Chapter 1: Oath sworn on ancestral bones
The stones of the ossuary were cold and unforgiving against my knees. A familiar sensation. The scent here was always the same—damp earth, crumbling mortar, and the faint, sweet-rot smell of old bones. The dead were better company.
Theon’s grip in my hair was new. A fresh twist in a three-year-long knot of misery.
“Look at it,” he snarled, wrenching my head forward. My scalp screamed. My gaze was forced down, past the wrought-iron balcony railing, into the shadowy hollow of the royal crypt below. A single, raw space gaped among the ornate tombs, a dark mouth waiting. My tomb. He’d had it commissioned last week. “See how quickly I’ll replace you? A year of mourning, for propriety’s sake. Then I’ll fill it with a wife who doesn’t reek of treachery.”
His breath was sour with communion wine and spite. We’d just come from vespers. He liked to mix his sacraments.
“I didn’t steal your mother’s jewels, Theon.” My voice was flat, scraped raw from three years of explanations that died on deaf ears. “Elara set the scene. She always did.”
A hard shake, my neck bones popping. “Elara is gentle. A true lady. You are a poison my father forced down my throat.”
There it was. The old, festering wound. The King, in a rare moment of paternal cheer after a successful campaign my father had led, had asked the Nineteen-year-old girl at the feast who she fancied. A silly, courtly game. I’d said Prince Theon was handsome, because he was, and because it was the expected answer. My father’s men cheered. The King, pleased with his loyal general, decreed it a splendid match. A reward. My father beamed. He died with his smile still in place, I think, in the fire that took my home, my family, and every shred of my safety six months before my wedding.
Theon saw it not as a king’s whim, but as my calculated ambition. He hated me for it from the first.
But what truly killed any faint hope was what came later. Elara, my only friend at court, whose laughter had been a lifeline. She brought me wine one evening, her eyes wide with concern over my melancholy. The next thing I knew, I was burning from the inside out, my thoughts melted wax, my body a puppet with strings pulled by a desperate, alien need. The stable boy, Guyrin, was in my chambers. He looked as confused and terrified as I felt, but my hands were on him, pleading for help, out of my wits from a drug I didn’t know I’d taken. Theon threw the doors open. Elara stood just behind him, her hand over her mouth, a perfect mask of horrified discovery.
He called me a soiled, insatiable whore. He believed, and still believes, I'd ruined myself.
“You blame me for a king’s decree and a whore’s trick,” I whispered now, the stone biting into my shins.
His free hand grabbed my jaw, fingers digging into the bruises he’d left yesterday. “I blame you for being the weapon used against me. I should have let you burn with your traitorous house.”
Tears of pure, unfiltered rage welled in my eyes. Not grief. Never grief for him. I’d shed all those tears years ago, alone in the dark. These were hotter, more dangerous. I stared at my future tomb. The cool, dark silence of it seemed suddenly inviting compared to the living hell of his touch.
A flicker of torchlight danced on the crypt wall below. A figure, moving silently up the hidden servants’ stair that wound from the depths of the crypt to this secluded balcony. Alaric. The King’s brother. My husband’s uncle. The man who watched me with those unreadable grey eyes that saw too much.
Theon followed my gaze. A cruel smile spread across his face. “Let him see,” he hissed, his mouth against my ear. “Let the icy bastard see what becomes of deceptive bitches. He’ll thank me for cleaning the court’s disgrace.”
He shoved me forward. I caught myself on the railing, my rings screeching against the iron. The torchlight grew brighter, illuminating the grim set of Alaric’s jaw as he emerged from the stairwell onto the balcony. He took in the scene: Theon flushed with violence, me pinned and disheveled, the chilling view below.
His eyes met mine. There was no great shock in them, no outburst. Just a deep, simmering coldness that somehow felt more potent than Theon’s hot rage.
Theon released my hair, straightening his tunic. “Uncle. We were just contemplating legacy.”
Alaric’s voice was a low rasp, like stone grinding on stone. “That is not a legacy. It is a threat.”
“It is a promise,” Theon corrected, smiling. He turned to go, pausing to lean close to me again. He dropped his voice to a venomous whisper only I could hear. “Three years of your lies. The crypt is too good for you. Perhaps I’ll let the dogs have what’s left.”
He strode away, his footsteps echoing into the dark of the chapel.
I didn’t move. I clung to the railing, shaking, the cool metal the only real thing in a spinning world. The scent of Alaric’s torch, of pitch and smoke, cut through the crypt’s stale air. He didn’t come closer. He just watched me, a silent sentinel in the flickering light.
The silence stretched, thick and painful. It was in that silence that the last of my fear burned away, leaving only a cold, hard coal of resolve. I looked away from Alaric, back down into the darkness of my intended grave.
I spoke the words to the empty air, to the bones of forgotten kings, to Theon’s retreating shadow. My voice didn’t shake. It was quiet, final, and carried on the damp chill like a vow etched into the stone itself.
“Next life, Theon,” I whispered. “I won't make the same mistakes. I'll see to it you get what you are owed.”
A beat of profound silence followed. Then, the soft scuff of a boot on stone. Alaric had taken a single step forward. I finally turned my head to look at him. The torchlight danced in his grey eyes, and for the first time, I saw something there besides icy distance. It looked like recognition.
He didn’t offer a hand. He didn’t offer empty comfort. He simply said, “The chapel is cold. You’ll catch a chill.”
