Chapter Six: A Vow in Blood

Lia could not quite remember what happened after that night.

All she remembered was standing before Kaelric, of Isolde—held back by fear of her pure blood—retreating, face dark, into the night, of the Shadow Tide upon the square slowly receding, of King Ashfall the Third's roar and the guards' scrambling footsteps, of herself supporting the blood-drenched man as they stumbled through the chaos.

When she came to herself, they were already in a secluded little chamber where a brazier burned warm. Kaelric lay on his back upon the couch, black blood seeping from the wound in his chest, his face as white as paper. He had not been struck by an ordinary blade, but by one steeped in shadow-venom—and only a pure-blood shadow-caster could draw that shadow-venom out of a man's blood.

"Your Highness," Lia knelt by the couch, her voice trembling, "what... what should I do?"

Kaelric looked at her, and those deep amber eyes showed, in the yellow lamplight, a weakness she had never seen. He raised his hand as though to touch her face, then drew it back and laid it upon the wound in his own chest, saying in a raw voice:

"Your mother's pendant... inside it, isn't there a page... from a wax-sealed ledger?"

Lia started. She remembered the wax-sealed ledger her mother had left in the storeroom below. She had never dared to open it.

"That is a fragment of the Vow of Ash and Shadow," Kaelric said, his voice growing lower. "Left behind by Melaira, the Shadow Queen, with her own hand. It says... when the bloodlines of fire and shadow are both cursed, only a vow made in blood—a soul-vow—can save them. Once the vow is made, life and death are shared."

He paused and looked at Lia, something in his gaze she could not read.

"Once the soul-vow is made, you can never kill me, and I can never harm you. We will... be bound together, until death."

Lia fell silent.

She ought to have hated him. He was the heir to the dynasty that had burned her mother, the hangman in the eyes of the Dusk Order, the very fire itself. But now, looking at him—at the black blood on his chest, at his dying weakness, at the shadow hidden in those deep amber eyes, a shadow likewise betrayed by a father, likewise carrying blood it ought never to carry—

she remembered what he had said—"If one day he were to find that something that ought not to be ran in my blood as well, would he burn me too?"

"In your blood," Lia asked softly, "there is shadow as well?"

Kaelric did not answer. He only raised his other hand, slowly. A thread of near-invisible dark smoke rose faintly from his fingertips, trembled once in the lamplight, and scattered away.

Lia looked at him, and suddenly she understood.

He had burned so many of the Dusk Order. He had burned away every last shred of shadow he could burn. And yet he himself was the deepest shadow of all. What he had been burning, all along, was himself.

She bowed her head, bit her fingertip with her teeth, and pressed out a bead of blood onto the wound in Kaelric's chest. That drop of pure-blood shadow blood, the instant it touched the shadow-venom, blazed up—like a drop of ink falling into clear water, like a single spark falling into an abyss.

"By blood, a vow," Lia said softly, her voice light and steady. "I, Lia Voss, of the direct shadow line, swear to bind a soul-vow with Kaelric Ashfall, Flame Prince of the Ashfall dynasty. Life and death shared. Fire and shadow, one fate."

Kaelric looked at her. In that instant, something in those deep amber eyes seemed, at last, to break.

"By blood, a vow," he said in a raw voice. "I, Kaelric Ashfall, swear to bind a soul-vow with Lia Voss. Life and death shared. Fire and shadow, one fate."

The instant the words fell, Lia felt a scalding, unfamiliar power pour through the blood on her fingertip and into every bone and limb. Her shadow swelled violently, then snapped tight, like a chain, welding her fast to the dying man before her.

The red-gold Flame Seal at her breast and the dark pendant of her mother's hummed, at the same moment, with a single faint note.

Thus the Vow of Ash and Shadow was sealed.

From that day on, he lived, and she lived. He died, and she died. To hate him was to hate herself. To wound him was to wound herself.

Lia looked down at the faintly warm Flame Seal in her palm, then at the man on the couch, already sunk into unconsciousness, and suddenly felt as though she had... given her whole life away.

Yet, for reasons she could not name, she did not regret it.

"Fool," she said softly, mimicking his tone, as much to herself as to him, "I ought to hate you."

She paused, then added a line, her voice barely audible:

"But I think I have already come, a little... to begrudge letting you die."