A Crown of Broken Vows - The Rookhaven Covenant - Book One

What He Kept

Kieran had my mother’s photograph in one hand and a silver bolt in his back.

He considered the photograph more urgent.

“The c***k was there before I was imprisoned,” he said. “I counted its points every day for nine months.”

“Nine months?”

“The first time.”

Rainwater ran from his hair onto his collar. His face had gone gray.

“We are discussing this after I remove the bolt.”

“If she is in that room—”

“She has been there at least three days. You have been bleeding for ten minutes.”

“The wound is not fatal.”

“I know. I can feel it.”

That ended the argument.

We took a hired cab back to his house because the royal carriage had become a poor choice for fugitives who had just burgled the Glass Synod. The driver asked no questions after Kieran paid him with a gold piece and bled on the upholstery.

Inside, I locked the door while Kieran set the evidence plates on the sitting-room table. He put my mother’s photograph beside them with extraordinary care.

“Chair,” I said.

“The light is better in the kitchen.”

“You know where the kitchen is now?”

“I learn quickly.”

He made it three steps before his knee buckled.

I caught him around the waist. Pain tore through my own back. For a breath we leaned against each other in the dark hall, both too stubborn to admit which one was holding up the other.

“Chair,” I repeated.

He sat.

The bolt had entered below his right shoulder and missed the bone. Its silver head was designed to spread after impact. Pulling it backward would tear more flesh. Pushing it through would hurt both of us but do less damage.

I laid out pliers, clean linen, a curved needle, and the last of Ione’s brandy.

“Drink,” I said.

Kieran took the glass and set it down untouched.

“It dulls reflexes.”

“That is the purpose.”

“I prefer to know what is happening.”

I looked at the hand resting near his knife. At the way he had positioned the chair so no one could stand behind him without entering his sight.

“All right,” I said. “I will tell you before I touch you. I will tell you before I move the bolt. If you need me to stop, say so.”

His gaze lifted to mine.

“Thank you.”

Two ordinary words. He said them as if I had returned something important.

I cut his shirt away from the wound.

The dark green fabric fell across his lap, ruined. Kieran looked at it with more regret than he had shown for either black coat.

“Ysabet finally persuaded you to wear it,” I said.

“For six hours.”

“She would consider that a victory.”

“She would be unbearable.”

His mouth tightened around the grief. I left the uncut pearl buttons beside his hand.

“I am touching your shoulder.”

He nodded.

I braced one hand against his back and gripped the shaft with the pliers.

“Now.”

I pushed.

Pain turned the room white.

Kieran’s muscles locked beneath my palm. He did not make a sound. The bolt head broke through the front of his shoulder, slick with blood.

“Again,” I warned.

I cut the head off and drew the shaft back.

The smaller echo in my own shoulder opened and bled. Kieran reached toward it, then stopped before touching me.

“Finish yours first,” I said.

“Ours,” he corrected.

I cleaned and stitched him. He cleaned the wound the bond had given me, standing in front so I could see every movement. His fingers were gentler than I expected and more certain than I wanted to notice.

When he finished, he tied the bandage beneath my collarbone.

“Too tight?”

“No.”

His knuckles rested against my skin.

For a moment neither of us stepped away.

Then he picked up the photograph.

Before discussing the cell, he carried the evidence plates to the desk and telephoned a number from memory.

“Elias Finch,” he said when someone answered. “Lady Rhyne is dead.”

The voice on the other end spoke for a long time.

Kieran closed his eyes.

“Yes,” he said. “I know.”

Another pause.

“I have the original street plate and proof that Magistrate Quill accessed Mara Ellery’s signing record. I need photographs made and delivered to every morning paper before the Synod can recover them.”

Finch shouted loudly enough that I heard murderer and trust from across the room.

“Ysabet trusted you,” Kieran said. “If that is not enough, distrust me in public tomorrow.”

He gave the address and hung up.

“Who is Finch?” I asked.

“A reporter Ysabet sued three times.”

“And you trust him?”

“She did. The lawsuits were how they exchanged information without the Court reading their correspondence.”

“That is an exhausting friendship.”

“Most worthwhile ones are.”

He called Nell next. No one answered. On the fourth ring, Moth barked into the receiver and Nell swore in the background.

Kieran’s shoulders lowered by a fraction.

“They are safe,” he said after ending the call.

