Chapters (53)
- Map of Kingdom of Finfalla and Surrounding Area- Western Half
- Map of Kingdom of Finfalla and Surrounding Area - Eastern Half
- Map of Kingdom of Finfalla and Surrounding Area - Full Map
- Important Trigger Warning
- Prologue
- PART I
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Interlude: The River of Life
- PART II
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Interlude: Fallow Fields
- PART III
- Twenty
- Twenty-One
- Twenty-Two
- Twenty-Three
- Twenty-Four
- Twenty-Five
- Interlude: Of Man and Monster
- PART IV
- Twenty-Six
- Twenty-Seven
- Twenty-Eight
- Twenty-Nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-One
- Thirty-Two
- Thirty-Three
- Thirty-Four
- POSTLUDES
- Postlude 1: Lana Vica
- Postlude 2: Ludo Vica
- Postlude 3: Cainan
- Acknowledgments
- An excerpt from Heartsworn, Volume II in The Forsworn Oath, available for preorder now!
- PART I
Considered getting out her book to distract herself but immediately discarded the notion, too exhausted to concentrate on Elaine of Availing or her adventures.
Closed her eyes. Images flared, conjured by an eight-year-old girl’s nightmares. Ludo. Her. Black flames all around. Hungry. No, ravenous was the word she’d used. Except in her version, there was another form present. Skin as dark as ash, but not from being burned. For the fire didn’t touch him, couldn’t touch him.
A tapestry of golden leaves shone on his forehead, his cheeks.
Even his scalp.
He was the Fire Eater.
Her father.
Twelve
Tomas
Approaching Drouin on the River of Painted Foes, Kinkalla
The waters of the River of Painted Foes were far calmer than the rough, relentless battering of the rapids tumbling inside Crown Prince Tomas Vedran’s mind. He calmed and distracted them through the act of scholarship, studying historical records that he’d already read, an entire trunk filled with books that he’d insisted on bringing with him for the journey north to Drouin.
He was searching for something specific, but so far had only reminded himself that the lands he would one day rule were drenched in the blood of their ancestors. This very river had earned its name because of blood spilled four centuries ago during the “Celebration of Painted Foes”, a historical event that had become an annual tradition in Finfalla. Feasting, drinking and general debauchery marked the occasion, though the true meaning of that day had been lost to most.
Not him.
As he sat on the riverboat’s deck while brawny oarsmen fought the southward current, he closed his book and stared at the peaceful bank with its lush grass, vibrant flowers, and the bustling activity of bees, butterflies and birds going about their daily tasks. All that beauty faded in his mind, darkening to a day on which surely the sun didn’t shine, where the bees and butterflies and birds surely didn’t show their faces.
On that shadow-filled day, there was only suffering and pain.
On that shadow-filled day, Tomas’s own forebears, the Northmen, had infiltrated the Drouin palace, killing dozens of royal guardsmen and abducting ninety-five members of the Kinkallian nobility, along with five of the Echevarian royal family: King Horace, Queen Aline, Crown Prince Arlen, and Princesses Oola and Lacey. Rather than being offered a swift execution, the group that later became known as The Wagered Hundred were injured, “painted” with each other’s blood, and then staked on this very riverbank beside what, at the time, was called the Gray River. The prisoners were fed and watered and generally kept alive, though their injuries were not tended to, nor were they protected from the elements.
In short, they were forced to watch each other slowly die.
By Tomas’s estimation, it was nothing short of savagery. Then again, it was also effective.