Page 69 of An Honored Vow

I didn’t move. “Nik. I can’t.”

His face fell. “I can’t just sit in this room, Keera. Underground. There’s too much to do, too much to prepare.” His voice cracked. “A funeral to plan.”

I sat down in the chair. “Nik, Rheih said you will be fine a few days. But I have no idea what will happen to you if I use my magic now that you havethat.” I nodded at his tether.

Nik grabbed his wrist. He stared at the brand along his skin, caressing it with his fingers. “How did you survive it?” he asked without looking up.

My back tensed. “Survive what?”

“The pit Aemon put you in.” A tear fell from Nikolai’s eye as he looked up at me. “You were only a child. And my mother—”

“She’s how I survived it,” I whispered. “She would speak to me through the walls. Tell me stories. But mostly she just listened. She listened to me sing, she listened to me cry, she always made sure I knew that even though I couldn’t see my own hand in front of my face that I was never alone.”

“She wrote your name in a stone. Did she tell you that?” Nikolai wiped his cheek.

I froze. “No. She never said anything.”

“I felt it one night, lying on the ground. At first I thought it was just a brick or a piece of stone that had fallen away over time … maybe it was, but it was etched with your name. Dozens of them. Keera, Keera, Keera, Keera. Like she knew one day you’d come back for her.” Nikolai’s brow trembled and he picked a loose thread from the blanket over his legs. “She carved them with her fingernails.”

My throat burned so hot I didn’t know if I could speak. “That must have taken her a long time.”

“Years, I’d imagine.” Nikolai took a deep breath. “But nothing compared to the walls. She carved my name into them hundreds of times. As high up as I could reach, I could feel the carvings.” He looked up at me. “Strange that you would be housed together, with her writing names into the walls of her cage and you carving names into your skin.”

I swallowed. “No one leaves the darkness unchanged.”

Nikolai sighed and leaned back on the pillow. He was more than distraught; he was broken.

I grabbed his hand. “But the light is healing. Just give it time.”

“You swear it?” Nikolai raised a brow. “You’re not just saying that so I don’t start moping around and wearing outfits like this everywhere I go.”

“I picked that outfit, you know.”

“You spent seven hundred years locked in a tree and then five more stuffed in a hole in the ground, Keera dear. Of course you developed an atrocious sense of fashion.”

I barked a laugh and tossed the spare pillow at Nikolai’s head.

“Laughing is a good sign,” Gwyn cheered from the doorway with a plate of food. “Riven told me you might be hungry.”

Nikolai’s face soured. “Not really.”

“Are you sure?” Gwyn removed the lid from a bowl of stew and fresh bread. “The kitchen just finished.”

Nikolai’s pupils widened, and he nodded at the table beside his bed. Gwyn set the tray down but her eyes were locked on Nikolai’s wrist. “I’m so sorry that he did that to you.” Her eyes glowed bright. “He will die for it.”

A perplexed look crossed Nikolai’s face. His lips parted, trying to find the words to ask what had happened in the weeks he had been gone. But there would be time for that. He rubbed at his wrist like if he only pressed harder the brand would rub away.

I leaned back in my chair. “What did it feel like?”

Gwyn went completely still.

“It just burned.” Nikolai sighed and stopped rubbing his wrist. “And then it felt like my life would never be mine again.”

My stomach clenched. “Do you know what he tethered you to?”

“No.” Nikolai shook his head. “He just chanted the same word over and over again.”

Gwyn’s fists flexed. “What word?”

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