Page 145 of Fate's Wicked Oath

Somewhere behind us, I heard the distinct sound of a Morta’s death call. I glanced back in time to see it collapse, crushing a handful of knights and slumping over the body of another slain monster. There were two Morta left: one currently swamped by fighters, and the other tearing free, heading our way.

I ran hard, the exertion stealing my breath, cutting our conversation short. When we reached the huddled ledgermasters, Faren dropped to his knees, sliding across the marble the rest of the way. I skidded to a halt beside him, nearly colliding with the Mighty Knight who had gotten there before us.

Faren’s introduction was curt. “Warner. Mariana.”

So this was Faren’s hapless friend. We shared a perfunctory glance, and based on Warner’s smirk, I got the sense that my reputation proceeded me, too.

“Pleasure,” he said, and his tone had an unexpected lilt of teasing.

I didn’t know what to make of it and didn’t have time to ask.

The two ledgermasters were tucked between the Lord’s toppled throne and the wall, holding each other in a terrified embrace. Their dusky brown robes were stained with purple pie filling and who knows what else, and with their ceremonial cowls thrown back, the fear on their faces was plain. These were high-ranking Arcane Adepts, middle-aged, with hands heavily tattooed—proof of their superior power—yet they were quivering like children, vacant-eyed and immobilized.

“What now?” I asked Faren.

His hair fell across his forehead as he regarded me. “You’re going to let me call the shots for once?”

The Morta was only thirty feet away from us now, and it let out a vicious hiss that rattled my bones. “Not really the time for jokes, is it?”

“Wasn’t a joke,” Faren replied.

“Quit flirting,” Warner said.

“We’re going to die,” one of the ledgermasters—a man with a short gray beard—whined. “We’re going to die.”

“Mariana, the Ledger,” Faren said.

The marble was hard beneath my knees as I shifted, removing my satchel from my shoulder and opening the flap. When Faren spotted the two additional spines within, he swore. Warner’s face went slack.

I removed the Ledger of the Sovereign and presented it to the ledgermasters.

They both startled, mouths falling open. “You,” the male ledgermaster said to me. “You’re the person whose been—”

“Sever Lord Haron’s Oath,” Faren interrupted—then gagged and grimaced as if the suggestion had stung his throat.

“What?” the second of the two—female, with black braids and a round face—shrieked.

“That’s treason,” the man added.

“But it’s not against your Oaths,” Faren pointed out, his voice rough. “If you care about this great realm, you will sever Lord Haron from the Ledger of the Sovereign. You will strip him of his power over—” He broke off with a strangled sound.

The woman glanced between the three of us—the three knights kneeling in front of her—then past us toward the approaching Morta. She began to shake her head, mouth agape—not a refusal, but disbelief. The man covered his face, fingers trembling.

I found their abject horror an odd comfort—it meant that not all the Lord’s ledgermasters were corrupt enough to enable his schemes. That these two representatives of his Adept court were therefore persuadable.

With a twinge in my own Oath magic, I removed the other tomes from my satchel, thunking the two Ledgers of the Order of the Morta on the tiles between us. “Your choice is simple,” I said. “Treason or death.”

The woman gaped at the Ledgers. The man was shaking his head. A crash from behind us—the Morta, stalking ever closer—made them both startle.

“I’m not supposed to die this way,” the woman moaned, rocking forward and back.

I gripped her arm, squeezing hard. “Morta can alter Fate.”

The man made a small, horrified noise.

“If you want to survive,” Faren piled on, “you will do as we say.”

“Do it,” a new woman said sternly, arriving on the scene. She had short blonde hair and a strong jaw, just like her brother. “Do it,” Phina Farkept repeated.