The Oath Breaker

Chapter Four

Dorian

They debated my imprisonment over honey cakes.

I sat at the round table — no head, no throne, Nessa's careful geometry of equals — and listened to Councilor Harth propose, in reasonable tones, that I be locked in Aldren's memory vault "for the duration of the crisis."

"For my safety," I said.

"For everyone's," Harth corrected.

"The vault is a prison," Nessa said. "We built this council on the promise that no one would be caged for what they might do."

"We built this council on the promise that oath magic would never again rule Lumeris." Harth spread his hands. "And now it leaks out of this boy in his sleep. Jem the woodcutter's lad couldn't leave his own gate. What happens when Vale dreams bigger?"

I wanted to argue. But I had tied my wrists to the bedpost three nights running, and the cloth kept coming apart in shreds, and Harth wasn't wrong. That was the worst of it. He wasn't wrong.

Councilor Vell — Saltmere, kind-eyed, her province missing its shard — spoke softly. "The boy contained the Graywater bloom before it took the whole crew. He fights it. That counts for something."

"It counts," Harth said, "until the day it doesn't."

The vote was called. Four against the vault. Three for.

Three. Out of seven.

Nessa adjourned with a face like winter, and I walked out of the throne room understanding, with perfect clarity, that I had nearly been caged by my friends' colleagues — and that next time, the numbers might not favor me.

In the corridor, Nessa fell into step beside me, her heels striking like punctuation.

"Three votes, Dorian."

"I counted."

"Harth's been visiting the provincial keepers. If another shard goes missing, he'll have his four." She stopped at a window overlooking the training yard. "I'm not going to lie to you. If the blooms keep spreading, I may not be able to stop the next vote."

"I know."

"Do you?" She turned, and her face was raw in a way I'd never seen — not the councilor, just Nessa. "Because the woman who punched you in the mouth on the day you arrived would rather resign than sign that order. But the woman who leads this council has seven provinces to think about."

I put a hand on her shoulder. "Then let's make sure it never comes to a vote."

"How?"

"We find the shards first." I looked out at the yard, at the recruits drilling with wooden swords. "Whoever's collecting them needs me alive, Nessa. That means they'll come to Bellhaven eventually. Let them."

"That's not a plan. That's bait."

"It's the only leverage I have." I smiled, thin. "I'm very good bait. Ask Sera."

"She'd kill me if she heard you say that."

"She'd kill them. There's a difference."

A palace guard was waiting further down the corridor. "A message for you, my lord. From the lower cells."

He held out a folded scrap. No seal. I knew the handwriting anyway — I had been taught penmanship by the same tutors.

It sings to me still. It sings to you too. — A.

Sera read it over my shoulder. "Don't," she said.

"I have to."

"Dorian—"

"He's my father. And he knows what's happening to me." I folded the scrap. "You can come if you like. But I'm going."

The lower cells were clean — Nessa's doing; even Aldren got daylight and books, because ordinary consequences were crueler than theatrical ones. He sat at a small table, reading. Without the crown he looked smaller. Older. Almost human.

"My boy," he said, without looking up. "Come to visit your father."

"I came to ask about the singing."

Aldren set down his book. His eyes were the same gray as mine — I had always hated that. "You feel it in your teeth first. Then the dreams. Then you start saying things in your sleep that the morning has to apologize for." He smiled. "How is young Jem?"

My hands curled. "How do you know about Jem?"

"I know everything that happens in this palace. I built it." He leaned forward. "You think breaking the crown freed you? Oh, Dorian. You didn't break it. You became it. All that power had to go somewhere, and you opened your mouth and said— what was it? Tell me what you said in the chapel."

"I don't remember."

"Liar." Softly, almost fondly. "You said I am the kingdom. And the kingdom agreed."

The cell felt very small. "The shards are being stolen. Someone's reforging it."

"Of course they are. Power abhors a vacuum even more than nature does." Aldren studied me. "They'll come for you, you know. You're the vessel. The only question is whether you walk to them or make them drag you."

"Is that what you want? To be relevant again?"

"What I want," he said, "is for my son to stop pretending he's a woodcutter." He picked up his book. "The song gets louder, boy. Soon you won't be able to hear anything else. When that happens — remember that I offered you the truth first."

I left before I could hit him. In the corridor, Sera was waiting, and the look on her face told me she'd heard enough through the door.

"He's trying to frighten you," she said.

"He's trying to recruit me." I took her hand. My fingers were shaking. "It's not going to work."

But walking back up into the daylight, I could feel it — faint, far, like a choir heard through stone.

Singing.