He gestured impatiently. “Go on, then. How does this work?”
She hesitated. When he’d said she would never leave, she’d thought he meant she would never leave him, not that she’d be a prisoner on this patch of earth for the rest of her life.
He smiled. “We will have to consider the wording. You don’t need to stay on the estate forever.”
Relief flooded Aoife.
“Only until you fall in love with me.”
Dread flooded back as fast.
“I have great ambitions, Eva. I’m going to be Viceroy someday. So, you see, I have no intention of keeping you prisoner here.”
Aoife’s stomach turned.
“I can give you everything a woman could dream of,” Halverton took a step closer. “And the sooner you realise that, the sooner you can see your family again.”
Aoife kept her eyes down, thinking. She couldn’t make this oath, not the way he wanted her to. There was no way she was ever going to fall in love with him.
Relief flooded her; she was being stupid. There was no way he spoke even a single word of Morrish, she could say whatever she liked.
“Very well,” she conceded, stepping forward and placing one hand on the bark of the tree. “Nim fior tauram ced—”
Lord Halverton’s voice cut through sharply. “In words I understand. An actual language, not your gibberish.”
The insult burned. She bit back her response.
“You want me to make an oath to the Sheedar in Eldrossi?” she asked, astonished.
“Yes,” he replied firmly.
It was a slim hope, but perhaps the Sheedar wouldn’t accept the oath if she made it in the wrong language. She thought for a moment longer before she spoke.
“I will not quit these grounds until I give my heart to one who abides here.”
She looked at Lord Halverton, and he nodded, satisfied. “Now the blood.” He said.
Aoife had been hoping against hope that he didn’t know about that. A thought took hold before she could name it. She leant in and pricked her finger on a thorn. The sting lingered, and she applied pressure as she spoke to Lord Halverton.
“You need to do it, too.”
“Why?”
“So the Sheedar know who I’m making the oath to.”
Halverton stepped forward and pricked his thumb on a thorn. The drop of blood shone brightly in the autumn sun for a moment and vanished.
A subtle pulse moved through the air. As the oath took hold, her chest constricted, tighter and tighter. For several seconds she couldn’t expand her lungs to breathe. Her hope that they might not accept an oath made in Eldrossi was dashed.
As quickly as it came, the pressure released. Aoife took a relieved lungful of air. Halverton bent at the waist, coughing.
“You felt it too?” she asked.
“I swallowed a fly.” Halverton said, straightening. How much proof did the Eldrossi need before they would believe?
As they returned to the carriage, her heart was leaden, the tightness in her chest lingered. The Sheedar would make her keep that promise. They were sneaky and tricksy, and in every way they knew, they would keep her from leaving this estate. The flogging would have ended. This would not. She could only hope it wouldn’t all be in vain.
They climbed into the coach, and Halverton gave the order to go.
