Page 59 of Fate's Wicked Oath

My heart was simply too cracked to hold something so beautiful.

“Kieran, what are you doing in my house?” Timand asked.

“Faren,” his mother corrected.

“I’m helping your aunt on a mission,” he said.

Himhelpingme. The phrasing was a lie—a kindness.

“Have you greeted your Auntie Ana, yet, Tim?” Celia prompted.

My nephew barely looked in my direction. “Hi Auntie Ana,” he said, sidling closer to Faren. “What kind of mission?”

“A secret mission,” Faren said.

Timand bit his lower lip, considering. “Are you hunting a dragon?”

Faren chuckled. “Nothing as exciting as that.”

Timand studied the tooled edge of Faren’s breastplate, then dragged his tiny finger along the pattern, smudging the shiny metal. “Do you have a sword like Kieran?”

Faren leaned closer, as if he were about to tell my nephew a secret. “I havetwo.”

I couldn’t help but smile at Timand’s immediate elation. “Can I see?”

Faren jerked his chin at where his scabbards rested by the door. “If your mother agrees,” he said, “you can retrieve them for me.”

Celia gave her son a nod. “Carefully.”

Timand sprung to his feet, racing over to Faren’s heap of gear. When he found the twin scabbards, he grasped them with care—intimidated, but also shaking with barely repressed excitement—and with some fumbling, managed to carry the hard leather sheaths over to where Faren sat.

Timand nestled against Faren’s side again, watching intently as Faren laid the swords across his legs and drew one from its scabbard. He angled the hilt toward Timand, allowing the boy to trace the woven grip and the round ball of the gold-plated pommel.

“It’s prettier than Ana’s sword,” Timand said at last.

Faren tipped his head back, chuckling deeply. For a moment, I lost myself in the view of his throat.

“Since when have you inspected Ana’s sword?” Bard asked his son pointedly.

“She wears it all the time,” Timand said.

I sat forward. “What’s wrong with my sword?”

My nephew wrinkled his nose. “It’s dull.”

“Finery,” Faren said at length, getting the boy’s attention, “is not as important as how one wields their weapon.”

“I still think gold is better,” Timand said.

“The gold is a symbol,” Faren continued. “It’s representative of the sacred honor and responsibility of my duty as a knight—but it is my strength of character that guides how I use my blades.” Light brown eyes lifted to me. “Just as it is your aunt’s strength of character that guides hers.”

True to the attention span of most seven-year-old boys, Timand appeared to have only retained half of Faren’s well-meaning speech—but the adults in the room seemed to hold their breath. For all our insults and griping on the road, Faren had a talent for speaking well of me in front of my family.

“Kieran uses his sword to fight villains,” Timand said.

Faren stroked his clean-shaven jaw. “How do you think Kieran determines whether someone is a villain?”

Timand thought on that for a while. My father sat forward, waiting for the boy’s answer. I winced, dreading he’d saysomething that skated too close to my own past—criminality, thievery, lawlessness.