He had checked the fox before asking whether the palace route remained open. I stored the fact with the others I did not yet know what to do with.

“The room is in the lowest palace level,” he said. “The official plans identify it as an unused cistern. There is one guarded entrance from the archive corridor.”

“And another?”

“A service stair from the old royal apartments. Maeven sealed it after my second escape.”

“Second?”

“The first taught her to improve the locks.”

I looked at the six-pointed c***k behind my mother. Nine months the first time. A second imprisonment long enough to require better locks. Kieran offered the facts in a level voice and waited for me to treat them as useful.

“What did she do to you in that room?” I asked.

“Nothing relevant to entering it.”

“That was not what I asked.”

His mouth tightened.

“The Crown gave commands. I refused. It repeated them until refusal cost more than obedience.”

“Did you obey?”

“Eventually.”

Shame roughened the word.

I sat opposite him. “How old were you?”

“Seventeen.”

“The first time?”

“Yes.”

I thought of myself at seventeen, newly apprenticed and furious because Ione made me return a ring I had repaired badly. Kieran had been alone beneath a palace learning how long pain could continue before choice became a word other people used about you.

“That is why you cannot have someone behind you,” I said.

He glanced toward the door. “Among other reasons.”

“And you still intend to go back.”

“Your mother is there.”

“You do not know me well enough to die for my mother.”

“I knew her.”

“That is not better.”

He looked down at his hands. “No.”

The fire had burned low. I added a log and watched sparks rise.

“At Rusk’s shop,” I said, “you were going to stay behind.”

“To give you time.”

“You would have died.”

“Possibly.”

“You say that as if your life is part of the equipment.”

“It has always been.”

“Not to me.”

The words left before I could protect them.

Kieran looked at me.

I could have softened it. I could have said the bond made his life necessary to mine, which was true and safer.

I did not.

“I have known you less than a day,” I said. “You have lied by omission, arrested me, watched me for twenty years, and nearly strangled me. You are arrogant, controlling, and too willing to bleed on other people’s furniture.”

“A thorough assessment.”

“I am not finished.”

“My apologies.”

“You protected Ione when you had no reason to. You held a fox until it stopped being afraid. You let me change my mind upstairs without punishing me for it.”

His face had gone very still.

“Your life is not a tool,” I said. “Stop offering it every time you do not know what else to give.”

He stared at the unlit lamp beside me.

“What else is there?” he asked.

The question was so quiet I almost missed it.

“Information. Honesty. Staying alive long enough to become irritating in new ways.”

“I can attempt the last.”

“You have a natural gift.”

I sat on the edge of the desk, suddenly unable to look at him.

“I don’t know how to ask someone for more than that either,” I said.

“You asked Ione to come with you.”

“After she stood there until silence became more humiliating than honesty.”

“You still asked.”

“And she said no.”

“She chose to stay. That is not the same as leaving you.”

Ysabet’s words, returned in his voice.

“Everyone is very fond of that distinction today.”

“Do you think it is untrue?”

“I think being left hurts before the reason arrives. Sometimes the reason never catches up.”

Kieran looked at the closed front door.

“When people leave me,” he said, “it is usually because I failed to be useful enough.”

“Or because you make yourself so useful they never meet the person doing the work.”

His gaze came back to mine.

I had not meant to say it aloud. The accuracy frightened both of us.

“I am trying to meet him,” I said.

“Why?”

There was no vanity in the question. He truly did not know.

“Because he chose the black tea. He reads terrible mysteries. He is gentle with injured things and rude to anyone who notices he is one of them.”

Kieran stared at me as if I had found him in a room he believed was locked.

The grief in his expression was worse than tears would have been.

“I watched you because the Crown ordered it,” he said. “I kept watching because Elowen vanished through a door I opened. I could not reach her. I could keep the same thing from finding you.”

“You could have told me I wasn’t alone.”

“I believed distance kept you safe.”

“It kept you safe too.”

“Yes.”

The admission cost him. I let it.

“I don’t forgive you,” I said.

“I did not expect you to.”

“Stop deciding what I will give before I give it.”

He drew a slow breath. “All right.”

“And I hid Quill’s message because I believed I knew what you would choose.”

“You did.”

“I’m sorry.”

His attention came fully to me.

“For the secrecy,” I added. “Not for trying to keep you alive.”

“That seems fair.”

“You are still angry.”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

His eyebrow rose.

