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
This is no ordinary woman. “I’d rather stay and see how this plays out,” he said nonchalantly. In truth, when she’d come barreling past him as though fleeing from something with snapping teeth, he’d welcomed the distraction. It wasn’t that he minded being alone—hence, ridding himself of the soldiers assigned to accompany him at the first opportunity—but he did mind being bored.
This innate need to always be doing something, he knew, was the source of most of his problems, but he’d given up on trying to change himself a long time ago. Instead, he’d chosen to embrace this flaw in his character. Rather vigorously.
“Suit yourself,” she said, and he couldn’t help but smile at the way she’d turned his own words back on him. Both beautiful and quick-witted, he thought. A dangerous combination.
He watched as she began to swing, the branch shedding leaves as it swayed in concert with its unwanted passenger. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you…”
She ignored him, extending the distance of her next swing and then clenching her abs to kick her feet up and over the branch until it settled in the crook behind her knee. Her foot, he corrected in his mind, a frown creasing his brow. For her pantleg had slid upwards during the maneuver, and now the wooden implement was visible.
As was her entire face, a calculating expression narrowing her eyes as they flicked from him to where he was staring. In one quick motion she dragged her trousers down to cover the false leg and then stood on the narrow branch without hanging onto anything. It was all he could do to steel his expression to hide his shock as the one-legged woman strode across with the ease of someone out for a morning stroll. She quickly traversed the thin beam the width of her foot with deadly drops awaiting even the slightest misstep or wobble.
She didn’t wobble, not once, like an acrobat performing the sort of death-defying feat that made a crowd go ooh and ahh.
CRAACK!
She froze, both their eyes darting to the part of the branch where the bending was most severe. The part of the branch that now had a hairline crack running through it, a crack that was already growing, widening. CRA-CRAAACK!
She broke into a run, but they both knew she wouldn’t make it before the branch—
With the loudest crack yet, it snapped. Which should’ve been the end of the woman, tumbling into the abyss as though a trapdoor had opened beneath her feet. But somehow, someway, she’d anticipated the exact timing of the branch’s demise, choosing the moment the split-second before to plant her real foot and leap into empty air, arms windmilling.