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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

There was something in his father’s expression that Tomas hadn’t seen in a long time. A steely glint in his eyes. A hardness to the set of his jaw. For just a moment, he looked like the strong ruler that Tomas had always remembered from his childhood. But then he coughed, barely managing to get his cloth to his mouth to cover himself as he turned away. The hacking continued for longer than usual, until Tomas found it prudent to rise and go to him, rubbing his back tenderly. “What can I do?”

“I’m fine,” the king said, waving him away, trying to hide the blood on the handkerchief by folding it in the middle.

“You need a healer.”

“I said I’m fine. You need to prepare for your trip to Kinkalla.”

“May I ask why I’m going there?”

“Your brother is missing.”

“Edward?”

“Do you have another brother I don’t know about?”

“Father,” he said flatly. “Just tell me what happened.”

“That’s the thing. No one knows. One day he was just gone.”

Seven

Korsiris

Lostwood, Finfalla

Korsiris slammed the bat’s dead body onto the rock in frustration. Its chest was ripped open, sheened with gold blood, the cavities where its eyes had once been now hollow and dark. He’d already chewed and swallowed the creature’s heart, followed by its eyes, felt that delicious surge of power, a surge that had lasted so pitifully short a time that he’d barely taken wing before he was forced to return to the forest floor in a rough landing that had scraped his elbows and knees.

Now, he tossed the broken creature into a heap of similar ones. Golden blood limned his lips, so he licked them clean. How many of their hearts had he eaten so far? Twelve? A baker’s dozen? And yet, if anything, the additional power gleaned from each new kill was less than the previous. But why? He was adding more enhanced godsblood to his stores, wasn’t he? Or was there something he was missing? He hadn’t even had another golden leaf appear on his face in days.

Though his predecessor’s memories were broken into disparate, jagged shards, like a pane of glass that had been shattered by a stone, he could still piece together enough of them to know:

This was as far as they had made it too.

Frustration burned in his chest at the realization, so hot he could feel it in his bones, in his heart. Those flames tore through him, elongating, multiplying, until they pushed into his scaled arms, obscuring the golden rivers of light that lived between each section, before pouring over his hands, and then out through his fingers in a dark blast. They hit the mass of dead wings and broken bodies, immediately lighting them like a torch doused in oil.