“If you pretended otherwise, I would not believe the rest.”

We sat with the anger between us. It did not vanish. It stopped being a locked door.

Kieran reached for my mother’s photograph.

“We cannot enter the cell tonight,” he said. “Maeven carries the stair key. Tomorrow evening she holds a private supper for Ysabet’s family. I can get us inside.”

“And steal from the queen.”

“Borrow.”

“Will we return it?”

“Unclear.”

I smiled.

His gaze caught on my mouth.

The room changed without magic. The fire cracked softly. Mr. Larkin’s watch ticked in my pocket. Kieran sat close enough that I could reach him without the bond forcing either of us to move.

“Upstairs,” I said, “I stepped away because I was hiding the photograph.”

“I know.”

“You did not know then.”

“No.”

“Did you think I didn’t want you to touch me?”

His hand tightened around the edge of the photograph. “It was one possibility.”

“There were others.”

“I was not entitled to choose among them for you.”

“I was afraid,” I admitted.

“Of Quill?”

“Of hoping. If my mother is alive, then some part of me is eleven again, waiting for the door. I do not trust that part to make decisions. I thought if I kept the photograph to myself, I could control her.”

“Could you?”

“No. She is apparently an idiot.”

“She has had a difficult day.”

I laughed, and the sound broke in the middle.

Kieran rose but did not close the distance.

“I cannot promise we will find Elowen alive,” he said.

“I know.”

“I can promise not to turn your hope into permission to command you.”

“Careful. Promises are dangerous around me.”

“Then take it as an intention.”

That was smaller, less magical, and harder to dismiss.

“I cannot promise I will stop being angry with you either,” I said.

“I would distrust the speed.”

“I may become angrier after I sleep.”

“That seems likely.”

“And if you hide another danger from me for my own good, I will stab you somewhere the bond can tolerate.”

“I do not believe there is such a place.”

“Then consider the stakes.”

The answer reached somewhere my cleverness could not defend.

I stood and crossed the space between us.

Kieran looked up at me. He did not reach.

I touched the scar beneath his lower lip with one finger.

His breath stopped.

“Mara.”

This time I understood the question.

“Yes,” I said.

His hand came to my waist, slow enough for me to refuse. I bent and kissed him.

For one heartbeat he remained perfectly still.

Then restraint broke.

He rose, bringing me with him. His mouth was warm and far less careful than his hands. The kiss held everything he had denied himself permission to say: anger, hunger, grief, and a tenderness that frightened me more than any of them.

My fingers slid into his hair. His arm tightened around my back, avoiding the fresh bandage without needing to be told. The bond stayed quiet. Whatever passed between us belonged to our bodies and our choices alone.

He drew back first, breathing hard.

“Your shoulder,” he said.

“Still attached.”

“Your side?”

“Kieran.”

“What?”

“Stop conducting an inventory.”

His mouth curved. It was the first real smile I had seen from him, brief and unexpectedly young.

I kissed him again because I wanted to feel it disappear beneath my mouth.

This kiss was slower. His thumb moved along my jaw. I felt the moment desire stopped being an emergency and became something we might have to live with.

That was more dangerous.

I stepped back before we forgot the evidence on the table and the queen’s key and the woman beneath the palace who might still be my mother.

Kieran let me go, though every line of him objected.

“We should make our own copies of the plates before Finch arrives,” I said.

“There is a camera in the desk.”

I crossed to it while he added coal to the fire.

The desk drawer stuck. I pulled harder. A stack of Amelia Pike mysteries tipped sideways, and the oldest volume fell to the floor.

Its spine split.

A cream envelope slid out.

It landed faceup beside my boot.

My name was written across it in the hand I had found inside my father’s clock.

Mara Ellery.

I did not pick it up.

Kieran had stopped moving behind me.

“What is this?” I asked.

Silence.

I turned.

The warmth had gone out of his face.

“My mother gave you this.”

“Yes.”

“Twenty years ago.”

“Yes.”

“Why was it hidden in your book?”

His eyes stayed on mine. He did not reach for an excuse.

“The Crown ordered me to burn it,” he said. “I disobeyed.”

“But you did not give it to me.”

“No.”

The kiss was still warm on my mouth.

“You knew I thought she had left me nothing.”

His answer was barely audible.

“Yes.”

I picked up the letter.

Six paces of floor lay between us, and for the first time they felt exactly like a prison.