The Oath Breaker

Chapter Two

Dorian

I woke to the sound of someone crying in my kitchen, and for one terrible moment I thought it was Sera.

It wasn't. It was Jem — seventeen, all elbows, the village lad who came three mornings a week to chop wood and mend whatever the cottage had broken. He was sitting at our table with his head in his hands, and when he saw me in the doorway he flinched like I'd raised a hand.

"Jem? What's wrong?"

"I can't leave." His voice cracked. "I tried. I got to the gate and my legs — they wouldn't. It's like there's a wall."

Cold moved through my stomach. "What happened?"

"You did." He looked up, and he was angry now, under the fear. "Last night. You came out to the woodpile — you were asleep, I think, eyes open but not seeing — and you put your hand on my shoulder and said, 'You'll always have work here, Jem. I promise.'"

The kitchen tilted.

"I didn't — I don't remember—"

"I know you don't remember!" He stood so fast the bench scraped. "But I can't go home, can I? My mother'll think I've run off. I have to get to the gate and I can't."

Sera appeared in the doorway behind me, hair loose, a shawl over her nightdress. She took in Jem's face, my face, and the silver thread I could now see crawling up the boy's forearm like a vein.

"Jem," she said gently, "sit down. Let me see."

She unwound it the way she'd unwound Pippa's — patience, a changed promise, a boy's shaking whisper of I'll work here until the harvest, then. The silver let go. Jem fled without his day's wages, and I didn't blame him.

Then Sera looked at me.

"You were asleep," I said.

"I know."

"I don't remember saying it."

"I know that too." She crossed the kitchen and put her hands on either side of my face. Her palms were warm. "Dorian. How long?"

I wanted to lie. The old curse slept in my blood, but habit remained, and I had been a prince long enough to know that some truths are safer unspoken.

Her thumbs brushed my cheekbones. "Don't," she said softly. "Not to me."

So I told her the shape of it but not the whole: that I'd felt something moving under my skin for weeks, like a second pulse. That twice now I'd woken with the taste of silver in my mouth. I did not tell her about the worst of it — the dream that kept returning, of a crown of black thorns growing out of my own skull, roots and all.

"Why didn't you tell me?" she asked.

"Because every time I open my mouth, I'm afraid of what might come out bound in silver." My voice sounded raw. "Sera, I am becoming the thing we killed."

She was quiet for a long moment. Then she did something I didn't expect — she laughed, once, without humor.

"You're not the crown, Dorian. You're the man who burns toast and paces before weddings and asks permission to kiss his own wife." She kissed me, quick and fierce. "But you're right to be afraid. So let's be afraid together, and let's be useful about it."

"Nessa will want to lock me up."

"Nessa," Sera said, "can try."

The council session was in three days. We would ride for the capital in the morning. As Sera went to pack, I stood at the kitchen window and watched Jem's small figure disappear down the path toward the village, running like the gate might close behind him.

My hands were shaking. I pressed them flat against the sill until they stopped.

That night, I tied my own wrists to the bedpost with a strip of cloth. Sera found me doing it and didn't comment — just checked the knot, the way she'd check a bandage.

"For everyone's safety," I said.

"For everyone's sleep," she corrected, and lay down beside me.

I dreamed of thorns. In the morning, the cloth was in shreds, and there was silver under my fingernails.

Sera found the shreds when she made the bed. She held them up without a word — thin strips of linen, torn as if by claws — and I watched her do the arithmetic.

"You tied yourself down," she said.

"For everyone's safety."

"For everyone's sleep," she said — but her voice wasn't light this time. She sat on the edge of the bed and looked at the strips for a long moment. "Dorian. If it gets worse — if you start saying things in your sleep that I can't unwind — promise me you'll tell me. Not Nessa. Not the council. Me."

"I promise," I said, and we both watched my wrist like it might catch fire.

Nothing. Just skin.

She exhaled. "Good. That's — good."

But we both knew what it meant: either the curse was fading, or it was saving its strength. I didn't say which one I believed. Some truths are safer unspoken — and I was becoming an expert in those again, which frightened me more than the dreams.