Soren Mael's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Soren Mael stood at the garden wall and watched another man take his place. His vow was simple: guard the lady, never touch her, never speak his heart. He had worn dark leather and a longsword for three years to keep that oath. Now a suitor bent close to her ear, and she laughed, and Soren's hand ached on the hilt he could not draw. He wanted her free to choose him. The vow made that impossible while any man stood at her side. The suitor came each morning after that. He brought gifts and honeyed words. Soren could not interfere while the man remained her guest. So he did the only thing his oath allowed. He watched. He listened. He learned the man's habits, his lies, the way he changed his story about his lands and his name. One night the suitor left a satchel behind. Soren carried it toward the guest wing to return it. The strap slipped, and papers spilled across the floor. He knelt to gather them and stopped. A bundle of letters, tied with a red ribbon, addressed to another woman. Promises. A wedding pledge, sealed and dated last spring. The man courting his lady was already bound to someone else. Beneath the letters lay something older. A scroll, wrapped tight, its faded markings still glowing faintly under a pink ribbon. Soren untied it. The runes shifted as he read. It was a decree from the old fae courts, forgotten by everyone but the man who had stolen it. It named the terms that could void a knight's binding vow. A vow of guardianship dissolved, the scroll said, the moment the one guarded was proven deceived by a false suitor. The lady had only to name the deception aloud before witnesses. Soren's breath caught. The suitor had been carrying his own undoing. He went to her at dawn. He set the letters in her hands and said nothing, because his vow still held. She read the wedding pledge. Her face went pale, then hard. She understood without a word from him. Before the morning court, she named the suitor a liar to his face and held up his own letters as proof. The man fled. The old decree took hold. Soren felt the vow break inside him like a snapped cord. His hand loosened on his sword for the first time in three years. But the lady did not turn to him. She stared at the letters, then at the guards, then at Soren. "You knew," she said. "You searched his things. You said nothing to me." Her voice was cold. "How long did you let him near me?" Soren was free to speak at last. He opened his mouth. The words that would win her, or lose her, waited on his tongue, and her eyes were already closing against him.