“Tellme, boy!” Luc demanded. “What did you see? Speak!”
The next moments played out in Rolan’s imagination. Luc would shake the truth from him one way or another. And Rolan would say the words:Your brother ordered your death. He was the one who hired my father to set that fire. He is the reason your wife and son are dead. He was too cowardly to be an Arcanist, and he wanted you out of the way so he could be a duke instead.
And once he knew the truth, Luc would attack his brother. What else could he do? He would attack the duke, and even if he beat him, the guards would kill or arrest him. And even if he beatthemor managed to escape, the Arcane Council would condemn him for breaking his oaths.
Arcanists were given the power of monsters, but they were denied justice.
Rolan would lose him. That would be the end of it all—his apprenticeship, his new life, the family he had found. The end of Luc.
The only father who had ever wanted him.
All of it lost for a taste of vengeance.
Luc had never forgiven himself for his family’s deaths, and he would do anything to erase that pain. Rolan knew that now. He knew Luc would never be satisfied just fighting Cryptics. He needed to make things right, and if he discovered his brother was the mastermind behind their murders, his anger and pain would drive him to doom himself.
“Speak!” Luc ordered, his voice strained, his eyes half mad.
So Rolan did.
- CHAPTER 43 -THE ARCANE OATHS
Before the goddess and these witnesses,” Rolan murmured, “I vow to uphold the Law of the Arcane.”
Luc’s eyes widened, at first in confusion, then understanding.“No…”
“I vow to be a shield of the people, their sword in the dark,” Rolan went on, more loudly, as the duke and his men came to a halt behind the Arcanist, listening to his apprentice speak.
The words had been stuck in Rolan’s memory ever since he’d first read them, sounding them out, the Arcane Histories heavy in his hands.
“I vow to seek no justice or retribution, nor to pass judgment on or seek out any person whose secret I may learn through the relics I collect. I renounce all titles, properties, and inheritance. I will takeno spouse and father no children.” An image of Anaya, laughing and kissed by sunlight, flashed in his brain. With a stab of pain, he ruthlessly pushed it aside. “I will share no Arcane knowledge with any person outside the Arcane order. I vow that my life from this moment to my final breath shall be in service to truth.”
Luc looked stricken. Panicked. He gripped Rolan’s shoulders so tightly that Rolan’s arms began to tingle, his fingers robbed of blood. “Rolan! Don’t do this! You’re too young. You don’t know what you’re—”
“I vow to speak no secret I learn,” Rolan finished, his spine rigid against Luc’s grip. “My lips shall remain sealed upon the pain of my own death. I will live in service to the Arcane Order until the day I die and my soul is taken up in the goddess’s embrace. Such is my word. Such is my vow.”
It was done.
Luc’s eyes slid shut. His grip on Rolan slackened and he sighed long and wearily.
“We can still undo this,” Luc whispered.
“I know the rules,” Rolan said. “I fulfilled them all. I slew a Cryptic of Rank Four or higher in the presence of an Arcanist. I spoke the vows before at least three witnesses. And I’m holding an Arcane blade, given to me by my master. I’ve done it all by the book.”
“I know what you’ve done, my boy,” Luc said wearily. “But I fearyoudo not.”
Rolan swallowed. He knewexactlywhat he’d done. He’d sealed himself forever to the life of an Arcanist. There was no going back now. There would be no other paths for him.
And Luc wouldnotget his secret, the secret that would doomhim. There would be no final vengeance for the Arcanist. He wouldlive, and he would stay with Rolan, and they would be family.
Rolan met Luc’s eyes and regretted nothing.
“Well,” said the duke, clapping deliberately. “That was unexpected. Er… he seems a bit young for the oaths, doesn’t he, brother? And a bit questionable in his morals, given his father. Personally I wouldn’t trust a son of Rabb Strider with a rusty fork. Regardless, about this mess—”
“How do you know who his father is?” Luc asked, oh so softly.
The Arcanist rose, his sword point dragging through the dirt.
The duke’s eyelids fluttered. “What?”