It wasn’t kindness. It was a fact. But in the wake of Theon’s cruelty, it was the first true thing anyone had said to me in years. I pushed myself upright, my knees screaming in protest, my head throbbing.
I pushed myself upright, my knees screaming in protest, my head throbbing.
Alaric didn’t move to steady me. He just stood there, torch held aloft, his shadow a giant against the chapel wall. “Can you walk?” he asked. His voice was devoid of warmth, but it wasn’t cruel. It was a simple, logistical question.
“Yes,” I said, though my legs felt like water. I took a step, and the world tilted. A wave of nausea, sharp and acrid, rose in my throat. It wasn’t from Theon’s manhandling. This was different. A familiar, creeping wrongness I’d felt only once before.
I swayed, my hand flying back to the cold railing for support. The taste of metal flooded my mouth. The wine.
Elara had brought me wine that night too. Sweet and floral, a vintage from her mother’s estates. I’d drunk it gratefully, desperate for anything to dull the edge of my loneliness. This was different, though. Subtler. I’d taken nothing from Elara tonight. I’d been careful. I’d eaten only from the common plates, drunk only from my own goblet, which never left my sight.
But the servants handled everything. The cooks. The cup-bearers. A hundred hands between the vine and my lips. The Queen herself had offered me a honeyed almond from her personal dish after vespers. A rare, poisonous kindness. The Prince had glared. Elara’s mother, the Duchess, had watched with her cold, reptilian smile.
It could have been anyone.
“What is it?” Alaric’s voice cut through the spiraling dread. He’d taken a step closer. The torchlight illuminated the faint, concerned pinch between his brows.
“I don’t…” The words died as a cramp seized my stomach, twisting deep. A cold sweat broke out on my skin. Not again. Not like last time. This was slower, more insidious. A creeping chill, not a raging fire.
“I need to…” I didn’t know what I needed. To vomit. To lie down. To scream.
Alaric saw it then—the pallor, the tremor in my hands that had nothing to do with fear. His eyes narrowed, darting from my face to the shadowed corridor where Theon had disappeared, then back to me. The calculation in his gaze was instantaneous. He knew. Of course he knew. He saw the pieces of court life others missed.
He thrust the torch into a sconce with a sharp, decisive movement. The metal rang. Then his hands were on my arms, his grip firm, almost painful. “Who?” he demanded, his voice low and urgent.
“I don’t know,” I gasped. Another wave of dizziness slammed into me, and my vision swam. The carved saints on the walls blurred into grinning skeletons. “The wine… maybe the food… I don’t…”
A violent shiver wracked my body. The chill was in my bones now, leaching up from the crypt below. Alaric swore under his breath, a raw, ugly word I’d never heard him use. He released one of my arms and pulled me against his side, half-supporting, half-carrying me toward the archway that led to the private family apartments.
“You will not die here,” he stated, as if commanding the poison itself. “Not like this. Not in this place.”
Each step was an effort. The tapestry-lined corridors, usually so oppressive, swam in and out of focus. My breath came in short, ragged pants. The pain was a cold stone in my gut, growing heavier.
“Why…” I slurred, my head lolling against his shoulder. The wool of his tunic was rough against my cheek. “Why do you care?”
He didn’t answer for a long moment. Our footsteps echoed. “Because you looked at your tomb and didn’t weep,” he said finally, his voice rough. “You looked at it and made a vow. I heard you.”
I had. Next life, I won't make the same mistakes. I'll see to it you get what you are owed.
But that wasn’t all of it, was it? That was just the rage. As the darkness pressed in at the edges of my sight, a deeper, more fundamental ache bloomed beneath the pain. The loneliness of three years in a gilded cage. The hollow echo of Elara’s laughter. The phantom touch of a father’s hand on my hair. The crushing absence of a child’s cry I would never hear.
If given a second chance…
I will make them pay.
Not just Theon. All of them. The smiling queen with her poisoned treats. The duchess with her cold eyes. Elara, who I had called friend. Every last one who thought a lonely girl with no allies was a acceptable sacrifice in their games.
I will find love.
Real love. Not a political decree, not a chain. Something chosen. Something fierce and quiet and mine.
I will have the family I always wanted.
A home that is not ash. A hearth that is warm. Laughter that is real.
The promises crystallized in my mind, sharp and clear, even as my body failed.
We reached the door to my chambers. Alaric shouldered it open, kicking it shut behind us. He lowered me onto the cold floor near the hearth, his movements strangely gentle. He tried to lay me down, but I convulsed, curling into myself.
“Look at me,” he commanded, crouching beside me. His hands cradled my face, forcing my gaze to his. His grey eyes were no longer icy. They were a storm, fierce and terrified. “Stay. Look at me.”
But I was slipping. The cold was winning. I tried to speak, to tell him about the wine from the silver flagon, about the queen’s almond, but only a faint rasp came out.
“I know,” he whispered, his thumb stroking my cheek. A shocking tenderness. “I know. I’ll find it. I’ll find who did this.”
He gathered me into his arms then, pulling me against his chest. The hard planes of his body were the last solid thing in the dissolving world. My head fell back against his arm. I stared up at the canopied ceiling, the embroidered birds frozen in flight.
“I’m sorry,” he breathed into my hair, his voice breaking. It was the most human sound I’d ever heard from him. “I was too late. If I would have known sooner, I... Izy please hold on, I cant -"
I didn't hear what he said after that. The darkness took over and I prayed to anyone who might here me.
Please just one more chance.