. You’re safe.”

I blink at him. “What?”

“You’re here.” He pauses, looking back at me. “You made it.”

“You think—you think I came here because I was running away?” My tears dry up in a hurry. Is that what everyone thinks? Is that why I’ve been packed into a carriage instead of sitting down to strategize?

Jake looks at me like I’m insane—which confirms it. “Yes?”

“No, you idiot.” I swipe at my eyes again, then shove him in the chest. “I came here for help.”