Page 1 of Fragile Oath

ChapterOne

GALINA

Half an hour.

Once again, that’s all it had taken to turn my world upside-down. An appallingly short time for me to be wrenched away from the castle that had started to feel like home.

From the person who alreadywasmy home.

To add insult to injury, the carriage still smelled like the Autumn festival, a cruel reminder of how happy Davin and I had been only the night before. I breathed in the faint scent of spiced pumpkin, remembering the pastries, the games, the hippocras. And the faint scent of evergreen that had blown in…

Had he been there? Watching us? Waiting for his moment to take me?

A band of soldiers galloped by our carriage, interrupting my thoughts, and Alexei’s hand tensed on my arm.

“Remember what’s at stake,Radnaya.”

His reminder was unnecessary. I was hardly likely to forget his flawless plan to ensure my parents would die if I didn’t obediently accompany him. He alleged he had a series of check-ins and meeting points that led all the way back to Socair, ensuring his safety and my compliance.

There hadn’t been time to think my way into a different solution with his hand around my neck and his breath in my ear. But honestly, even hours later, I wasn’t sure there was another way.

Davin will come after me,I had said. So confidently. Brashly. The Lochlannians were rubbing off on me. But Alexei had only tightened his hold.

Then I trust you will make sure he doesn’t. Your parents aren’t the only lives at stake.

So I knew the soldiers weren’t a threat to Alexei, knew that I had probably done my job of convincing Davin to stay away a little too well. But whether it was Davin’s men or the residual traitors in the ranks, they were unlikely to look twice at a nondescript merchant’s carriage in a sea of other plain carriages cluttering the road home from the festival.

Alexei knew those things, too, but it didn’t stop his fingers from digging into my bruised skin in a warning I didn’t need. I froze like the terrified rabbit he turned me into, an ingrained reflex I would have given anything to burn out of my soul.

“I will allow you to sulk for now,Radnaya, because these Lochlannians have poisoned you, but I expect you to remember your place by the time you are my wife.”

I know my place, and it is not here. It is not with you.

If you wanted a willing wife, perhaps you shouldn’t have kidnapped your bride.

But I couldn’t say any of those things, not when I had agreed to be obedient. Not when I had agreed to behis.

“I’m sure the journey home will give me ample time to come to my senses.” In my head, the words were dripping with sarcasm, but I managed to deliver them evenly.

Or at least, I thought I had.

Then, something sparked in Alexei’s almond-colored eyes, a warning that had my heartbeat pounding wildly in my ears. He leaned in, his voice a quiet murmur that belied the anger radiating off him in waves, made more ominous by the icy wind howling outside the carriage.

“You can’t think I would wait to claim you this time.”After last time, he meant, though he never entirely acknowledged that I had run away from him. “We will wed here. In Lochlann.”

If I had been standing, my knees would have given out. Alexei nodded, like he knew exactly what his declaration was doing to me, in spite of my best efforts to hide it. Like my terror satisfied him on some primal level.

Was this why he had let me live? Not only for the sake of his pride, as I had assumed, but so he could make sure I suffered every day for the rest of my life, all for the sin of leaving him?

Yours, I had told Davin.Only yours. Always yours.

It was like the universe had heard me, like the stars themselves had been determined to make a mockery of the promise I had finally brought myself to make.

“Will that make you happy, Galina?” Alexei said my name the way he always did, with the condescending exasperation of a parent chastising an obstinate child.

I forced myself to look into the eyes so devoid of the warmth and wit and laughter that Davin always held in his piercing blue gaze. And slowly, I nodded.

“Of course, My Lord.”

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