“I’m leaving the Rocklands. At midnight. I want you to go with me, but I’ll understand if you can’t. I’ll wait at the tunnel for a few minutes, but no longer. I’ll know your answer then.”

And then she kissed him, lightly on the cheek, stood and hurried away.

He sat there, one hand absently touching the spot where her lips had met his skin, where it felt warm, her heat lingering on him. What had just happened? Was she really going to leave?

He sat there for a long time, until the shadows began to creep in, until day turned to dusk turned to night. He sat there as though glued to the spot. Like he was a statue. He sat there, feeling like time was washing over him, past him. He sat there like that, because he was afraid of what he would do if he moved even a single muscle.

He didn’t know exactly how much time had passed, or how late the hour had grown, but some innate sense was telling him the designated time was fast approaching. Don’t move, he thought. Stay here. You’ve done this before, you can do it again. You must be strong. Your place is here. Your Oath…”

For some reason, that word in his mind released the pressure of the moment that had been building inside him ever since she kissed him, and he exploded from his spot like an erupting volcano.

And then he ran.

Something was happening.

Cainan heard shouts echoing down the corridor but given the way the voices bounced off the stonework, he couldn’t tell if they were drawing nearer or receding. There were also footfalls, the frantic kind that made him think of very heavy mice scurrying down the hallway wearing thick-soled boots.

As anything out of the ordinary usually was, the commotion was greeted with shouts and jeers and pounding on the metal doors by some of the other inmates, those who’d lost their marbles years earlier, were prone to violence, or were simply bored, leaping at the chance to be involved in anything that broke up the monotony of life in prison.

Cainan, as weak as he felt these days, dragged himself to the door, hauled himself vertical, his legs feeling like thin sticks ready to crack at any moment, and thumbed open the food slot. He peered out, looking for any clue as to what might be happening in Comman Dur.

The corridor beyond his door was its usual mix of wavering shadows and flickering torchlight, an orange, gray and black miasma that made him freshly aware of just how dark his tiny cell was. Other than that, everything was still, if not silent. The shouts he’d heard previously were fading, which meant the guards who’d been stationed in this part of the prison were likely gone, off to help with whatever crisis had started the ruckus in the first place. The most raucous prisoners continued their howls and pounding for several minutes longer, but eventually even that died away.