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Back Forsworn
Chapters (53)
  1. Map of Kingdom of Finfalla and Surrounding Area- Western Half
  2. Map of Kingdom of Finfalla and Surrounding Area - Eastern Half
  3. Map of Kingdom of Finfalla and Surrounding Area - Full Map
  4. Important Trigger Warning
  5. Prologue
  6. PART I
  7. One
  8. Two
  9. Three
  10. Four
  11. Five
  12. Six
  13. Seven
  14. Eight
  15. Nine
  16. Ten
  17. Eleven
  18. Twelve
  19. Interlude: The River of Life
  20. PART II
  21. Thirteen
  22. Fourteen
  23. Fifteen
  24. Sixteen
  25. Seventeen
  26. Eighteen
  27. Nineteen
  28. Interlude: Fallow Fields
  29. PART III
  30. Twenty
  31. Twenty-One
  32. Twenty-Two
  33. Twenty-Three
  34. Twenty-Four
  35. Twenty-Five
  36. Interlude: Of Man and Monster
  37. PART IV
  38. Twenty-Six
  39. Twenty-Seven
  40. Twenty-Eight
  41. Twenty-Nine
  42. Thirty
  43. Thirty-One
  44. Thirty-Two
  45. Thirty-Three
  46. Thirty-Four
  47. POSTLUDES
  48. Postlude 1: Lana Vica
  49. Postlude 2: Ludo Vica
  50. Postlude 3: Cainan
  51. Acknowledgments
  52. An excerpt from Heartsworn, Volume II in The Forsworn Oath, available for preorder now!
  53. PART I

He screeched to a halt. Eyes narrowing. Confusion growing. The rear door was locked and bolted. He hurried to the front door once more. Perhaps she’d circled back around and followed directly behind him. Nope. Also secured, an act that could only be completed by someone on the inside.

Back upstairs he went, the mystery growing larger in his mind. Back into the deserted room. Clack!

The sound made him flinch, but he hadn’t seen what caused it. Clack! There it was again, his gaze snapping in its direction. Clack-clack!

There! A plank of wood that he had personally hammered over the window was loose at the bottom, and now the wind was hitting it hard enough that it tilted inwards before losing momentum and colliding back against the frame.

He cursed under his breath and hurried over, lifting the plank upward so he could peer out. The window had been pried open and then halfway shut again, but the girl had obviously failed to get it the rest of the way closed and had given up. He wasn’t surprised—this particular window had always stuck rather stubbornly. Thus, the source of the wind. Using a technique he’d perfected, Loris shimmied the window back and forth several times until he was able to gain enough leverage to jam it back into place. He flipped the lock. The girl would need to use the front door when she returned. Next, he checked the other planks, as there was no way she could’ve squeezed through the space left by a single loose board. Sure enough, no fewer than three of the wooden beams had been pried free at the bottom and then levered upwards to create a makeshift opening. She’d clearly tried to pull them all back into position, as two of the nails were buried halfway into the wall, but the third had obviously found its way loose again on account of the gusting wind.

Anger filled him. How dare that foolish urchin put him at risk? The boards were there for a reason: to keep the dangers of the night outside where they belonged. And yet she’d practically opened the door for the nightdemon and rang the dinner bell! It wasn’t right. Such behavior simply couldn’t be tolerated in times such as these. Someone needed to do something about it. He needed to do something about it.

And he would, but not now. First, he needed to fix what she’d broken. Grumbling, he was about to head for the door to retrieve his hammer and box of nails when a sound caught his attention. It was a sort of scritching, scratching, scraping sound that seemed to originate over his head. He looked up, almost expecting to find something gnawing on the ceiling. Instead, he saw nothing, the sound continuing. Was it those damn squirrels in the attic again? The last time they’d burrowed their way inside to keep warm, they’d made a major mess. And who had to clean it up? He did, that’s who!