The blood dried, the wounds healed, and the fever began. Bone-deep fire. Araam shivered untrolbly as he burned alive.

  Father. Mother. The Raen tribal greatship. Ueat and Ceolr and all the raedrs. Haelbringr.

  Mehet. Those beautiful eyes glittering in the fmes of their burning wedding vessel. No, glittering in light from the whale oil mp in their . Glitterih him. Soft hair the color of sunshiill slightly damp from the waves, tangled around his fingers. Golden skin and the taste of salt. The smile that was only for him, hidden from the rest of the world by sweet-smelling silks. Those clever weaver’s fingers.

  Do your duty by me, husband.

  When Araam surfaced from the fever dreams, he remembered that he was in one of the nd-going crafts the dirters called a cart. Ugly and violent, it sailed as if it were stantly running aground. Crude pnks beh him banged and lurched endlessly. At times, he crawled to the cart’s waist to retch over the side. At others, he found nth to move, and bile pooled on the boards beh his cheek.

  Was any of this real? How could it be? How could he have given in to cowardice so easily, sold his soul for his manhood? Wrecked, mutited, ruined manhood that it was.

  Half a man. Son of no one. Of no tribe. Disgrace to the people and the o that had birthed him.

  He hadn’t fought hard enough. He should have died rather than given in.

  Why couldn’t he have died fighting? Died with his cutss in hand, as Ueat and Ruell and his crew had.

  Or with swordbreaker in hand, as Mehet had.

  Beautiful eyes like sparkling teal gems, Mehet stood on the deck of the Haelbringr. All around her, fmes ed her wedding vessel.

  It is lost. Do your duty by me, husband. I will not be taken by this dirter filth to be raped and ensved. I am Raen as much as you are. I will die free.

  Only minutes his wife and already she had had the ce of a fully proved raedr. He’d been sick with love and pride and pain as she pulled back her silken veil and guided his cutss to her throat.

  But he had failed in that, too.

  Someone shouted from the bow of the dirter’s cart. They were sitting at anchor now, that siing otion making nausea bloom in Araam’s gut. He was too weak just then to crawl to the side. Too disorieo tell which way the side was. He choked on the acid taste of the bile, coughed it onto the pnks.

  “Think he’s dying?”

  “Nah, the king gave him some blood. He should be healing.”

  “But he’s a fner.”

  “It work for fners. I seen it done when I was on the northern front. When they want to keep a prisoner alive long enough to questiohey work the blood magi a couple days, they’re good as new.”

  “Don’t look like it’s w.”

  A pause. “Sometimes there’s reje.” Another pause. “But it’s the king’s blood we’re talking about here.”

  Their voices were like screaming gulls. Araam curled in on himself trying to block out their noise and ease the siess in his stomach.

  “Anyhow, we’re close now. Once we dump him off, he’ll be Thornfield’s problem.”

  “Better be. I’m not wanting to square ats with the king if he croaks along the way.”

  “What do you think about those? Think they’ll be missed?”

  “I never saw any gold.”

  Pulling, then tearing, along the top of his ear. Araam tried to push their filthy dirter hands away, but he was too weak. Fresh blood trickled into his ear al and hair.

  They stole my earrings.

  I didn’t deserve them. A coward doesn’t deserve significe.

  Lurg, jolting motiourned an unknown time ter. A ship driven over reefs by an unskilled hand. Araam’s head bouhe pain in his torn ear fred as it bumped against the pnks.

  Mehet, five me. I was not worthy to be your husband.

  Her glittering, fearless eyes. The cutss at her throat. The final duty of every O Rover whose wife apanied him into battle against the dirter savages.

  He had to spare her from being taken captive.

  Do your duty by me.

  But Araam had hesitated. Selfishly, he had prayed to the God of the Waves for st-minute, impossible salvation.

  Then a burst of pain at the base of his skull.

  When he had opened his eyes, he was facedown on the deck. Mehet y just feet from him, legs rigid and shaking, heels thumping against the pnks. The swordbreaker he’d given her was still clutched in her delicate hand, slinging dirter blood as it struck erratically iy air. Her head y an arm’s reach from her body in a spreading pool of red.

  A dirter had stood over her headless corpse, swearing and iing the gash she had scored in his forearm.

  A filthy dirter had cut off his wife’s head. Araam had failed her, left her at the mercy of those monsters. Like her father, who had not stopped fighting when he was beaten to the ground, Mehet had attacked a attag.

  “I am Raen as much as you are.”

  Moreso, Mehet. You were more Raen than I deserved to be. You fought to the end and past. In my pce, you would have died. You would never have disgraced yourself or your people.

  He should have suffered the emascution, then killed himself honorably. If he killed himself now, disgraced, would he go to the hell he deserved?

