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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

“And I’ve not had a single restful night’s sleep since because of the river of regret running through my veins.”

“Then why didn’t you write? Why didn’t you visit? Why did you pretend like I didn’t exist?”

“For a long time, I didn’t think you did!”

He detected no lie, which only made her strange words catch him even more by surprise. “Explain.”

“Of course I received word of Crown Prince Tomas’s birth. Your birth. It was all anyone spoke of for a while, along with my own return to Drouin and Crown Prince Edward’s claim to the throne. But I couldn’t believe it, not when Artemus, your father, had lied to me so many times in so many ways. I wanted to believe it, of course I did, but I couldn’t. I had to protect my heart from being broken, for Edward’s sake.”

“But surely at some point you realized it was no lie.”

“Yes.” She had a faraway look in her eyes, as though remembering the exact moment she’d realized her firstborn son who she’d given up for dead still lived. “I…”

There was something different in her voice now. She sounded weaker, less confident. Tomas waited, the silence so deep he could hear his own exhalations through his nostrils.

The queen shook her head. “That was a long time ago. I should’ve written to you. I should’ve made some effort. I took the easy path. I simply…stayed. And now you despise me and Edward is…is…”

“I don’t despise you.”

She clamped her lips shut, a single tear tracking down her cheek. “You should.”

“I am angry, or at least I thought I was, but the truth is, you’re a stranger. How can I despise a stranger?”

She offered a crying laugh at that, wiping the tear from her cheek. It left a smear of pink skin across the gold dust, which now clung to the back of her hand. “You don’t feel like a stranger to me at all, Tomas. I feel like I’ve known you my entire life. I wish I had.”

“Me too.” The words escaped his mouth before he could stop them.

They clung to the silence that followed, each left to their own thoughts about a life unshared. “So…Lord Stapleton is your most trusted advisor, huh?” Tomas said to finally break the quiet.

The queen chuckled. “I’ll have you know, he’s far cleverer than he acts sometimes.”

“I think I scared him.”

“Only because he was afraid of disappointing me. He’s as loyal as they come. I’m lucky to have him.”