Page 97 of Fragile Oath

The man’s hair was matted, but the same light-brown color I remembered. His clothes were crusted with blood, some dried, some fresh, and his hands trembled in the shackles.

I tried to dredge up some emotion. Sympathy. Vindication. But staring at the same body that had been the backdrop to some of the worst days of my life, I felt nothing.

When the cell door clanged shut, he slowly moved his head up.

“I already told ye, I dinna ken—” He cut off abruptly at the sight of me, his eyes widening.

Davin clucked his tongue. “I suppose news doesn’t travel as fast wherever you were hiding out. Your all-knowing Viper didn’t tell you that my fiancée was back, safe?”

“She—” He trailed off, looking between Davin and me with ever-growing horror, shaking his head.

“So, let’s try again,” Davin said casually. “We’ll start simple this time since you are clearly of only middling intelligence. Did you drive the carriage that took my kidnapped betrothed out of Lithlinglau?”

He overly enunciated each word, digging at the man’s pride.

“I didna ken she was kidnapped,” he fired back, his dark eyes darting back and forth between us.

“Come, now. We both know that isn’t true. Why else would you have been so secretive?” Davin asked, the muscles in his forearms flexing as he crossed the distance to jab a finger into the man’s chest, right where his Uprising tattoo rested. “You weren’t just the driver, were you, John?”

It was the first time I had heard his name. I wasn’t sure why I noted it, or why it felt significant, but I filed the information away all the same.

“You were his contact for the Viper,” Davin continued. “You got them all the way to Whitmire without being seen. You were there for that complete farce of a wedding. You knew she wasn’t there by choice,” Davin said, murder underlining his tone.

“The punishment for rebellion is a simple hanging,” he continued after a moment. “But I think I’ll come up with something special for the man who hurt my future wife.”

John’s face went even paler than his blood-loss accounted for. “I swear, she only said it was to get the Socairans out.”

We both looked at him sharply. He clearly wasn’t referring to me, when I was one of the Socairans in question.

“She?” Davin’s word was loud in the silence that had fallen, the single syllable reverberating on the stone walls.

The driver shrank back, muttering the wordnoover and over again.

“You can’t. You can’t… My family.”

“Perhaps you shouldn’t have involved them with the rebellion if you were so worried about them,” Davin said coldly.

“You dinna understand. You have to kill me. Please. You have to let me die now.”

Davin said nothing for a long moment. Then, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a small capsule of the poison. The man’s eyes lit up with a macabre sort of hope.

“Tell me her name,” Davin demanded.

John’s face fell. “She never said it.”

“Describe her, then,” he ordered.

He shook his head. “It was dark, and she— she had a hood on.”

Davin sighed, making a show of putting the poison back in his pocket.

“Wait!” John practically cried, the desperation in his voice palpable as he fixed his gaze on the pocket. “She…talked like you do.”

“Like a man?” Gwyn asked from the corner of the room.

“No,” he shook his head. “Like a highborn. Like— like a lady.”

“And when did you first have contact with her?” Davin pressed, pulling the capsule back out and holding it up for John to see.

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