  It was a coward’s thought. Mehet’s determination had driven her headless body to keep stabbing at her killer until the lifeblood drained from her. His mother had fought until the mainmast of the Raeship fell. His father had fought until his back was broken and he could move no longer.

  His wife, his parents, his tribe. A sea of blood debt closed over his head.

  Hell or paradise, Araam’s soul could never rest. How could any O Rover—even cursed, even half a man—lie down and die when a blood debt that huge hung over him?

  You will serve me.

  No, he would not serve, and he would not die. Not before he had repaid the king of the dirters for the O Rover blood he had spilt.

  ***

  Thornfield y at the end of a miles-long stretch of sand, separated from the mainnd by a wide ihe far shore was visible, but just barely. The only road on the sandbar passed through a vilge halfway down.

  Perhaps because Vori bad at having to temporarily me Izak to get him this far, or perhaps because a full skin of blood had been required for Izak to heal the slices, the Thorn took a small measure of pity on the prind let him spend his final day of freedom in the public house. He didn’t even burst in on Izak and the pub girls the moment the su.

  Vorino’s patience wasn’t limitless, however. After midnight, he was done waiting.

  “Your time is up,” he growled through the door. “The enrollment is tonight, and we have miles left to ride. Get your clothes on a on a horse.”

  Izak slipped from between soft, warm bodies and sidered the jump from the window.

  “If you try to run again, I’ll ride straight back to Siu Rial and inform the king,” the Thorn called.

  “Light, Vorino, ’t you tell a defeated man when you chop his feet off?”

  “Stop being dramatic, I barely nicked—”

  “I’m ing, I’m ing! The horse is dead, man, stop beating it.”

  They rode in silence along the moht stretch of sand. Tufts of dune grass hissed in the breeze. In the distance, Izak’s prison loomed closer. The vilge they had just left was too small to have its own ghost city, but Thornfield was mirrored on the dark sky in pale, watery green.

  “I ’t survive this, I?” he muttered.

  “A little celibacy won’t kill you.” Apparently Vorino was finally in a joking mood. “Besides, the rumors about Thorns are true—you’ll have no she of women lining up after you’re recalled from the grave.”

  Izak’s lip curled in disgust. He had never run short on female admirers nor the desire for more of them.

  Funny how Teikru’s blessing looked more like a curse with every passing sed.

  “I meahornknife ceremony.” Rumor had it that there en pit where they tossed the bodies of the men who failed. “Etiaianiel, rather—has been training for this since he could hold a sword.”

  The dunes pulled back from either side of the path, revealing the graveyard from which Thornfield had taken its name. Wooden thornknife hilts cast shadows on the moonlit sand. The oldest were little more than ugly stakes snapped from the closest thorhose must have hurt like bzes going in. Probably left enough splinters in the wound to grow a new branch.

  The passage of turies became obvious as they drew closer to the ret bdes. With every geion, the thornknives were refihey went from ugly stakes to handsome, tapered bdes so thin and deadly that they could slip between a pair of ribs with ease.

  Of course, ‘ease’ must necessarily be defined by the owner of said ribs.

  s, baubles, and shells glinted arouain bdes, left behind by visitors paying homage to the dead men whose souls had once resided within.

  Was his uhornkuck there in the sand among those many thousands bleag in the sea breeze? Did heretics get memorialized or had that magical bde been hacked into muld cast into some stinking privy hole to add insult to execution?

  “I don’t have my brother’s sense of duty, his dedication, or his skill,” Izak said. “And I certainly don’t have his…” Etian wasn’t bloodthirsty, but he could be cold when he had to. Izak was certain that his younger brother could kill a brigand and not spend the week reliving it. If Etian believed a was necessary, he would move immediately and without a sed thought. “…his Josean-blessed disposition. I survive the grafting?”

  Vorino sighed. “Do you think a rustic caught up in the body tax has sixteen years to prepare before he’s shipped off to Thornfield? And the criminals dragged from the gaols—do you think they’re born with the expectation that one day they’ll be tied by a magics they barely prehend to a lord whose life they would suddenly give anything to protect?” The Thorn’s long face turned away as if he were ting the knives in the field. “You will survive, you will serve, and you will be a better man for it.”

  Izak searched the rows, remembering a better man. All the noble hopes that better man had held for his eager, bright-eyed nephew. Right up until the ax fell.

  The ers of Izak’s mouth twitched in a bitter grin. “How could I be worse?”

  Hey friends, thanks for reading! chapter ing at you Monday! I hope you enjoy the rest of your Sunday! I'm still w on a regur schedule, so if you've got any i in a specific time of day for neters, let me know in the ents!e