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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

One hundred and eighty seconds. I should be feeling…something…shouldn’t I?

Ludo didn’t just mean physically, though there was that too. Shouldn’t his chest be aching, demanding his next breath? More than that, he’d expected—no, hoped—to feel something else, that connection to the woman who’d birthed him that he’d been missing his entire life. Instead, he felt…

Nothing.

Like she was nothing to him. Just a name—Lana Vica. An idea at best, cobbled together from the once-a-year tidbits his father would offer him like scraps being tossed to a starving dog. While all the other days of the year they pretended she’d never existed. Maybe I just need to get all the way there…perhaps then I’ll get what I came for…

Two hundred and twenty-two, two hundred and twenty-three…

He was so close now—why weren’t his lungs on fire?

He was so close now—why was his mother still a stranger?

Two hundred and twenty-eight, two hundred and twenty-nine, two hundred and thirty…

Ten seconds to go and then his life would be changed forever.

Something grabbed him from behind, strong limbs curling beneath his arms and cinching across his chest. He hammered at his attacker fruitlessly, but the water rendered each blow weak while his foe’s grip was like iron as he was forced upwards toward the surface.

A silent bubble-filled scream burst from his lips, continuing all the way until his head exploded from the pond’s surface with a spray of water and then the return of sound. “GetoffmeletgoofmeletgoletgogetoffgetoffGETOFF!!!” With each breathless word he pounded against what he could now see were hands holding him fast, towing him to shore.

Familiar hands.

His father’s hands. Strong, calloused, sun-browned.

Hands that had bandaged his knees when he fell. Hands that had scored his backside with a belt when he’d snuck out to drink awful-tasting ale with Little Tommy and Winston. Hands that had rebuilt their house after the fire took it and Gado. Hands that had failed to protect Gado. And now, hands that had ruined everything.

With Ludo still kicking and fighting and screaming like a madman, his father silently hauled him ashore and set him down, water shedding from his skin and clothes and muddying the dry patch of dirt. “No,” he screamed. “I need to feel what she felt! I need to understand!” He tried to fight back to his feet, to plunge back into the water, but his father held him fast with what might as well have been bars of iron for all the effect his own meager strength had when he tried to push them away.